Cobb County public schools: academically excellent, racially backward

Forget the hype about democratically elected school board ensuring racial equity and local control in public education.

By the most basic measurements, Cobb County schools in Georgia exemplar the great American public school system.

With 112,000 students in 113 schools (22 of them are Blue Ribbon schools, and the state designates 56 as "schools of excellence"), the district is the second-largest in Georgia and the 23rd largest in the nation.

The student body here is racially balanced: 37% white, 30% Black, 22% Hispanic, and 6% Asian.

And, Cobb students have higher average ACT and SAT scores - 22.8 and 1,107 respectively - than the nation, while having a higher graduation rate too.

Above all, a democratically-elected school board governs this high-performing district, something that teachers' unions and public education advocates nationally argue makes the schools accountable to the public they serve.

Those advocates should have seen the heated meeting Cobb County school board members held this past Thursday. During that meeting, one of the board's three Black members (the board splits between four white Republicans and 3 Black Democrats), Jaha Howard, seemed to accuse his colleagues of participating in "systemic racism."

His calmly delivered rebuke came after the board voted to abolish a community advisory committee scheduled to reconsider how schools and district buildings are named. A second proposal up for vote would require board members have four votes to put items on the public meeting agenda. Both of these proposals are anti-democratic in my eye, but what's new?

It was the first proposal that drew the most heat. The East Cobb News reports that the community advisory group on school renaming was "approved by a 4-3 vote in August." Back then, a Black school board member took issue because of the district's 113 schools; there wasn't one named after a Black person.

Cutting deeper into that wound, community members have complained that two of the district's best schools are named for racially problematic people.

A student at Walton High School started a Change.org petition to rename the school, saying:

Walton High School is named after George Walton, one of Georgia’s three signers of the Declaration of Independence. For many in history class, that’s where the conversation stops. No one ever talks about how George Walton was a white supremacist, belonged to a slave owning family, and spent his political career championing white supremacy in Georgia by stripping Native Americans time and time again of their land. For a school well known on the national stage, it is sickening that they choose to carry themselves using a man who represents one thing: continuing white supremacy in the American South.

It is no surprise that Walton High School specifically chooses to exonerate a figure who oppressed minorities his entire life, as the same behaviors that the school is named after are behaviors that plague the halls of that school to this day. It is no coincidence that Walton High School is only 6% black, significantly lower than the county average of 30.2% and the state average of 36.3%. Walton has always been districted to block minority students and especially black students from enrolling in a sizable number, acting as a beacon of white supremacy in a majority-minority school district.

According to the East Cobb News, "Georgia Department of Education data...indicated that Walton, which opened in 1974, had 155 black students out of an enrollment of 2,616."

I'd have to dig really hard to explain how that is possible in a district with 30% Black students.

Another high school was also under community pressure for a name change. Wheeler High School alumni formed a private Facebook group that led to a call for that school to rename.

The Wheeler "Wildcats" had this to say:

“Students do not deserve to attend a school whose namesake celebrates a Confederate history and one that was named for a hateful purpose: to hurt and shame Black youth that were, by court order, integrated into our county’s white school system. It does not go unnoticed that the school was named after the passing of Brown v Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. It does not go unnoticed that the school was named after the state of Georgia finally began to adhere to the ruling, seven years after it passed. It does not go unnoticed that the Cobb County School Board finally voted to desegregate in 1965—the same year they named Joseph Wheeler High School.”

In this dispatch from Cobb County, there should be plenty here for public education believers to address in stories like this one. Does an elected board really ensure accountability to local concerns when the power dynamics of those boards break down along racial and political lines?

Is this messy form of democracy, as practiced by school boards, a safeguard against discrimination and racial inequality?

Doesn't the very idea that four board members could pass rules to prevent three other board members - all of whom are the voices of a public constituency that voted for them to have a say - from even putting items on the agenda create suspicion?

Shouldn't it bother us that the white leaders of the Cobb County school board, in an effort to stifle Black thought, voted last year to prevent board members from making comments at the end of board meetings?

And, shouldn't we all take note when one of America's largest districts, one that prides itself on academic excellence for all, should lift up the names of dead Confederates over the objections of living educators, parents, and students?

I think you know the answers.

And, in keeping with Dr. Martin Luther King's words "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," I'd ask that you take an interest in letting the local leaders in Cobb County know that we are watching from afar. You can find their email addresses here, and perhaps you can send them a quick note to tell them they need to listen to communities of color.

Watch the contentious board meeting here: