Dallas County Schools put in state intervention by state school board starting Thursday

The Dallas County School System is now under state control.

The Alabama State Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to approve a “resolution recommending intervention of the Dallas County School System.” What that means is that the Alabama State Department of Education and its board are now in charge of Dallas County Schools. 

The takeover comes after the Alabama Department of Public Examiners, the Alabama Department of Education and the federal government found that more than $12 million in federal funds were spent without following regulations. 

“There is no accusation of anyone taking money and running,” State Superintendent Eric Mackey said after the meeting Thursday. “Money was not spent using proper procurement processes, allegedly.”

But the federal government could require the school system to pay back any federal money that was improperly spent, Mackey said. 

“(Dallas County School System) can’t write a check like that,” Mackey said. “They understand they will need some help, and we are willing to offer that help.”

Effective 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Dr. Daniel Boyd is the Chief Administrative Officer of Dallas County Schools. Boyd is also CAO of Bessemer City Schools, which went under state intervention in August. The state also operates the Sumter County School System. 

Mackey said Boyd and his bosses at the Alabama Department of Education will select a superintendent who will serve for the duration of the state intervention, which Mackey said would be about two years. After that, the Dallas County School Board might select its own superintendent, he said.

Current Dallas County School Superintendent Anthony Sampson announced that he was leaving at the end of the school year. Mackey said the state is working with Sampson “on the step-down process.”

Mackey said that the Dallas County School Board voted unanimously on Feb. 21 to consent to the takeover when they realized that improper purchasing procedures may require the system to pay back more than $12 million in federal funds. 

In addition, the system’s enrollment is “dropping precipitously,” Mackey said after the state board of education meeting in Montgomery Thursday. 

“(Dallas County Schools) have half the number of students they had 20 years ago,” Mackey said. “They’re down to 1,700 students. That’s part of the financial issue, because they are getting less and less money every year because they are losing students, and their state money is based on the number of students they have.”

Mackey sent an official letter to Dallas County School Board President Melvin Flanagan-Brown dated Feb. 21 that laid out the case for state takeover. According to the letter and an interview with Mackey, the story of the state takeover began last summer when an audit performed by the Alabama Examiners of Public Accounts turned up improprieties in purchases made with federal funds. Among other things, the audit found that almost $4.9 million was spent from the Education Stabilization Fund for professional development services without obtaining sealed bids as required. 

The letter sent by Mackey said the auditors found that the “Dallas County Board of Education was noncompliant with respect to how it managed and disbursed federal funds.”

That audit led to deeper audits performed later that summer by the Alabama Department of Education and by the Federal Programs Section. Those audits found even more improperly performed purchases, to the tune of $12.2 million. 

The reviews found that “DCSS lacks significant operational oversight,” that it “failed to follow federal procurement regulations,” the letter states.

Mackey’s letter to Flanagan-Brown said the audit also found that the Dallas County School System had not fully closed its financial records since 2020 and had receivables on the books that it never received, inflating the fund balances. The system does not have a month’s expenses in reserve as required, and the system owes construction firm Frasier-Ousley of Selma at least $1.4 million in past invoices. 

“From the above, it is clear that Board members failed to be good stewards of the federal program’s funds awarded to assist the system, and as a result failed to fulfill their individual and collective fiduciary duty to the entire DCSS including its teachers, students, parents and the community,” Mackey says in his letter. 

“This behavior erodes public trust in individual members and the Board as a whole,” he continues. “It also suggests that the Board is dysfunctional and ineffective in properly stewarding the funds awarded to the system for its students.”

Mackey wrote, “Inaction and mismanagement put our students, teachers and school administrators at risk of continuously falling behind the ASLDE’s expectations, and as the State Superintendent, I find that utterly unacceptable.”

Local boards of education “perform a state function at a local level and function as an arm of the state,” which according to the resolution that gave the Alabama State School Board and Mackey control of Dallas County Schools.