Public comments at the May Cobb school board meeting

By Larry Felton Johnson

Since the Cobb County Board of Education decided to remove public comments from its livestream of both work sessions and regular meetings, I’ve been attending the meetings and recording the meetings.

At this meeting there were only two commenters, one at the work session, the other at the regular evening meeting. The sound quality was uneven, so I included transcripts below the embedded video.

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Transcripts of Comments

Public Commenter during work session (Jeff Hubbard, Cobb County Association of Educators):

We have a situation where some schools do not finish formatives by May 8th. Formatives are designed for staff members to improve upon anything that they need to. If a discrepancy is found, it’s also a chance for them to respond.

So we ask that principals please do this in a timely manner because now we also have schools where some things have not been completed. We’re in the last four days of the school year. If somebody’s not coming back or if somebody needs to be put on a PDP, it needs to be handled quickly so they can reflect upon it and then look at what they need to do to improve. So we do ask the principals be better at it.

The governor’s bonus, we found out that employees on family medical leave should have been included in the distribution.

I do want to thank the human resources and finance departments for speaking to me about this concern and we do hope that there is a successful and timely resolution to this as they were supposed to be included on it. However,

I will say this, the rules that the school system’s got were horribly vague as to who was responsible and who was supposed to be in that. The last thing is about principal surveys. When you send one out four days before the end of the school year about how that administrator can improve, that’s honorable. But when you send it on a job form, which is anonymous by default but still can be brought forth to see who did it by either login, email tracking or IPS. 32nd. Thank you, ma’am. So at the school where this is coming from, they’re already in an uproar. In fact, last month I gave human resources and leadership 35 emails and letters about this one particular school.

So here’s a point to request. We again request that all surveys by administrators be administered by the assistant superintendent level and up from their email addresses when dealing with issues with school climate, school culture, and administrative concerns.

Public Commenter during regular meeting, (Charles Rudd):

Thank you. I am coming here as a member of the Lassiter High School community and a member of the parent booster or the parent support organization. And so I just want to say that when I woke up this morning, I came here to appeal to you and to talk to you about allocating or reallocating resources to have a qualified theater teacher be brought to Lassiter High School. We currently do not have someone that has experience or a background in that art, but currently that person is led by someone who has put our children in danger, has subjected them to discrimination and has … I’m sorry. I’m trying to compose.

They’re just not right for our program. And what I do want to finish with though is the fact that through all trying to negotiate and to work with the administration, what I do realize and what I want to talk about is our concern that extends beyond any single incident that’s happened this year or anything else.

But instead centers on whether the district has adequate oversight of the processes in place. When credible concerns are raised at a school level, the administration declines to act. We’re asking that the board ensures that the concerns involving student welfare ethics and financial management are thoroughly and objectively reviewed rather than informally dismissed, which is what we’ve been subjected to this week as we’ve raised our concerns.