EDITOR’S NOTE: Below is a selection of the responses from readers of MDJOnline.com in reaction to recent MDJ stories.

Cash-strapped Cobb schools spending $300,000 to send large group to conference in Florida …

Kennesaw Resident — If (Superintendent Dr. Michael) Hinojosa can’t find a better way to spend this grant money, maybe the CCSB should find a replacement superintendent who can!

Kennesaw Voter — What an outrage! Why not pay the facilitator to come to Cobb at a local hotel and put on a conference right here to teach them how to think and work? The school employees who are screaming to tax us more should have to take a pay cut to fund this nonsense. Oh wait, they can just tax the seniors and get it from them. And if a few seniors have financial difficulty because of it, that is really a small price to pay for them principals learning how to think outside the box. CCSD is turning into a mirror image of DeKalb schools.

Mmmmmm — When are you all going to get it, that even Cobb and Fulton counties’ best schools are not what the average schools are in the top 10 states?

Ms Take — Spending tax money on wild junkets is not the answer. Our teachers are qualified to pursue their profession but there is continuous interference from a gigantic oversupply of “administrators” telling the teachers how to do that which they are trained and prepared to do.

Cobb Taxpayer, Too — I’m sure this trip will end up helping our schools and improve Cobb in general. I don’t have any qualms about it. We should look at some of the wasteful spending of our Cobb County government, instead. I don’t trust the audit that comes out for them periodically. We should make sure we have truly independent audits of what our Cobb government is doing.

Donald Duck — Check out the size of the budgets that you are comparing. You had better get concerned about both the CCSD and the Cobb County Budget. SPLOST and bonds have come around to bite us in the butt.

Kennesaw Resident — This is just another EduFad which will not help improve a thing. You are VERY naive.

CCSD Teacher — Can you people read? The money being used for the conference CANNOT be spent on teacher salaries or to save jobs. I laugh in your faces when you jump to conclusions without properly researching; I guess that’s difference between educated people and angry, irrational people. Why don’t you let CCSD raise your property taxes? Because you will scream and pitch a hissy fit! You all bark and scream, but do not want to be part of the solution.

Mad Max —Yes, I can read. I understand that the money can’t be used for teacher salaries but I know WASTEFUL SPENDING when I see it and that is what this trip would be. I have been to these kind of seminars before and they are usually nothing more than glorified vacations. Mine have not been at taxpayer expense and neither should this one.

GOP Newbie — There are procedures in place by the use of which funds can be transferred from item to item in the CCSD budget where there is a genuine need to do so. The problem is with the CCSB and its lack of will to pursue the legal means to initiate such a change.

Confused teacher — FYI – (Conference leader) Dr. Daggatt has already been to Cobb County and made a presentation to the county administrators this school year. I don’t really understand the $300,000 need to hear him again.

Another confused — It would be interesting to see a list of names of those “chosen” to attend and what schools they represent. What schools are represented and why. When can we, the public, see this?