Bibb County Schools: Bigger Budgets, Fewer Students, More Questions

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42 min read

Last updated Updated October 3, 2026

Part 1 of 5

A records-based investigation into budget gaps, administrative spending, audit findings, taxes, borrowing and academic results.

Fifteen years ago, this website was born out of the chaos surrounding Bibb County Schools and superintendent Romain Dallemand. Years later, Dallemand pleaded guilty in federal court to filing a false tax return after failing to report a $100,000 payment prosecutors said was intended to influence actions he took as superintendent. Bibb County Schools later obtained a $47.5 million civil judgment against him.

That history is why I am careful with words such as corruption, fraud, and missing money. They mean something.

This is a Bibb County Schools budget investigation. In this five-part series, I will examine where the money goes, what taxpayers get for it, and whether the people in charge have earned their pay.

I taught in Bibb County schools for 11 years before retiring this past year, which is why I am now free to finally write freely on this topic. So these budgets are not abstractions to me, I lived with them daily.

Nothing I found in the records for this article accuses Dan Sims or today’s administration of criminal wrongdoing.

However, they give us plenty to question without inventing any.

I wrote about Romain Dallemand relentlessly in the early days of this website. Dallemand ran the Bibb County schools from 2011 to 2013, and the district’s outside audit later found he had committed Bibb County to tens of millions of dollars in spending the board never approved and never put out to bid. His signature technology plan ordered some 15,000 NComputing thin-client terminals. The board later said only about 200 were ever used; roughly 14,800 remained boxed in a warehouse while classrooms went without. Federal court filings recount that the district’s chief financial officer, Ron Collier, refused to sign a $1 million check he believed was illegal, and Dallemand removed him as CFO. In November 2014, the Georgia Professional Standards Commission revoked Dallemand’s educator credentials altogether. The board’s own arbitration filing, with the money trail spelled out wire transfer by wire transfer, is still published on this site.

Dallemand did not govern in a vacuum; he operated under a board that had the authority to question, reject, or stop the contracts and payments. Five board members, Tommy Barnes, Tom Hudson, Susan Middleton, Ella Carter, and Wanda West, backed him so reliably that Bibb citizens started calling them the BOE5, and vote after vote on his plans ended 5 to 3. When he quit in February 2013, the board voted 7 to 1 to hand him a $350,000 severance payment rather than fire him for cause. At the Macon Telegraph, opinion editor Charles Richardson defended Dallemand in column after column. Oedel later wrote that Richardson fired him after Oedel pressed for an investigation and tried to interview Richardson’s wife about the district job Dallemand had given her, a job Richardson never mentioned to his readers while he was writing those defenses. I answered Richardson at the time, and the record has not improved with age.

The people who stopped Dallemand were not the powerful ones. Bill Knowles, who published WeArePolitics and wrote for The 11th Hour, spent years digging out open records, paying the request fees from his own pocket, and printing what the local daily would not. His column after the state revoked Dallemand’s credentials ran on this site, and it reads like a closing argument to this day. Bill has passed away since then. He worshipped his son, Teddy, and this community still remembers him fondly. So do I. Darren Latch built the online groups and showed up in person, meeting after meeting. David Oedel gave up his column rather than look away. And when the majority moved to renew Dallemand’s contract behind closed doors, incoming members Lester Miller and Jason Downey were shut out of the meetings. Once Miller took his seat he cast the only vote against that severance payment, while Gary Bechtel, Susan Sipe, and Lynn Farmer had spent the Dallemand years on the losing end of those 5 to 3 votes.

This site was called Georgia Watchdog in those days, and my part in the fight was the keyboard. One of my replies to Richardson drew more than 6,000 readers in a single morning, and people across Bibb County who had never heard of this website started pulling records, attending meetings, and asking questions of their own. I was not the most important player in that fight nor would I ever claim to be, and it would be dishonest to write history that way. But I take pride that my stories reached thousands of people who had no idea where their school tax money was going, and some of you reading this now were among them. If you have been away for a few years, welcome back! We kept the receipts.

That history is part of the DNA of Global Watchdog. This series is a return to those roots, not because today’s leadership is Dallemand, but because taxpayers deserve the same relentless scrutiny of public money and my Spidey senses are tingling.

This is Part 1 of 5. Later installments will examine vendors and software, academic results, central-office positions and hires, and what all of this looks like from inside Bibb classrooms.

What the General Fund Is Telling Us

School budgets are enormous documents, and comparing the “total budget” from one year to another can mislead. Federal grants, capital projects, school nutrition funds, and temporary programs can swing wildly between years. A district might look like it’s spending dramatically more (or less) simply because a federal grant arrived or expired.

