East Cobb Town Halls This Week

The upcoming Sope Creek Bridge replacement on Paper Mill Road will be detailed on Tuesday.

Both East Cobb-area Cobb commissioners and a local school board member will be holding town hall meetings in the coming week. District 2 commissioner Bob Ott and Post 6 Cobb Board of Education member Scott Sweeney will hold a joint town hall meeting Tuesday starting at 7 p.m. at Sope Creek Elementary Schoool. Among the topics are the March 19 Cobb Education SPLOST referendum and the replacement of the Sope Creek bridge on Paper Mill Road that will affect East Cobb traffic this summer. Sweeney's SPLOST advocacy was in the news earlier this week. State law mandates that public officials cannot lobby for or against a referendum in public facilities, including schools, or use taxpayer resources to do so. The Marietta Daily Journal recently …

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Sweeney Pens Pro-SPLOST Opinion Piece

The editorial was written as his personal opinion, and not in his official position as a Cobb school board member.

Cobb County School Board member Scott Sweeney has stirred up controversy by writing an opinion piece in support of the Ed-SPLOST in the February edition of Around Walton magazine. The piece, entitled, “Why You Should Vote to Continue Ed-SPLOST,” outlines Sweeney's thoughts on the sales tax benefiting education and cites examples of how previous SPLOST initiatives have benefitted local schools. Schools in East Cobb like Wheeler High School and Sope Creek Elementary School have already seen improvements funded by SPLOST collections, and further SPLOSTs would help pay for renovations at Walton High School and the construction of a new middle school in East Cobb. Sweeney, who represents a portion of East Cobb on the board, told the Maretta …

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Ott, Sweeney to Hold Town Hall

East Cobb's commissioner and school board member will have a joint appearance Feb. 19 at Sope Creek Elementary School.

East Cobb citizens will be updated on county government and education developments at a Feb. 19 town hall meeting at Sope Creek Elementary School. District 2 Cobb Commissioner Bob Ott and Post 6 Cobb Board of Education member Scott Sweeney will meet with constituents and answer questions. The town hall begins at 7 p.m. The school is located at 3320 Paper Mill Road. Among the topics are Paper Mill Road improvements, the Sope Creek bridge replacement and the March 19 Cobb School SPLOST IV sales tax referendum.

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Eastvalley Parents Express SPLOST Concerns

The future of four older East Cobb elementary schools dominated discussion at a town hall meeting Monday.

The proposed "SPLOST IV" project list for the Cobb County School District includes nearly $70 million in funding to fully replace three unspecified elementary schools. At a town hall meeting Monday night, parents representing one East Cobb elementary school wanted to know if the "TBD" designation might apply to them. And if it doesn't, they wondered how money would be found for improvements to a facility that's more than 50 years old.  Parents with children attending Eastvalley Elementary School didn't get all the answers they were looking for at the meeting, which was held at Wheeler High School. Cobb Board of Education chairman Scott Sweeney, who represents the Eastvalley attendance area, repeatedly told the audience of around 50 …

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Sweeney to Hold Walton Town Hall

The Cobb Board of Education chairman will meet with constituents on general school matters next Thursday.

Cobb Board of Education member Scott Sweeney will be meeting with constituents next Thursday, Sept. 20, at a town hall meeting at Walton High School.  The meeting, which is free and open to the public, will start at 7 p.m. at Walton, located at 1590 Bill Murdock Road.  Sweeney, who represents the Walton and Wheeler High School districts in East Cobb's Post 6, said the meeting will cover a wide range of topics relating to the Cobb County School District.  In his first term in office, Sweeney is currently serving as the board chairman. The school board will soon tackle the fiscal year 2014 budget and is considering a proposal to call for a referendum in early 2013 to extend the Cobb school SPLOST collections for construction and maintenance …

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Cobb School Budget Vote on Tap

A preliminary vote to address a projected $62 million deficit headlines Thursday's school board agenda.

The first major step in what figures to be some painful budget-cutting decisions by the Cobb Board of Education begins tonight.  The school board is slated to vote on a tentative fiscal 2013 budget that includes a recommendation to shrink the teaching staff by hundreds of positions to help eliminate a projected $62 million deficit.  Mike Addison, the Cobb County School District's chief financial officer, is suggesting that cutting 350 teaching jobs by attrition, imposing five furlough days, increasing class sizes, and other measures, including using $21 million in reserve funds, be undertaken to balance the budget.  But school board member David Banks, writing over the weekend in East Cobb Patch and Northeast Cobb Patch, questioned most of…

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Hinojosa Prefers Layoff Alternatives

The Cobb school superintendent wants to avoid cutting teachers to balance the budget.

Superintendent Michael Hinojosa would rather dip deeper into reserves than resort to layoffs if attrition doesn’t meet the Cobb County School District’s plan to cut 350 teaching positions. The school system is 200 teachers short of that 350 goal, Hinojosa said during Wednesday’s Cobb Board of Education work session. But even though that’s behind the predicted pace, he said he expects attrition to do the fiscal dirty work. Last year Cobb schools lost 320 teachers from this point until the end of the school year, Hinojosa said. “I think it’s unfortunate, the bit of news that you bring up—the people leaving aren’t matching up to expectations—because the last thing we want to be in position to do is to lay off teachers,” said board member Tim …

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Cobb Schools Seek Map Comments

Redrawing the districts of board members David Banks and Scott Sweeney is on the April 19 agenda.

The Cobb County Board of Education will seek public feedback on the new map of the board's seven districts at its next meeting. Board Chairman Scott Sweeney on Wednesday added the school board's reapportionment to the agenda for the board's April 26 meeting. Gov. Nathan Deal had not signed H.B. 1208, the legislation redrawing the election districts in Cobb, as of Thursday morning, but he is expected to do so. The legislation uses a map that's different from what the school board itself proposed, so board members are anxious about what the map shows. David Banks of Post 5 in East and Northeast Cobb this week distributed a link to a map from the Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Office, which is attached to this article as a PDF …

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Banks or Sweeney? I Don't Know

The realignment of Cobb County school board posts creates at least temporary confusion in East Cobb.

It turns out Wheeler itself remains in Scott Sweeney's district, although the attendance zone for the high school is split between Sweeney and David Banks. Banks disseminated a more detailed map of the new Board of Education posts Monday night, and it shows that the border between the East Cobb members bows westward to keep Wheeler in Sweeney's district, along with East Cobb Middle across Holt Road. Here’s a little homework for you during spring break this week: Figure out who your school board member is. Either David Banks or Scott Sweeney is your representative on the Cobb County Board of Education if you live in East Cobb Patch. That was true before the Georgia General Assembly enacted new post borders Thursday night, and it’s true now…

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Michael Jacobs

7:55 am on Wednesday, April 11, 2012

I was trying to convey that the post map was splitting high school attendance zones, so Wheeler's nonmagnet students are split between Banks and Sweeney. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. But what's potentially worse than splitting the schools feeding high schools is that the new map doesn't keep individual elementary schools within one school board district. My school district, Eastvalley, is …   more ›

Teach for America Proposal Pulled

School board chairman Scott Sweeney of East Cobb said he's unsure the plan "will help close the achievement gap."