Photo of Cobb schools Chief Strategy and Accountability Officer John Floresta by Rebecca Gaunt
By Rebecca Gaunt
The financial watchdog group Watching the Funds – Cobb filed a complaint last week with Attorney General Chris Carr’s Georgia office requesting an investigation of the Cobb County School District’s handling of open records requests.
Since the inception of the parent-led group in 2021, it has questioned the spending of millions of dollars on malfunctioning COVID-19 mitigation strategies such as UV lights that had to be removed and hand-rinsing devices that are frequently broken. Other investigations have pertained to the district’s legal costs to create its own redistricting map for the school board and hire the Freeman Mathis & Gary law firm to intervene in a lawsuit regarding those maps. In June, the group revealed the plans they obtained from an anonymous source regarding the controversial $50 million planned event center. Superintendent Chris Ragsdale pulled the project in July, citing inflation as the reason.
The group has been quoted fees as high as $25,000, preventing it from moving forward in some cases. The Courier has had similar experiences, with fees ranging from $16 for a single email to $6,000 for a request that included disciplinary records and training information for school resource officers.
Additionally, records requesters are required to pick up documents in person that other government offices would typically email.
In the letter from the office of attorney Joy Ramsingh on behalf of the group, Carr’s office was asked to investigate persistent delays in responses and prohibitive fees. Ramsingh’s practice focuses on government transparency.
“One particularly concerning instance involved a request for documents related to a study conducted by Brown University on the Cobb Teaching and Learning System. The District estimated that fulfilling this request would require 211.75 hours at a cost of $14,947.65, equating to an hourly rate of $70.58. This rate is significantly above what would be expected for a typical public records request and appears to be an attempt to deter information-seeking relating to the outcome of an evaluating study of the District’s performance of its government function,” the letter states.
Another inquiry, for information related to the district’s implementation of Erin’s Law (SB 401), was abandoned due to a fee quote of $6,642. The law requires public schools to implement a childhood sexual abuse prevention awareness program
The letter also alleges violations of open meetings laws for failing to put the superintendent’s contract on the agenda for discussion, and requests corrective measures, oversight, and training for CCSD.
Courier editor Larry Felton Johnson tackled the subject of Cobb’s record handling in a 2022 editorial Cobb County School District emails should be available to the public except in narrow circumstances.
In December 2023, The Marietta Daily Journal Around Town column asked if the district was chilling open records requests. The newspaper had requested open records related to the removal of 23 books from Marietta City Schools. Marietta waived the fees. Cobb County School District put a price tag of $751.90 on that information.
John Floresta, Cobb schools’ chief strategy and accountability officer, told the MDJ that anyone with questions about the process was invited to his office to learn more about the time and cost for the district to fulfill those requests.
Watching the Funds co-founder Heather Tolley-Bauer tried to take him up on that invitation in an email dated Feb. 14, 2024.
Floresta declined to meet, writing, “If we choose to extend invitations to political action groups, yours will be included.”
“He refused to meet with us, so here we are. CCSD needs to understand that transparency isn’t optional. It’s the law,” Tolley-Bauer told the Courier.
Read those emails here. (Editor’s note: In a previous edit of this story, I left out two parts of this exchange. First was John Floresta’s response. The second was a followup to that response by Watching the Funds).
Post 5 school board candidate Laura Judge applauded the move Tuesday on her campaign Facebook page. Judge is another one of the co-founders of Watching the Funds, but previously announced she was stepping back from an active role due to her candidacy.
The district implemented a policy of not commenting on stories for the Courier in 2021.
Rebecca Gaunt earned a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s degree in education from Oglethorpe University. After teaching elementary school for several years, she returned to writing. She lives in Marietta with her husband, son, two cats, and a dog. In her spare time, she loves to read, binge Netflix and travel.
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