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Schools

Calendar Fight Heads for Finale

The Cobb County Board of Education also plans to discuss the new Smyrna elementary school and the planned ninth-grade center.

The heated issue of the calendar could be resolved, at least for the next two years, at tonight's meeting of the Cobb County Board of Education in the Central Office boardroom at 7.

Board Member David Morgan of Post 3, which covers and high schools, said, "I think it (tonight's meeting) will be very intense."

"I welcome that type of intense debate, but I hope that it stays civil," Morgan told South Cobb Patch in a phone interview today. "I hope it stays at a level that if people disagree, they're not being disagreeable."

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Comments about the calendar are expected to fill the public-comment period, starting at 7 p.m., and communications director Jay Dillon later will reveal the community response to the district’s online calendar survey. South Cobb Patch will be reporting live from the meeting beginning with the public comments; you can find the article on the home page just before 7 or go directly to http://patch.com/buRLr.

The survey, launched Friday and set to end at 1 p.m. today, asks people to choose among three options for next year’s school calendar, with that choice carrying through to 2012-13. All three calendars would provide two weeks off during the Christmas/New Year's holidays.

Find out what's happening in South Cobbwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The first choice is to use the current balanced calendar, with school starting Aug. 1 and four weeklong vacations throughout the 2011-12 school year. The first semester of 88 days would end in December, and the 92-day second semester would start when school resumed in January.

The other two options are variations on the traditional calendar. The Aug. 15 start choice provides two weeklong vacations, and the Aug. 17 start offers only one weeklong vacation during the school year. The difference between them is that the Aug. 15 calendar provides a full week off for Thanksgiving.

This is the first year Cobb County has used the balanced calendar.

Board member David Banks of Post 5, who told board members at their work session Feb. 9 that they should keep their “covenant” with the community and stick with the balanced calendar, questioned the issue’s relevance when he spoke to Patch this week.

“First of all, we should not even be talking about a calendar. That’s the last thing we should be talking about,” said Banks, whose district includes Pope, Sprayberry and Lassiter high schools. “I’ve got 1,000 e-mails so far, and it’s running about 75 percent for the balanced calendar. I’m trying to respond to all of them and responded to a good portion of them.”

Banks said the tone of the e-mail messages changed after the Feb. 9 board meeting, getting “madder and madder.”

“They don’t want to lose the balanced calendar" and don't understand why the discussion is taking place, he said. “They put it in stronger terms than I do.”

Morgan said the e-mails he has received this week "have run the gamut. Some have been really civil, others have been really intense."

Although he said he does have a position on the calendar issue, he preferred not to reveal it until the meeting tonight. Morgan also said he would like the board members to take the survey results, e-mails and their constituents into consideration when making their decisions about the calendar.

Patch was unable to reach board Chairwoman Alison Bartlett of Post 7 and Tim Stultz of Post 2, which includes Floyd Middle School, for comment.

After the board discusses and possibly votes on the calendar, several other issues are on the agenda. Eight of the nine noncalendar discussion items involve construction projects using Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax money.

One of those projects is the new elementary school in Smyrna, whose the school system announced last week.

The selection of for the west Cobb ninth-grade center could generate the most debate. The SPLOST referendum didn’t specify a school for the center, and the district revealed Feb. 9 that Harrison will house the $14.3 million center because of its central location, high number of classroom trailers, age and upcoming renovation project. Kennesaw Mountain, Hillgrove and Allatoona high schools were the other options.

Bartlett has said the center should be built at Smyrna's Campbell High, based on its enrollment zone boasting 5,145 homes sold and leased from 2007 to 2010. Of the four west Cobb high schools considered, Kennesaw Mountain had the highest number of homes sold and leased in that period with 1,979, according to figures she presented to the board.

The Marietta Daily Journal reported Thursday that the school district's Facilities and Technology Committee voted 7-6 this week against putting the center at Harrison. That vote is advisory, not binding.

Early in the meeting, the board will recognize, among other things, Georgia Department of Education Title I Distinguished Schools. Cobb County has 26 of the 868 schools earning that designation in Georgia, and

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