Charisse Davis was elected in November 2018 to represent Post 6 on the Cobb Board of Education. A Democrat, she narrowly defeated two-term incumbent Republican Scott Sweeney to represent the Walton and Wheeler clusters, as well as a portion of the Campbell cluster, where her two sons attend school.
A former educator in the Atlanta and Fulton County public schools and currently a youth services librarian in the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library System, Davis was sworn in in January.
On Tuesday, Oct. 1, she’s holding a town hall meeting in the cafeteria of Sope Creek Elementary School (3320 Paper Mill Road) from 7-8 p.m.
In her first few months on the board, Davis has suggested, along with Jaha Howard, another first-year Democratic board member, that the district should explore the possibility of making some changes to the Cobb schools senior property tax exemption.
Cobb is the only school district in metro Atlanta whose senior tax exemption comes without any conditions, such as an income threshold.
Davis and Howard also have called for the district to create a cabinet-level position for equity and diversity in the wake of calls by some parents and school staff in the county for Cobb schools to address what they claim are unaddressed and systemic racial biases.
Both of those topics have caused friction on the school board, whose 6-1 Republican majority before Davis’ and Howard’s election was reduced to 4-3.
East Cobb News met with Davis before the school year began to discuss her first few months on the board.
There’s been a learning process that naturally comes with being a newcomer, but most of Post 6 is East Cobb. Davis said her 15-year teaching experience working in very different schools in Atlanta—one a Title I elementary school and another a high-achieving school in Buckhead with an international baccalaureate program—has been helpful as she’s gotten started.
“Just sitting with people, in the beginning it’s all about listening,” she said. “It’s parent to parent, there’s nothing that you can’t discuss in a constructive way. There’s no challenge that anyone in East Cobb is talking about that I can’t understand.”
More than anything, Davis said, “I want them to know there’s someone who’s easy for them to get to.”
Among the early school year events she’s attended include a gathering of principals and school leadership with the East Cobb County Council of PTAs.
She said what she’s learned from parents everywhere, regardless of a school’s academic reputation or a family’s socioeconomic status, is that they want the same things for their children.
“They’ll say, ‘I don’t want to have my kid in a good school in a district that’s so-so,'” she said. “They want all our schools to be great. We’re all connected. We all benefit from having a strong district.
“What I find is a lot of parents bring up that they want everyone in the district to be doing well. To talk about these issues should never be about pitting some people against others.”
She said one of the most pleasant surprises to her is “seeing how much can be done at the school level” and that a big part of her role as a school board member is facilitating connections between parents and the larger school community, as well as school staff and teachers.
“You hear from families whose experiences are unlike your own,” Davis said. “My job is to help them and connect them, sometimes it’s with people, and sometimes it’s with information.”
Davis said she thinks last year’s election results in Cobb, which included Democrats making other inroads in the county (including Lucy McBath winning the 6th Congressional District) have sparked some broader conversations about local governance, as Cobb political and cultural demographics continue to change.
The Cobb school district enrollment of nearly 112,000 for the current 2019-20 year is 37 percent white, 30 percent black, 22 percent Hispanic, six percent Asian and four percent multi-racial.
“It’s encouraging to see so many more people being engaged,” Davis said. “It’s not just for a presidential election. People are waking up to the fact that these things have been happening, and that there are so many elections that are happening right down the street.”
Touching the senior third rail
At her first meeting in January, Davis was nominated to be the board’s vice chairwoman in what turned out to a series of party-line votes. That vote failed, as Republicans David Chastain (of Post 4 in northeast Cobb) and Brad Wheeler were chosen to be the board’s officers.
“On a seven-member board, we are three votes, Democrats, people of color, younger,” Davis said. “We have a nice little balance that is getting more representative of the county. It would show the great strength of our board to acknowledge that.”
She and Howard, a pediatric dentist who represents the Campbell and Osborne clusters, have spoken together about some issues that have ruffled feathers.
The senior tax exemption, enacted in Cobb by the Georgia legislature in 1973, comes to more than $100 million a year. Davis mapped out the disparities on her own website, illustrating senior tax exemption qualifiers in other metro Atlanta school districts.
