ATLANTA — State Rep. Matt Dollar (R-east Cobb) said he will begin asking members of Cobb’s 19-member legislative delegation today to sign a bill he authored that prevents the Cobb County School District from beginning school before the third full week of August.

The bill would change the existing start date, scheduled for Aug. 2, preventing the start date from occurring before Aug. 16. For the bill to become law, Dollar must garner the signatures of seven other Cobb state representatives and three Cobb state senators, as well as the signature of Gov. Sonny Perdue. Dollar said he did not include Marietta City Schools in the bill because it is not in the district he represents. State Sen. John Wiles (R-Kennesaw), delegation chairman, called a meeting at the Capitol on Monday to discuss Dollar’s bill. The meeting was poorly attended by the public, but Dollar said not many people knew about it.

Lane Holt, a member of Georgians Need Summers, a Cobb-based group in favor of Dollar’s bill, said she would have attended had she known about the meeting. State Sen. Judson Hill (R-east Cobb), said he didn’t learn about it until an hour before it occurred.

The two speakers on the bill were school district spokeswoman Michelle Luckett and lobbyist Chuck Clay of the Marietta law firm Brock Clay.

Luckett argued against Dollar’s bill, saying the state requires End of Course Testing to be complete by Jan. 7. Starting school the third week in August means the school system runs up against that testing deadline. Luckett spoke of the “significant disadvantage” the bill would cause Cobb students in having to “cram” for exams during the Christmas break.

State Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-east Cobb) said Luckett’s reasoning made sense, asking if it had been explained to parents. Luckett said she didn’t know.

“If that wasn’t communicated to the parents, that may have been one of the reasons we’re having this big controversy,” Cooper said, noting that she didn’t see how the school system had much choice when to start school if the testing deadline was Jan. 7.

Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) asked if the Jan. 7 deadline was a state law or simply a state Department of Education regulation. Luckett said it was a regulation, to which Wiles said perhaps a waiver could be obtained for the deadline the same way the school system obtains waivers to increase class sizes.

State Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) asked if Luckett could characterize the general opinion of parents on the school calendar. Luckett said she’d have to get back with him. Luckett was also asked about the results of any surveys the school district had done on the subject and what parents said.

Wiles asked her to provide the legislators with that data.

Cooper said after the meeting she wished Luckett had better information.

“She wasn’t prepared to tell us the numbers,” Cooper said.

Cooper wondered why Superintendent Fred Sanderson sent Luckett, who was only hired last fall, to the meeting instead of coming himself.

“I would have thought it was important enough perhaps for the superintendent to have talked with us. I think that would have been very helpful,” she said.

Clay told the legislators he was not present as an attorney for the school board, but as a lobbyist for the Georgia Education Coalition, a group that represents such school systems as Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, Cherokee, Coweta, Chatham and Cartersville.

Clay said Dollar’s bill may limit the number of furlough days Cobb could give teachers, and while no one likes furloughs, they’re preferable to termination. Currently, he said, there are teacher workdays built into the calendar when students don’t attend school. Those could be used as furlough days, he said. But if the school year is compressed and those teacher workdays are taken out, they can’t be used as furloughs.

Clay told legislators to be wary of the bill and to ask questions of the school board members. He said they should be focused on “education not economics.”

The economics argument was made by Dollar and others, who say a key time for the tourist industry is in August. And when places like Six Flags and White Water do well, it helps the school system earn more Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. In a time when school systems are talking about closing schools and firing teachers, they should welcome any revenue they can get, Dollar said.

Holt, whose children attend Dickerson Middle School and Sope Creek Elementary, said if more revenue comes in from a later school start date, thus saving five teacher positions, it should be considered.

Clay said the bill goes against local control.

He said the school systems his group represents oppose interference by legislation, “particularly those things that fall clearly within the purview of what a board is elected to do.”

State Rep. Judy Manning (R-Marietta) said the main problem some of her constituents have with the earlier school start date is that it pushes athletic programs into mid July, in the heat of summer, allowing students very little time away from campus.

Yet state Rep. Pat Dooley (D-Marietta) said she was leaning toward opposing Dollar’s bill, but wants a few more days to hear from her constituents.

“I don’t like the children out there in July and August with football and the practicing and the band. I don’t like them being put at risk, and I have some concern about that, but that should be a policy issue with the school board. That isn’t something that I need to legislate,” Dooley said.

Wiles asked Luckett to have school board members contact their legislators about where they stand.

But Cooper said she’d rather hear from the people in her district than her school board member.

“There just seems to be great dissatisfaction with this board,” Cooper said.

Cooper said the school board has a “massive communications problem,” comparing the board to the way the Democrats treat the Tea Party patriots.

“It’s the same kind of reaction. It’s just like ‘we know what’s best for you and you don’t have an opinion,’” Cooper said.

The word that sums up the board’s attitude, she said, is “condescension.”

“That is the perception that members of the public have. Whether that is really how the school board feels, only they know,” she said.

But the public has a solution, she said, pointing to the upcoming July election. Three board members are up for election in July, including Dr. John Abraham, Dr. John Crooks and Holli Cash. Abraham and Crooks say they don’t intend to seek re-election.

Cobb legislators absent from Monday’s meeting were state Sens. Doug Stoner (D-Smyrna), Steve Thompson (D-Powder Springs) and Hill, and state Reps. Alisha Morgan (D-Austell), Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), Don Wix (D-Mableton), Terry Johnson (D-Marietta) and Rob Teilhet (D-Smyrna).