Two Cobb parents have filed a federal lawsuit against the school district, alleging that they were blocked from speaking critically about the district during a school board meeting last fall.
Mothers Jennifer Peterson and Melissa Marten say that before the September 2023 meeting of the Cobb Board of Education, district staff made a last minute switch to the method of public comment sign up in order to bar them, and others with viewpoints critical of the district, from speaking.
The change in protocol also caused a chaotic scrum that ended with several minor injuries, as reported by the MDJ at the time.
“Without warning, the county staff took the computers and sign-up table outside, and instead of becoming first come, first served as it’s been for years, it became a free-for-all, pushing, shoving,” Cobb County Association of Educators President Jeff Hubbard told the MDJ last September.
The September 2023 meeting came just weeks after the school board voted 4-3, along party lines, to uphold Superintendent Chris Ragsdale’s termination of former Due West Elementary teacher Katie Rinderle, who was fired for reading a book about a nonbinary child to students.