The cleaner comparison is the General Fund, which pays for most ordinary day-to-day operations, teacher salaries, administrator pay, utilities, transportation, and the core costs of running schools. When you want to know whether a district is living within its means, the General Fund is where you look.

Here is what Bibb County’s own adopted budget documents show:

Source: Bibb County School District FY2025 and FY2026 adopted budget documents.

Those percentages deserve context and a measure of caution. A 29% increase in an accounting category does not prove that anyone is overpaid, unnecessary, or doing a poor job. Accounting classifications can change from year to year. Positions can move between functional categories. Categories include costs beyond salaries, contracts, supplies, equipment, and other operating expenses that may have nothing to do with staffing levels.

But the contrast is worth noticing and worth explaining.

In the adopted budgets, instruction, the category that most directly reflects classroom spending, increased about 4.1%. General administration increased 29.0%. Central support services increased 28.9%. School administration, which covers principals and assistant principals, increased 14.6%.

Total General Fund expenditures grew 6.2% while anticipated revenue grew only 2.0%. The projected ending fund balance declined 10.4%.

That gives taxpayers a much more useful question than simply declaring that “the central office is bloated.” The question is: what specifically accounts for those increases?

That is answerable. Payroll records, position histories, individual departmental budgets, and year-over-year staffing comparisons can tell us. And it is exactly the kind of question this series will continue asking.

Three Years of Budgeted Gaps

There is another useful way to look at the numbers, one that comes directly from the district’s own budget sheets.

FY2025 anticipated $261.86 million in General Fund revenue while budgeting $269.82 million in expenditures plus roughly $1.39 million in transfers out. That produced a planned reduction in fund balance of about $9.35 million.

FY2026 anticipated $267.22 million in revenue against $286.59 million in expenditures and another $1.4 million in transfers out, producing a planned reduction of approximately $20.77 million.

For FY2027, the district’s June 25 adopted budget projected approximately $287.4 million in General Fund revenue and transfers against $302.4 million in expenditures and transfers, a gap of roughly $14.93 million.

Those aren’t three piles of money that disappeared. They are three consecutive adopted budgets in which planned General Fund outflows exceeded anticipated annual inflows. The gaps were to be covered by drawing down the fund balance, the district’s savings account.

That pattern is worth paying attention to, for a straightforward reason: a fund balance is finite. You can only spend more than you take in for so long before the reserves run thin. The district’s own projections show the fund balance declining from $52.48 million (FY2025) to $47.02 million (FY2026). That trajectory is worth watching on its own. Separately, the district later received a moderate-risk designation following four audit findings, which I discuss below.

It is also worth being precise about what these numbers are and aren’t. They are budgeted operating gaps, not audited year-end losses. Actual results can differ from adopted budgets, revenues may come in higher, spending may come in lower, amendments may adjust the plan. But the pattern of planning to outspend revenue three years running tells you something about the district’s fiscal posture, regardless of how each year ultimately closed.

The $5.5 Million That Didn’t Disappear

Now we get to one of the biggest stories of the year, and one of the most misunderstood.

In January 2026, local news reports described a $5.5 million discrepancy, sometimes characterized as a “hole” or “gap” in Bibb County Schools’ FY2026 budget. That sounds like somebody misplaced a wheelbarrow full of cash.

That is not what the district’s own paperwork says.

The January 15 budget amendment identified $7.417 million in salary and benefit expenses that had been previously unbudgeted, underbudgeted, or otherwise not fully accounted for. The official breakdown was:

Source: Bibb County School District January 15, 2026 budget amendment, as reported by 41NBC/WMGT-DT.

The $5.5 million figure appears to correspond to part of this larger list. Four of the categories, transportation personnel duties ($2.435M), the attrition-assumption adjustment ($2.030M), the Innovation and Technology Academy positions ($577,000), and athletic-event security and custodial duties ($458,000), total exactly $5.5 million. That appears to be where the headline number came from.

But there is another part of the story that the headlines missed.

The same budget amendment added $3.854 million in property-tax revenue, $415,000 from Macon-Bibb County, $302,791 in PILOT-related revenue, $1.83 million in state grant funding, and a $1.715 million adjustment to the beginning fund balance. It also identified a net $2.25 million reduction in non-salary expenditures.

