Cobb Reporter

The Cobb County Schools superintendent has reviewed data on COVID-19 and is sharing encouraging news as numbers decrease across the district; the decrease comes right before cooler temperatures that have been associated with higher numbers of cases.

According to data that Superintendent Chris Ragsdale presented at a Sept. 23 school board meeting, cases in Cobb schools have dropped by 44%, representing a massive victory for the district and their measures to control the pandemic, East Cobber reported. 

“We need to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what will happen next," Ragsdale said. "We need to understand our data and what it means. I felt it was time to get an accurate depiction of our data. When we are not presented with a forward-looking process, we will use our own data-driven process.” 

The most recent peak in the virus, which took place in August, still showed that Cobb had one of the lowest case numbers per student compared to other nearby school districts, East Cobber reported.

“I appreciate that the superintendent compiled some of the COVID-19 data which separates fact from narrative, Randy Scamihorn, chairman of the school board, said at the meeting. "I’m glad to see the case numbers going down. Our goal since the beginning of this pandemic has been to keep our students and staff safe, and the data says we are doing that as well as we can.”

Cobb attempted to help slow the spread by implementing a mask mandate during the last academic year, but case numbers in Cobb were similar to those in other districts, East Cobber reported. 

East Cobber cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of COVID transmission among 90,000 Georgia students during last winter’s surge, which showed student masking “could not be said to be effective,” according to an article in New York Magazine Intelligencer.