Teachers’ group: Cobb educators questioned about reactions to superintendent’s speech

The Cobb County School District questioned an estimated 200 teachers last week over whether they walked out of the superintendent’s address at the beginning of the school year, a teacher’s group said.

The educators could learn as soon as this week the next steps in the district’s ongoing investigation. They could be accused of insubordination or unprofessionalism, said Jeff Hubbard, the president of the Cobb County Association of Educators.

In a back-to-school kickoff event for staff in late July, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale spoke to teachers about school safety, academics and benefits. He also spoke about President Donald Trump’s visit just days earlier to Cobb’s Wheeler High School, claiming that people said the visit was “divisive” the same way they said removing books from Cobb schools was “divisive.”

At one point, he equated people who oppose book banning to people who support human trafficking.

“Every two minutes, a child is sold into trafficking in the United States of America. Let that sink in,” he said, according to a recording of the speech the district posted on YouTube. “Now, folks, the sexually inappropriate materials we remove from this school district have one intended action. To condition kids at a young age to accept this whole deal around trafficking is normal some way, shape, or form. And either you agree with protecting kids or you don’t. There’s no politics involved.”

Hubbard called the speech “chilling.” Some teachers walked out because they were offended by the comments and needed a moment to collect themselves, he said.

The district reviewed security tapes from the speech, which was broadcast to several locations throughout the district, to identify employees who stepped out, Hubbard said. Roughly 200 of those employees in about 10 schools were called out of class to speak with their supervisors last week. They were asked two questions: Why they walked out of the superintendent’s speech, and who gave them permission?

“How do you call 10,000 certified personnel and paraprofessionals sex traffickers because they disagree with their philosophy on a book?” Hubbard said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “What should have been an engaging, empowering, joyful celebration to start a new school year left pretty much everybody with a bad taste in their mouth.”

The district said in a statement it’s been having conversations with some educators.

“Those conversations ensure alignment, communication, and like any personnel investigation, are not publicly available.”

Cobb is Georgia’s second-largest public school district, with more than 105,000 students and 17,000 employees.

The district’s administrative rule on employee ethics requires employees to fulfill the job requirements or duties as assigned by their supervisor. It includes self-reporting any violations of the law, such as an arrest or traffic citation and not exploiting relationships for personal gain.

The state also has a Code of Ethics for Educators. It requires teachers to follow “generally recognized professional standards and preserves the dignity and integrity of the education profession.” Conduct that impedes an educator’s ability to do their job professionally or hinders the health, well-being or morals of students is prohibited. The code does not include employee guidelines for interaction with the district’s superintendent, aside from rules for an employee whose certification is revoked.

When complaints make their way to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, which handles teacher licensure, the violations often include infractions like disrespecting students, failure to supervise students or contract abandonment, a spokesperson for the commission said.

Hubbard said it’s not clear what penalties could be imposed.

“These are educated professionals,” Hubbard said. “It’s not like we’re dealing with a bunch of middle schoolers.”

Issues at the forefront of national politics — like mask mandates, critical race theory, antisemitism and immigration — often play out in Cobb schools, and Ragsdale routinely addresses controversies at monthly board of education meetings.

Ragsdale’s speech was just days after Trump’s visit to Wheeler High School. That event was organized to promote Trump Accounts, but the president spent little time on the savings accounts for children. Instead he spoke about immigration enforcement and the upcoming election, among other political issues.