MARIETTA — Cobb County School District Superintendent Chris Ragsdale sat down with the MDJ earlier this month to discuss some of the major events of the year.
Topics discussed include book removals, the lawsuit over the Cobb school board map, taxes and budget, and school safety.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MDJ: What were three of the top successes of the year, in your mind?
Ragsdale: So probably what jumps up as the top priority, or the top success, was Georgia’s Best. And it wasn’t just this year, we started it before, but I think it really came to culmination when we had it included in the budget.
(Editor’s note: Georgia’s Best is a program where the district pays for teachers to get graduate degrees.)
So including it in the budget kind of made it permanent, if you will, something other than just a pilot or a proof-of-concept or something, it kind of brought it to fruition.
And especially, you know, where we had 5,000 people interested in 500 slots. That also … presented us with, OK, the teachers are serious about this, and now we’ve opened it up, 100 slots for administrators to get doctorate degrees.
It is a recruitment (tool) to a degree. But for me, I focus more on the retention of it. I’ve always … (believed) you take care of the people you have, and that is a recruitment in and of itself.
So I think that even though it’s drawn people from around the country to come because of it, I think it’s more of a retention success than anything. And the proof was in the pudding, so to speak, when we had about a 98% retention rate when we started the budget discussion.
And I think the budget was a success. We were able to give a 7.5 to 12.1% raise.
And that’s just a success for both the organization and the board. Because that’s truly a team effort. Everybody benefits from the raise, the way that…
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