Cobb County School District Calendar 2026–2027

Cobb County School District enrolled 104,859 K–12 students and organizes most families through a large set of address-based feeder patterns leading to 17 comprehensive high schools. The district’s attendance-zone locator is the starting point because familiar city names such as Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw and Acworth do not by themselves identify a school cluster. Marietta City Schools is a separate municipal system inside the county, while many other named communities remain in Cobb County schools.

Cobb’s seven high-school magnet programs operate within selected comprehensive schools and use competitive application requirements. Admission to a magnet does not erase the distinction between the host school’s residential zone and the countywide group of students selected for the program. Cobb also runs a general school-choice transfer process based on available seats; that process can use a lottery and may require a new request when a student moves to the next school level.

Those mechanisms should not be collapsed into one idea of “choice.” A residential assignment follows the current feeder map. A magnet seat follows program criteria. A transfer follows capacity and the district’s choice rules. Cobb’s size makes the differences consequential: the same school building can contain neighborhood students, magnet students and approved transfers whose paths into it are legally and operationally distinct.