As a result, the amendment did not project the district’s ending fund balance falling by $5.5 million. The district actually reported that the revised ending General Fund balance would increase from approximately $47.02 million to $48.14 million. That was the proposal. The board approved a partial version, 4-3, after removing a $1.275 million reduction line, which put the approved ending balance at about $46.87 million: essentially flat, not down $5.5 million.

So no, $5.5 million did not vanish.

That does not make the episode trivial or unimportant.

A public body approving an annual budget and later identifying $7.417 million in salary and benefit obligations that were not properly included in it raises legitimate questions about forecasting accuracy, budgeting controls, staffing assumptions, and internal review procedures. Some items were outright omissions (positions that had been approved but never entered into the budget). Others, like the $2.03 million attrition adjustment, were forecasting errors, assumptions about staff turnover that proved wrong. Both kinds of errors point to weaknesses in the budgeting process.

The January amendment passed on a 4-3 board vote after considerable debate, itself a sign that board members took the episode seriously.

The $7.417 million in previously unbudgeted or underbudgeted personnel obligations is the story. Not theft. Not disappearing money. A financial-management problem documented in the district’s own paperwork.

The district’s public answer to the memo arrived on Facebook. On January 15, 2026, Sims posted the state’s reply to his page, writing: “In light of the attention received from our recent budget memo shared with our Board and reported on by some media, we received a response from the Georgia Department of Education based on a media inquiry concerning this same matter.” The state’s response treated the gap as a routine reconciliation. His audience heard the word he wanted them to hear. “Thank you for your transparency and continued commitment to the success of our students and school district,” one supporter wrote back.

Taxpayers can weigh that word against the paper. The memo that started the episode, obtained through open records and reported in full by the Macon Melody, is what made the amendment in the table above necessary: $7.417 million in obligations the adopted budget had missed, added after the budget was already approved. A forecasting miss can be explained, corrected, and learned from. Describing the correction as transparency is a different move. The correction is a fact. The description is a choice.

A Tax Increase Without Raising the Tax Rate

This is probably the most confusing piece of the entire story, and it deserves a careful explanation because it is easy to get wrong in either direction.

You may have seen that Bibb County Schools imposed a 9.33% property-tax increase. You may also have seen that the school tax rate didn’t increase at all. Both statements refer to the same event.

The school board adopted 14.674 mills for 2026. That is exactly the same nominal millage rate as the previous year. The board did not raise the rate from 14.674 to something higher.

But property values in the tax digest had increased. Georgia’s rollback-rate mechanism calculates the millage rate that would theoretically generate roughly the same property-tax revenue from the existing digest after reassessments, in other words, the rate the board would need to adopt to avoid collecting more revenue simply because property values went up.

For Bibb County Schools in 2026, that rollback rate was 13.422 mills.

Instead of adopting the rollback rate, the board kept the rate at 14.674 mills. The difference was 1.252 mills, or 9.33% above the rollback rate. Under Georgia’s tax-notification rules, maintaining a rate above rollback is advertised as a tax increase, because it is one, in revenue terms, even though the nominal rate didn’t change.

The district estimated that a home with a $225,000 fair-market value and a homestead exemption would see approximately $103.92 in additional annual school taxes. For non-homestead property of the same value, the estimate was $112.68. The district noted that actual bills vary with assessed value, exemptions, and other factors.

The board adopted the 14.674-mill rate on September 9, 2026, after the legally required public hearings. This was not the first time the board held this rate: in 2024, the board also maintained 14.674 mills, with board member Daryl Morton casting the lone no vote and saying “I didn’t feel enough money was being spent in the classroom. I think the focus was more the central office.”

So saying “the board raised the millage rate by 9.33%” would be wrong. It didn’t. The rate stayed put. But taxpayers whose assessed values increased are paying more because the board chose not to roll the rate down enough to offset that growth. That additional revenue, estimated at about $8.34 million more than the rollback rate would have generated, became critical to the FY2027 budget picture.

Before these recent increases, the board had a long history of rolling the rate back to avoid revenue increases. That pattern ended with the first effective property-tax increase since 2016, and the board has now held above rollback three years running.

What Does Dan Sims Actually Make?

This turns out to be harder to answer definitively than it should be, because different government records measure different things, and the available records don’t fully reconcile.

Dr. Dan Sims. Photo: Dan Sims Facebook page.

When Global Watchdog examined the district in 2023, the article reported that Sims had been hired at a base salary of $250,000, excluding benefits, along with a monthly travel allowance.

Sims later received a contract extension running through July 2028. Under that agreement, his contractual base salary became $262,500 beginning in July 2025. It is scheduled to increase to $275,625 on January 1, 2027.

