Dublin school board to announce finalist for school superintendent job

The beleaguered Dublin City School District has apparently found its new superintendent.

The City Board of Education has called a special meeting for 6 p.m. Wednesday to announce a sole finalist for the position. A finalist or finalists must be announced two weeks before a vote on the hiring can be taken.

Former curriculum director Marcee Pool has served as interim superintendent since last September, when Superintendent Fred Williams stepped down to take an early retirement after the severity of the school district’s recent financial troubles surfaced.

The new leader will be tasked with turning around the struggling school system, which last fall was projected to end of the current fiscal year with a $13 million deficit. The district has significantly cut spending – which included mid-year terminations of several dozen teachers and other staffers – but still owes the state about $5 million in overdue payments to the State Health Benefit Plan.

The superintendent search, which has been led by the Georgia School Board Association, drew a total of 25 applicants. The GSBA screened the applicants and checked references before narrowing the field for the interview process.

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.