Dramatic Night on East Cobb Stages

1. Today's weather is pretty much the same as Wednesday's, the National Weather Service says. It will be sunny with a high about 88 degrees and an occasional light breeze. Overnight, it will drop to about 64.

2. You don't have to go to Broadway to see some fine stage shows today, thanks to the talent at East Cobb high schools. At , it's opening night for the drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a play not known to have been performed before at a Cobb County school. The play is for mature audiences only; no one under age 16 will be admitted without a parent. It starts at 7 p.m.; tickets are $10. The curtain also rises at 7 at for the musical Annie Get Your Gun, which had opening night Wednesday. General-admission tickets for the show are $10. Both shows continue Friday and Saturday nights, so you can see both even if you can't make either one tonight.

3. East Cobb had plenty of good sports news Wednesday night after some disappointment Tuesday. Pope swept Winder-Barrow in a baseball doubleheader to reach the AAAA quarterfinals. Walton netted the game-winner in the final 15 seconds at Northview to advance to the AAAAA boys lacrosse state championship. also will play for the AAAAA boys soccer title after crushing Parkview at home, 3-0, and will host the A boys soccer championship game after beating Paideia, 2-1.

4. The Cobb County Board of Education had no members of the public appear to speak during the board's work session Wednesday morning. Does that indicate a new era of good feelings on Glover Street? Hardly. Chairwoman Alison Bartlett and Post 5 member David Banks, who represents part of East Cobb, had a brief but heated exchange over the school calender (what else?) as Banks tried to add to the agenda a proposal to move the 2011-12 start date to Aug. 8. Later, the , which seemed to please the board and when last week, won approval by only a 4-3 vote, with Bartlett, Tim Stultz and Kathleen Angelucci opposed. We'll have more from that meeting this morning. Meanwhile, the school board is moving its superintendent discussions to a new venue, meeting in executive session today at 9 a.m. and Sunday (yes, Sunday) at 1:30 p.m. at the Galleria 400 Building.

5. We're sorry to see that failure on the social studies portion of the Georgia High School Graduation Tests some seniors from graduating with their classmates this month in neighboring Paulding County. To do our part to address the social studies deficit in schools, here's a fact from this date in American history. While most of the action in the American Revolution took place in the North, fighting in the South delivered the final blow to the British, ending with the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. Well, that Southern campaign began disastrously for our side with the loss of Charleston, S.C., on May 12, 1780. It was the worst American defeat of the war, with a key port and more than 3,000 patriots captured, according to History.com. Among the Americans on the losing side on this day 231 years ago was Andrew Jackson, who went on to beat the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 and to be our seventh president.