At a school board retreat earlier this year, Davis asked that the district study the impact of possible changes to the exemption. She cited a recent change in the senior exemption for Forsyth County schools, where “they had households with kids registered in schools, but were taking the exemption.”
That exemption, in a heavily Republican county, amounted to around a half-million dollars a year. That may seem like small change in Cobb, Georgia’s second-largest school district (behind Gwinnett) and a $1.1 billion budget. The Republican majority on the Cobb board voted down her request for a study to see what such a change might mean in Cobb.
At an East Cobb business breakfast meeting in April, Chastain said adamantly that “we’re not taking away the senior exemption.”
“No one called for getting rid of it. People start with that, and then they’re not listening to anything else,” Davis said. “That’s been frustrating because people have gotten upset, but I don’t think we should get rid of it.”
Davis added that right now, “we don’t have any qualifiers [for exemptions]. Let’s think into the future, let’s plan for the future, because that $100-plus million dollars that we have now, it’s only going to grow.”
Charges of bigotry
In late August, Davis appeared at a Cobb Donuts for Democrats event at which she explained school funding, board procedures and other issues with a Powerpoint presentation.
After showing a slide of a group shot of the board, someone asked if the four Republicans were older white males. Davis said that they were. The Marietta Daily Journal made note in its “Around Town” political column, including a fiery e-mail from Republican State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart of West Cobb, who accused Davis of being “the most bigoted board member ever to sit on the Cobb Board of Education.”
In a response on her Facebook page, Davis explained that she was simply pointing out factual information about the board’s makeup, not making a comment about it.
“I understand that our political environment is highly charged, and it may feel good to attack a school board member for a perceived slight,” she said. “But I know I’m here for kids and I welcome you to engage with me about your ideas on how to support the students of Cobb County.”
She also included a photo of her with her husband Sean, who is white.
At the September school board work session, she and Howard bitterly opposed a measure by Chastain to ban board members from making general comments at the end of business meetings.
The proposal came about for what Chastain said had become overly political comments, sometimes not even about school matters.
At the August board meeting, Howard mentioned President Trump and state and local elected officials whom he accused of not being ethical, as well as immigration raids, the Sterigenics lab closure and gun violence.
That the vote to ban comments was taken during the work session and not a business meeting was unusual, and it sparked cries from Howard—the likely target of the ban—and Davis that they were being silenced, including about some school issues.
“When a couple of us get here and bring up words like ‘equity,’ we’re censoring,” Davis said at the Sept. 19 meeting. “You want to censor members on the board agenda. That’s not okay.”
After several failed amendments by Howard and David Morgan of South Cobb, also a Democrat, the board voted 4-3 along party lines, with the four Republicans in the majority, to impose the comments ban.
‘Let’s have the discussion’
Davis has said from the time of her campaign last year that while test scores in Cobb continue to rise (especially in East Cobb), she wants to address the lingering question of “are we meeting the needs of all our students?”
She said she was encouraged that parents have come to her “after seeing something mentioned on social media and I welcome those conversations that because conversations happen on social media.
“But it would be a shame,” she added, if parents “don’t think they can come” and have offline, one-on-one discussions.
She also commended Superintendent Chris Ragsdale, “who has always been very open about having our questions answered,” and as she has learned more about how Cobb’s largest employer operates (with a work force of more than 18,000), her appreciation for what they do also has grown.
“We’ve got some great, talented people working for this district,” she said.
After a few months on the board, Davis said she’s encouraged that some dialogue she’s felt is long overdue beginning to take place.
“We’re not going to agree all the time, and that’s okay,” Davis said. “That’s always been my point. Let’s have the discussion.”
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Ms. Davis, I do not want MY taxpayer money or time (at school board meetings) used for you or any other board member to promote any kind of NATIONAL politics. If you want to be a community organizer, go do it on your OWN dime. Politicizing our school board is what you and Howard did, before you even sat in on your first meeting, and that was at the expense of the teachers you threw under the bus. It’s NOT about YOU, it’s about the kids and it’s about taxpayers getting their money worth.