Dublin school board chairman: City, county could have helped avoid teacher cuts

Dublin City Board of Education Chairman Kenny Walters said Monday that “forces out there” are trying to impose school consolidation, and he blamed the City Council, the Laurens County Commission and even the Downtown Development Authority for recent teacher layoffs. 

Walters was responding to more than a dozen students and parents who addressed the school board about recent and possibly future staff cuts as the school district tries to climb out a projected $13.4 million deficit.

“Y’all talk about being transparent,” Walters said. “I said this last meeting, how the state keeps moving the goal post. For instance, they’ll call us on a Wednesday and say y’all need to cut another $2 million by Friday. That’s the kind of stuff we have to deal with. But let me say this, it’s been a big effort from someone that’s not on this board, not in this district, to do away with the Dublin City School System. The reason, I don’t know. I ain’t figured it out yet.”

The chairman also insinuated the city tax digest was delayed intentionally to harm the district, which had to borrow almost $3 million in advanced state funding to meet payroll and other obligations in September and October.

“Our digest just came out. The amount of property you can tax, that we can collect taxes on, just came out. The law says it’s supposed to come out in July. We’re not going to be able to collect money until maybe January or February on our property tax. Was that done intentionally or not?”

Georgia law actually has a deadline of September 1 for counties to have approved a final digest, but extensions are fairly common. Taxes are typically due 60 days after the digest approved.

“Over in Jones County, they tried the same trick on the education system down there, You know what they did? They fired the whole appraisal board,” Walters said. “That ain’t gonna work. We get money two ways – property tax and grants. That’s it. We’re not like the city with a $24 million surplus. The city didn’t help us. The county didn’t help us. The county could have allowed us to sell some bonds and use some of our property for collateral, and we could have accumulated $12 million to $13 million. We wouldn’t have had to lay no teachers off.” 

Dublin school officials approached the county commission last month, asking it to reboot the inactive Laurens County Public Facility Authority to sell revenue bonds in which the school system would essentially sell and buy back an unidentified building. The commission rejected the idea, raising concerns about its legality, and one commissioner called for the entire school board’s resignation.

The school system’s latest financial woes surfaced  after the Department of Community Affairs notified state education officials that Dublin City Schools owed more than $5 million in payments to the State Health Benefit Plan, including almost $800,000 deducted from employees’ paychecks but never submitted. It was later determined that the system owed $6.8 million to the state health.

Georgia Department of Education officials then found other “operational deficiencies” that included the system not having completed an audit since 2021.

A recent report by the state Department of Education blamed the district’s financial crisis on “financial mismanagement, lack of fundamental financial knowledge and processes and a culture of excess related to programs and personnel.” It also said the system used emergency COVID funds to “mask the district’s underlying financial/budgetary issues.”

Walters said Monday that the school board was misled into believing the school system was not operating in a deficit.  However, financial reports – which are signed by the board members and submitted to the state – show the district ended each month of fiscal year 2025 in a deficit.

“I can tell you, at one point this board was told – and I’m not making no excuse for who didn’t do it in finance, I’m not going there … those people are gone and made a mistake – but this board was told that we had, not a deficit, but we was in the black. We was planning, we was buying, we was giving raises on information was given to us. … If we would have known this information earlier, we could have got a TAN, what’s called a tax anticipation note … and we could have avoided laying people off.”

Tax anticipation notes allow local governments and school boards to borrow money until property taxes are collected.

Walters defended many of the school system’s programs, such as the Irish Gifted Academy, that have come under scrutiny during the financial crisis.

“We have things that most schools don’t have. You can count the (number of) schools that have an IGA. You can count the schools that have an alternative school. You can count the schools that have a day care. You can count the schools that have health care. You can count the schools that have an IB (international baccalaureate) program. You can count the schools that have a career academy. And we should be able to have those type of things. With an $871 million digest, for a city of 16,000 people, our millage rate ought to be 5 (mills) and not 18.564.”

The school board has submitted a deficit reduction plan required by the state that calls for cutting at least $4.7 million, including 51 positions. Other money-saving measures have also included cutting calendar days, reducing and realigning select staff and the suspension of all district-paid travel.

“Yell at us,” Walters told a standing-room-only crowd in the school board office. “Yes, there are some things we could have asked about and questioned, but go down there to City Hall and argue at them folks, too. Go down to that County Commission meeting and argue at them, too, because we do have some properties and stuff we could have accumulated, some money to not have to lay off teachers.”

  He said the board was left no choice but to make difficult cuts that have included at least a dozen teaching positions. 

“When you get the state school superintendent to come down here and look you in the eye – me personally – and say, ‘Ain’t no second chance. Ain’t no second chance. This is it.’ We could have did something if we knew earlier. We didn’t get no help from nobody on the outside. We could have gotten some help. We could have got some help from the county commissioners. We could have gotten some help from the city. We could have got some help from the Development Authority. So there’s a lot of things that’s behind the scenes we gonna look into. These abatements that we’ve given these people. This money we’ve given these people tax-free. There’s a lot of things that need to be looked into that we’re going to look into.”

One of the county’s largest-ever tax abatements, granted to Korean auto-part maker Hwashin, was approved while Dublin’s school superintendent, Fred Williams, served as chairman of the Dublin-Laurens County Development Authority. 

Williams stepped down as superintendent in October, taking an early retirement. Finance director Chad McDaniel, who replaced Christi Thublin in 2024, resigned in late August. The state has since assigned a special advisor and two financial consultants to assist the school system.

Jonathan Rowe, a Dublin teacher and parent of an Irish Gifted Academy parent, had asked board members to publicly declare each’s position on whether the school will be closed or subjected to further cuts. 

More than a half-dozen Dublin High students appealed to the board to reconsider the terminations of teachers and coaches whose impact have extended beyond the classroom or playing field.

“These are more than just people who work in a building. They are family,” said junior Ma’Kaela Kates, who described students as feeling “lost, unsupported and heartbroken.”

“These teachers didn’t cause this financial situation, yet they are the ones paying the cost,” she said. “Student morale is at an all-time low. Every decision made in this room impacts the lives of students like me.”

Walters addressed the gifted academy, saying,  “Nobody on this board wants this school to go away. Nobody on this board wants to lay nobody off. Nobody. And we doing everything we can to maintain us.”

  In other business, the school board heard a recommendation from Dublin High principal Michael Overstreet to move the high school graduation back to the Shamrock Bowl, rather than holding it the gym. Overstreet presented poll numbers that showed a majority of students and parents favor returning the ceremony to the stadium. He also told of “horror stories” of parents and grandparents of graduating seniors who missed commencement because they were locked out after the gymnasium reached capacity.

Tina Rozier, a senior parent, urged the board move the ceremony outdoors as a way to boost student morale, noting a “dark cloud hanging over our seniors.”

Board members James Lanier suggested keeping the graduation inside, but issue perhaps 10 tickets to each senior to guarantee family members admission.

The item was tabled until the board meets again.