Budget, Math Resources Before School Board

A drop in the newly released Cobb tax digest means that the Cobb Board of Education will have to address a budget gap when it holds a joint work session and business meeting Monday.

The meeting begins after an 8:30 a.m. executive session. The public meeting will take place in the board room of the Cobb County School District central office, 514 Glover Street, Marietta. 

The meeting also can be seen live on the district website. See the attached PDF for the full agenda. 

The board is being asked to draw from $3.2 million in reserve funding following the disclosure of a 1.28 percent reduction in the county tax digest for Cobb schools. 

When the board adopted an $856.3 million fiscal year 2014 budget in May, it did so with a projection of zero growth in the digest, and by using $41 million in reserves. 

Another agenda item calls for spending $2.9 million in SPLOST III funds for a modified purchase of instructional resources for mathematics. 

Northeast Cobb board member David Banks is proposing the alternative to a $7.5 million agenda item that was rejected by the board in April following protests over Common Core standards.

Banks was in the three-member majority that voted in favor of the new textbooks recommended by a teachers' committee. 

Those textbooks were designed to teach to the Common Core, which opponents, including the Cobb Republican Party and several Cobb Republican state legislators, have claimed are an intrusion on local educational control.

The partial spending amount will be used mainly for online and digital math resources and supplementary materials for teachers and students, Amy Krause, the district's chief academic officer, told The Marietta Daily Journal. Textbooks would be purchased for some advanced math courses.