One basic fact about this superintendency remains unestablished in the public record: whether the superintendent lives in the county that employs him. His 2022 contract, posted on DocumentCloud, contains no residency requirement. What it does contain is Section 7(i), which obligates the district to reimburse him for “moving his family to Bibb County, Georgia,” priced at the lowest of three estimates, with no dollar cap and no deadline. Sims, a native of East Point hired away from Atlanta Public Schools, told the Macon Newsroom in May 2022 that he planned to move his family to Macon after his daughter graduated from high school the following year, and that he had found a place to stay in the meantime. No news report or district statement since has confirmed that the move happened, and whether the district ever paid that moving claim has never been reported.

The complaint itself is not new to this office. The same Macon Newsroom reporting noted that Sims’s predecessor, Curtis Jones of Griffin, “never established legal residency in Bibb County” and commuted from Spalding County. For Sims, the documented record stops at intention. Intention is not an address. The board could settle the question with one sentence, and the reimbursement file could settle it with one document. Until one of those appears, the question the contract itself raises is still standing: the district agreed to pay to move its superintendent to Bibb County. Did he come?

Then there is the state payroll data. The latest indexed 2025 payroll records report $329,789.84 for Sims, along with $5,294.36 classified separately as travel in the state’s Open Georgia database.

Why is the payroll figure so much higher than the $262,500 contractual base? The available records I reviewed do not provide enough information to reconcile every dollar. Payroll databases may include compensation earned under different contract periods, or items categorized differently from contractual “base salary.” The Macon Melody identified the same discrepancy in its July 2026 reporting and cautioned that the state database and district contract figures were not measuring Sims’s compensation in the same way.

The responsible way to report this is straightforward: $262,500 is Sims contractual annual base salary for the 2025-26 period. $329,789.84 is the amount reported for him in the indexed 2025 state payroll data. They are not interchangeable figures, and the records I found don’t fully explain the difference. I would like to see a line-by-line reconciliation, and so should the board. For broader context on superintendent compensation, my 2023 comparison found Sweden’s education directors earning roughly $84,000 to $107,000 for similar responsibilities, while Georgia superintendents routinely exceed $300,000. In 2021, Gwinnett’s superintendent earned $641,955, Pickens County’s $507,659, and Cobb County’s $432,105. Those figures dwarf Governor Brian Kemp’s $175,000 salary and a U.S. Senator’s $174,000. The President of the United States is paid $400,000 a year. Georgia’s schools are not producing results that make that pay scale look like a bargain. The question writes itself: does the paycheck reflect the performance? Georgia has 159 counties, and some counties support both a county school system and a separate city system, each with its own superintendent; Laurens County is one example. These superintendents are often among the highest-paid public employees in their communities. I do not believe halving these salaries would leave Georgia with a shortage of qualified applicants.

It is also worth asking what those paychecks are buying in credentials. Many central-office administrators and principals across Georgia hold EdDs, not PhDs. As I have written previously, EdD programs vary wildly in rigor, and the title “Dr.” does not mean the same thing from one program to the next. I refuse to call a superintendent, assistant superintendent, or principal “Dr.” if their doctorate came from Nova Southeastern University, Walden, Liberty, Grand Canyon, American College of Education, the former Northcentral University, or Argosy University before it closed. If taxpayers are paying six-figure salaries partly on the strength of that title, they are entitled to ask what the doctorate required, what was researched, and whether it had anything to do with running a school system. Truth be told, we would be better served with more superintendents with MBA and finance degrees than with EdD degrees that have all the rigor of a correspondence course advertised on a matchbook cover. A school district is a quarter-billion-dollar business. It does not need another dissertation on transformational leadership. It needs somebody who can read a balance sheet without moving their lips.

Bibb County has already seen where that road leads. Romain Dallemand’s doctorate in educational leadership came from the University of Sarasota, later folded into Argosy University. The title did not save this district from the Dallemand years, and it is not saving us now. Most of Bibb’s six-figure administrators earned their EdDs from the very universities I just named, and some of them think they sound educated saying “conversate” when the word is “converse.” In my honest opinion, and I spent 11 years in Bibb County classrooms, they were not promoted on talent or intelligence. They were promoted on paper, in too many cases because the classroom had already figured out what the diploma mill never asked

Credit where it is due:  Sims earned his EdD at Georgia State University in 2015, and Georgia State is a real university, so I will call him Dr. Sims, because my rule is about the school and Georgia State passes. The degree itself gets no such mercy. An EdD is a bullshit degree wherever it comes from that isn’t even recognized in most countries; his just comes with better letterhead. My quarrel with Sims was never the title. It is the price tag, the overhead, and the results taxpayers are getting for both.

