Fired teacher faces Dublin City Schools in court

A teacher whose job was one of more than 50 eliminated midcontract by the Dublin City Board of Education testified in court Tuesday about the emotional, physical and financial toll the cash-strapped district’s budget cuts have taken on employees.

Ashley White, a former art teacher at Hillcrest Elementary, is suing the school system for reinstatement and damages. Schools officials contend the system is broke and that the cuts are crucial for the system’s survival.

White testified in Superior Court this week that she was let go in early October after refusing to resign as school officials tried to cut into a projected almost $19 million deficit. She recalled reporting to work Oct. 9 on an in-service day, leaving and then finding herself locked out of the building until a co-worker let her in.

“In about an hour or so they came to my classroom and told me that the previous day was supposed to be my last day and they were collecting my keys and my badge,” White said.

She testified that since then, she has struggled financially — to the point of not being able to afford her daughter’s daily seizure medicine – and that her own health has suffered, with the stress aggravating an existing condition and resulting in five trips to the emergency room.

White and four other teachers have filed suit against Dublin City Schools through the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, claiming breach of contract. School officials claim its reduction-in-force policy allows the terminations mid-contract because the system has no money.

“We wouldn’t be able to make it,” interim School Superintendent Marcee Pool testified. “We wouldn’t have enough to make payroll. That’s why we’re getting the state advances, to pay payroll and other bills.”

The school system has received more than $3 million in advances of state Quality Basic Education funding and is seeking a fourth advance for December’s bills. If approved, the system would not receive any more state funding for the current school year after February.

Neither side could produce a legal precedent of a school board firing teachers mid-contract without cause, and both sides agreed that White had a spotless work record. Judge Jud Green said he will issue a ruling later, but still shared some strong opinions in court about the school board and district’s troubling financial history and current situation.

“The interim superintendent says it was mismanagement. That’s being very, very kind. This is unprecedented,” Green said.

“There have been a lot of families and people destroyed by the board’s spending habits. A lot of people have been hurt around this area. It came out in Ms. White’s testimony … can’t get the tire fixed, can’t take her medicine. It’s all because of the Dublin School District.”

Green said his own wife is a teacher, and “when you sign a contract, you expect to be there for the whole year.” However, he acknowledged the school system’s precarious financial situation. Both the judge and school attorney Brian Smith likened suing the broke school system to “trying to get blood out of a turnip.” 

The lawsuit seeks declaratory relief that the school “has no authority to unilaterally terminate” contracts and a writ of mandamus requiring that the board reinstate White to her position for the entirety of the 2025-2026 school year. 

“Hypothetically if I grant the writ of mandamus, have I not opened the floodgates for every other aggrieved employee to come in, and at some point you’re going to have 800 breach-of-contracts you can’t pay?” Green asked. 

“They don’t have the money. You’re going to have endless copycat lawsuits wanting the same relief, and they won’t be able to pay anybody. Every single person who worked there is going to sue, saying, ‘Hey, I should have gotten paid but I haven’t been.”

Smith argued the district’s reduction-in-force policy allows the school board to terminate employees for a lack of funding. However, White’s lawyer, PAGE attorney Ellen Schoolar, countered that the policy allows firings only if funding decreases, and she produced budget documents and an updated cashflow statement showing the schools actually received more funding than budgeted for the current fiscal year.

“There has not been a decrease in funds. We’ve established that. They just want to use the money for something else because somebody dropped the ball,” Schoolar said. “They don’t have answers for how that money went missing. But they did have the funds to keep Ms. White employed. They just chose to use those funds in a different way.”

Pool, who was curriculum director before taking over for former Superintendent Fred Williams in October and had no role in financial decisions before then, confirmed the documents but disputed the numbers on the budget approved in June, before the start of the new fiscal year.

“The budget adopted by the board is not the same thing as it being accurate,” Pool said.”This document is not accurate. We know that now. The expenditures have increased beyond what that documents says. The district had more expenditures that it had revenue.”

Pool, who was the only school official attending the hearing, also testified that although she was not superintendent at the time, it was her understanding that the school board learned that it was operating in a deficit in January 2025. Then in August, school officials were notified by the state that the district owed more than $6 million in overdue payments to the State Health Benefit Plan for employee insurance.

State officials also found other “operational deficiencies” and determined the system faced a deficit of more than $13.9 million, if nothing changed, by the time the fiscal year ends next June. Even with the job reductions and other cuts, the current projected deficit is about $9 million, Pool said.

“Where did that money go?” Schoolar asked.

Though she was not involved in financial decisions at the time, Pool blamed the deficit on the incorrect budget and “mismanagement of funds.” 

“We hired too many people, and we did not have the funds,” she said. 

The judge said his decision will be based on the school district’s financial position in February 2025 – when White signed her new contract – and on whether district officials breached her contract.

Schoolar said White and other employees should not pay for the school district’s poor past choices. A summary report from the state Department of Education found the system’s deficit crisis on “financial mismanagement, lack of fundamental financial knowledge and processes, and a culture of excess related to programs and personnel.” 

The reports also said the school system used COVID funding “to mask the district’s underlying financial/budgetary issues” and allowed the district to report positive fund balances for several years.

“Whether it was former employee or not, the district has put itself in this position,” said Schoolar. “They were hiring new employees when they knew they had a negative balance in the general fund. I don’t think they should be given a pass because they’re saying, ‘Now we can’t afford it.'”

PAGE attorney Ellen Schoolar (center) is representing White and four other Dublin City Schools teachers who lost their jobs to budget cuts. Schoolar argued Tuesday that the city school board should not be “given a pass because they’re saying, ‘Now we can’t afford it.'”/PAYTON TOWNS III