25 candidates apply for Dublin school superintendent job

More than two dozen candidates have applied for the job of new superintendent of the cash-strapped Dublin City school district.

The superintendent search led by the Georgia School Board Association drew a total of 25 applicants, said school board Chairwoman Amanda Smith. 

“We are super-excited about going forward,” Smith said at Monday night’s school board.

The GSBA is screening the applicants and checking references. After the interview process, finalists could be announced by the end of May.

The new leader will be tasked with turning around the struggling school system, which just months ago was projected to end of the current fiscal year with a $13 million deficit. The new superintendent will replace Fred Williams, who stepped down to take an early retirement in September after the school district’s financial troubles surfaced.

Curriculum director Marcee Pool has stepped in as interim superintendent but plans to return to her former job once a hire is made.

“Mrs. Pool has done a wonderful job,” Smith said. “I don’t think anyone else would have jumped into this.”

The school system is expected to end the fiscal year with a cash surplus, although it still owes about $5 million in overdue payments to the State Health Benefit Plan.

The school board went in-house for its hiring of Williams, who took office in 2015 with the district in similarly dire financial straits. He inherited a multi-million dollar deficit and, with the aid of COVID funds, managed to get the system out of the red briefly in 2021, but left with it in even worse shape.

State officials contacted the Dublin district in August after learning the system owed $5.6 million to the State Health Benefit Plan after not paying in contributions for the entire fiscal year 2025. After a closer look at the finances, state School Superintendent Richard Woods declared the district on a “path to insolvency” with a $13.4 million projected deficit.

  A subsequent special examination by the state Department of Audits and Accounts, requested by local lawmakers, confirmed the root causes – overhiring and overpaying employees, wasteful spending and lax oversight – but also identified specific concerns ranging from late tax payments to the IRS, “abnormally” high credit card spending and unwarranted travel and expenditures. 

The audit also pointed to instances of family members traveling on out-of-town leadership retreats at the system’s expense and undocumented payments to a local florist.

The school board voted earlier this month to hire a permanent chief financial officer, Teresa Seeley, currently the controller for the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System. She is set to begin May 18.

The position has been filled by consultants and interim chief financial officer Betty Corbitt since former director Chad McDaniel resigned in late August.

McDaniel had served as the school system’s technology director before moving to its finance department in 2022, then taking over as finance director following Christi Thublin’s retirement in 2024. 

However, records show that Thublin continued to work for the system for at least another year as a consultant.