GBI asked to investigate Dublin City Schools amid $13M budget crisis

Dublin City Schools faces an ongoing fiscal crisis with a more than $13 million deficit for this fiscal year, and the district owes more than $6 million to the state’s health benefits plan.

13WMAZ reports that Dublin District Attorney Harold McLendon requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Tuesday to investigate whether any laws were broken in spending taxpayer dollars. 

McLendon said there is no evidence of any crime being committed at this stage, but he wanted the GBI to investigate the matter to avoid conflicts of interest.

Sarah McLeod, deputy director for the Georgia State Auditor’s Office, told 13WMAZ that the breadth of issues discovered at the school district stood out.

“What’s unique here is that at Dublin City, we saw all of these things present at one school system and for a duration of time, and that’s kind of what got them where they’re at,” McLeod said.

The audit of Dublin City Schools found multiple issues that lead to its financial crisis, including overstaffing, a lack of oversight at multiple levels and weak budget controls.

“We don’t have all the other things going on — overstaffing, excessive personnel costs, that weak controls, the budgeting — all of those combined just really created that perfect storm at Dublin,” McLeod said.

McLeod said it would take years for the school district to recover from the deficit.

“I think it’s critical moving forward that there’s transparency — both ways, information up and then also to the parents and the teachers,” she said.