Letter to the Editor: Andrew Horn

A few months ago, the Cobb School district was rocked with acts of anti-Semitic graffiti at two of its high schools with significant Jewish populations, Pope and Lassiter.

While students were concerned about their safety and parents were outraged that this type of behavior continues to exist, the district’s administration and the school board took it all in stride. They made a few public comments, took a few meetings with local rabbis at their request, and poof, before you knew it, it was all gone. Which is the typical Ragsdale way difficult issues are handled. Promises of future public action yielded nothing.

Now, again, we are faced with this disgusting behavior, as a bunch of Cobb middle school students felt emboldened to demonstrate Nazi behavior on the internet with apparently little concern of penalty for their actions. Why not? They are clearly astute enough to see that the Cobb school board and its superintendent are not inclined to address any issues that require them to take public positions, which might anger their right-wing, ultra-conservative, gun-toting, anti-maskers, there-is-only-one-religion, constituents, and cause any public discord.

But someone, an entity with a public platform, needs to pop the top off this festering disease that is threatening our next generation of young people. It is time for this school board to move beyond its partisan self-serving mentality and its bunker style of operating.

They must join us in the twenty-first century and appropriately address the economic, social, racial and spiritual issues which drive our society and therefore impact our students and their families.

Andrew Horn, Marietta