Dublin schools in danger of losing accreditation

A monitoring review has placed the Dublin City school district in danger of losing its accreditation, while also triggering a process that could lead to the governor suspending and replacing local school board members.

The Cognia Global Commission voted last week to downgrade Dublin City from “accredited” to “accredited with conditions” – the agency’s lowest status and a required first step toward dropping a district’s accreditation. The school system has 60 days to file a written response why its accreditation should not be dropped.

In the meantime, Georgia law requires that whenever a district is placed on that lowest level of accreditation, the state Board of Education hold a formal hearing on whether to recommend that the local board members be suspended and replaced.

A Cognia review team spent Feb. 23-25 in Dublin and interviewed 135 school system stakeholders – from the interim superintendent and all seven board members to 40 students and more than 30 parents and community members. The team also reviewed financial documents, audits and a special report from the state Department of Audits and Accounts, requested by state lawmakers.

Losing accreditation is “the death knell for a school system,” said state Sen. Larry Walker, whose district includes Laurens County.

“If you lose accreditation, you have trouble transferring credits. Colleges and universities won’t recognize your diploma and transcripts. It will have very dire consequences for the students,” Walker said.

Interim Dublin School Superintendent Marcee Pool said Friday that seven of 31 Cognia standards were identified as priorities, dealing primarily with the district’s recent financial crisis, personnel matters and transparency with stakeholders.

“Dublin City Schools is confronting challenges openly and taking steps to improve transparency and communication,” Pool said in a statement. “Many of the issues identified are tied to past practices, and current leadership has already begun implementing solutions.

“Let us be clear: The district is still accredited. The designation of ‘Accredited Under Conditions’ indicates that areas of concern were identified and are actively being addressed.”

The Cognia review team’s findings were detailed in a report sent to the district earlier this week.

In the report, parents, teachers, even board members and high-ranking staff told interviewers they were left in the dark as the district burned through $4 million in federal COVID funds to cover payroll and other bills from 2021 to 2025 — when it employed more than twice as many staff members whose salaries were funded through local and federal funds as peer systems. Staffing decisions “lacked sufficient transparency,” with pay levels and positions often decided at the top with no input.

“We had directors that we didn’t even know about,” one board member, who was unnamed in Cognia’s report, told the review team.

Pool, who was appointed after Fred Williams took an early retirement in the middle of the financial crisis last fall, told Cognia interviewers that the district has tried to be more transparent but admitted that, in the past, officials had “tried to hide anything that was negative.” 

Pool also said “previous administrations were in the habit of hiring coaches who happened to be teachers, not teachers who could coach.”

Stakeholders complained that some programs, particularly athletics and the Irish Gifted Academy, were favored unfairly with more funding and higher-qualified staff.

The report also gives insight into how the mid-year job cuts last fall negatively impacted morale and operations at the city schools.

“Teachers explicitly framed themselves as collateral damage, with one educator stating bluntly, ‘We are casualties of war.’ Parents and community members also expressed frustration. Many questioned why cuts targeted classroom positions and custodial roles rather than central office positions.”

Students, the report said, described the sudden loss of teachers as “heartbreaking” and reported that neither they nor their families received formal notification from the system or schools. Staffers described taking on duties, but the result was “some tasks going unmet and staff operating in a constant state of daily survival.”  One parent described a principal as “teaching math and he is the janitor.””

The review found “recurring patterns suggesting a need for closer alignment with applicable legal and regulatory requirements” across multiple areas — such as the conduct and documentation of meetings, financial decision-making processes, personnel management practices and the fulfillment of charter system responsibilities.

The report documented eight meetings – in addition to six budget and tax increase hearings – that were held last year which the school board failed to post notice of on its website. Reviewers cited “recurring deficiencies” in recording and publishing minutes from board meetings. 

“When such errors recur, they raise broader concerns about the reliability and integrity of governance documentation.” 

The report also noted that minutes and other records from local school governance teams were lacking and “indicates inconsistent compliance with statutory requirements governing open meetings, documentation and shared decision making. 

“Evidence from fiscal year 2021 through fiscal year 2025 revealed the system used temporary federal COVID-19 pandemic funds to sustain ongoing salaries while maintaining high administrative staffing levels “that did not align with system needs.”

The reviewers noted that audits found almost no internal controls related to employee compensation, and that the system was unable to demonstrate the use of performance data to guide staffing decisions or financial allocations. Stakeholders reported perceptions that staffing decisions lacked sufficient transparency, administrative staffing levels expanded without consistent oversight and that some hiring and placement decisions, including compensation levels and role assignments, were inconsistent with comparable positions. 

“During interviews, one board member acknowledged that positions and supplemental pay historically were not consistently monitored,” the report said.”The board member further acknowledged their failure to monitor financial supplements, noting that there were ‘people that did get supplements that we did not even know about’ and emphasizing that they now carefully review the supplements that coaches receive.”

The system spent more on salaries than comparable systems and provided disproportionately high coaching and extended-day supplements. According to the report, Dublin City Schools paid more than three times what similar school systems paid for extended day supplements and more than double what peer school systems paid for extended year supplements.

Stakeholders also expressed “deep frustration” regarding the inequitable distribution of qualified educators across the system, “explicitly noting that some of the certified teachers have been taken away from their base school to staff the Irish Gifted Academy.” 

However, the monitoring review team did not request data confirming the percentages of certified and non-certified teachers by school site, which limited the team’s ability to verify or refute stakeholders’ perceptions. 

Pool noted in her statement that the Cognia report also identified areas of improvement:

• Transparency is increasing under current leadership

• The interim superintendent is already working to make information more accessible

• Corrective actions have already begun

• Governance, finance and HR reforms are in progress

• Parents and stakeholders praised communication at the school level

• Teachers and principals remain highly engaged with students

• The report provides specific directives, not vague criticism

• This is essentially a step-by-step improvement plan

“We remain unwavering in our commitment not only to resolving these concerns, but also to building a strong, lasting foundation for Dublin City Schools that will serve generations of students to come,” Pool said. “We will continue to share updates throughout this process and keep all stakeholders informed of our progress as we work toward a common future of high achievement and success for all students.”