The Cobb County School District has been a hotbed of controversy since several books were first pulled from school shelves for containing “sexually explicit” and “inappropriate” materials in 2023, a decision Superintendent Chris Ragsdale doubled down on at the Jan. 18 board meeting. 

Ragsdale said his team “continues to actively review the millions of books in our schools” for content considered “explicit.”

“We have a professional and moral obligation to protect students from vulgar, lewd, sexually explicit, obscene pornographic material,” Ragsdale said. 

For some Cobb County students, the declaration is expected. A group of organizers from the grassroots collective the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition have worked since 2022 to get students into school board meetings around Atlanta — particularly in Cobb County. 

At the Jan. 18 meeting, several students showed up to provide public comment regarding the district’s book bans. They’ve come out again and again, despite challenges, to demand a stop to the book bans. 

High school senior Hunter Buchheit, Georgia Youth Justice Coalition’s narrative strategist, put it simply in his public comment: 

“Book bans don’t seem to be going away, and so neither do we,” Buchheit said.

The young journalist and organizer said books give young people an opportunity to see themselves in prose, particularly with diverse perspectives and backgrounds that represent kids from different backgrounds. 

“Book bans steal away that opportunity for connection, for understanding and for self-actualization,” Buchheit said. 

He’s been organizing against book bans since the first novels were pulled from shelves in 2023, a move that made national headlines. Popular far-right social media user Chaya Raichik, also known as “Libs of TikTok” claimed responsibility for filing the first complaint to the school district. 

That complaint led to bans on “Flamer,”…