COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The Cobb County Board of Education approved the purchase of 30 new school buses for the district at a cost of nearly $5 million.
At the meeting, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale and an operations chief pushed back on claims that a portion of Cobb County’s school buses were unsafe.
Responding to board members’ questions on the bus fleet, Ragsdale said “there are no unsafe buses on the road, period. That’s the number. Zero.”
Marc Smith, CCSD Chief Technology and Operations Officer, presented the agenda item at a board work session, saying he wanted to take the opportunity to address “false statements which have recently been made regarding the safety of our buses.”
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Smith said safety was a top priority for the district and that while they do experience issues that put buses out of service, “this is why we have backup buses.”
Buses in the CCSD fleet have a five-year warranty and are cycled out every 10 years, according to Smith, meaning the 2026 new bus purchases were in line with normal timing of the fleet.
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“After our recent state inspections, there were incorrect comments made that our fleet was unsafe and that up to two thirds of the fleet were deemed unsafe and taken out of service,” Smith said. “This is grossly incorrect. With 991 buses inspected over a nine day period, there were 122 buses, 12%, that were placed out of service with issues. 88% of these buses were repaired, reinspected and placed back in service within 24 hours.”
Smith said another 11% of those buses were back in service within the same week.
According to Smith, concerns over heating and air on the buses are being addressed.
In 2019, Smith noted that the school board had approved air conditioning for buses and that in their fleet, which he reiterated was large, 399 buses had air condition and 592 did not. He said it would take $98 million to get all buses in the fleet to have air conditioning.
Ragsdale said he had asked for the information to be presented due to a responsibility to correct inaccurate information, particularly concerning student safety.
The superintendent said that the claim “that perhaps a large majority of our buses are unsafe, that is simply untrue and unacceptable that people would take student safety as some flippant topic to try to score brownie points. We’re just not gonna stand for it.”
Ragsdale said the county board would call out people “come up and present lies as being factual.”
He said that claims that a bulk of buses were out of service during the recent fleet inspection were inaccurate and untrue.
Answering questions from board members, Ragsdale said an investigation into fleet safety was ongoing. While he acknowledged that bus safety inspection data is publicly available, Ragsdale also said it was important to have both correct data and correct context for it.
“We have a fleet of over 1,000 buses on the roads each and every day, so absolutely making sure they’re safe for our students to travel in is the top priority of our transportation department,” Ragsdale said.
The new buses, now approved for purchase, will cost the county $4.96 million, with funding coming from a combination of SPLOST VI and Georgia Department of Education funds for the 2026 fiscal year.
According to the district’s agenda items, each bus seats 72 passengers and will be gasoline-fueled, rather than diesel or propane.
Ragsdale commented that the district would never have fully electric school buses, citing the lack of heated air when batteries lost charge.
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