The overhead keeps growing nationally, too. Federal NCES staffing data show that from fall 2000 to fall 2022, district administrative staff rose about 95% and instructional coordinators rose about 155%, while classroom teachers rose less than 10%. That is the backdrop for Bibb’s budget: more people administering, coordinating, and supervising education, and not nearly the same growth in people actually teaching children.

That is worth stating plainly. A watchdog article that hides favorable comparisons won’t survive the first skeptical reader.

The Melody also noted strong graduation rates during Sims’s tenure. I’ll return to those numbers later because graduation and academic mastery are not the same measure. Macon Melody reported that the board’s 7-1 vote to extend Sims’s contract also shows that a large majority of board members supported retaining him. Whether taxpayers should share that valuation is the question this article exists to ask.

The Central Office Salary Scale

This is where the analysis needs to move from the superintendent’s pay to the broader administrative structure, and where rhetoric should give way to the district’s own documents.

Bibb County’s central-office salary scale (FY2026 rates, effective July 1, 2025) establishes the following ranges:

Source: Bibb County School District FY2027 Central Office Salary Scale (239 days, effective July 1, 2025). This is a salary scale, not a payroll record; it shows the range for each grade, not where any individual employee falls within it. Step 10 is the maximum entry level for new hires; Step 21 is the highest longevity step.

For comparison, the district’s FY26 principal salary scale starts at $131,481 for high school principals and $111,926 for elementary principals. A brand-new Bibb County teacher starts at $48,740.

The Macon Melody’s July 2026 analysis, based on district salary data, found that Bibb employed 10 people classified as assistant superintendents who averaged $160,866, compared with a statewide average of $154,094 for that category, about 4.4% above the state average. The Melody nevertheless concluded that Bibb’s senior administrator salaries generally fell within the range of comparable Georgia districts.

That finding complicates the story, and a serious watchdog article shouldn’t bury it.

The salary data establish that Bibb has a substantial number of six-figure administrators. They do not, by themselves, prove those administrators are unnecessary, unproductive, or overpaid relative to the market. To answer those questions responsibly requires something more difficult: identifying individual positions, examining when each was created, determining what each office is responsible for, comparing staffing levels with similar districts, and looking for measurable output associated with those offices.

That is why Part 3 of this series will examine central-office positions individually, who holds them, when they were created, what they cost, and what they produce, rather than treating the phrase “six-figure salary” as evidence by its
elf.

Test Your Watchdog IQ

Professor Winston has five questions. Every answer
comes from the district’s own records.

1. Bibb County’s General Fund budget grew
by how much between FY2022 and FY2026?
A) $12 million   B) $34 million  
C) $60.95 million

Tap to reveal the answer

C) $60.95 million. General Fund
spending rose 27.1% from FY2022 to FY2026, per the
district’s own budget documents.

2. While the budget grew, what happened
to enrollment?
A) It rose about 8%
  B) It stayed flat   C) It fell about 15%

Tap to reveal the answer

C) It fell about 15%, from roughly
24,200 students to about 20,600, even as spending
climbed.

3. How many Bibb County Schools employees
earned over $100,000 in FY2025, according to Open
Georgia?
A) 43   B) 96  
C) 173

Tap to reveal the answer

C) 173. That is the count of
six-figure salaries in the state’s Open Georgia
records for the district in FY2025.

4. How much did Bibb pay Franklin Covey,
the company behind the “Leader in Me” program, from
FY2022 to FY2025?
A) $212,000  
B) $865,000   C) $2,151,524

Tap to reveal the answer

C) $2,151,524, per Open Georgia
payment records. Parents know the banners. Now you
know the invoice.

5. How did Bibb’s Class of 2026 graduation
rate compare with the Georgia average?
A) Above the state   B) Exactly tied  
C) Below the state

Tap to reveal the answer

C) Below it. Bibb graduated 87.64%
of the Class of 2026; Georgia averaged 88.5%
(GaDOE).

Score
yourself: 5 of 5: Professor Winston suspects
you read budgets for fun. 3 or 4: a solid watchdog,
keep going. 0 to 2: Professor Winston assigns the
article above as homework, with feeling.

Want more?
Take the
full Watchdog IQ test.

What Does “In Line With Peers” Actually Tell Us?

The Melody’s conclusion deserves to be taken seriously because it was based on actual data. But “in line with peers” only tells taxpayers what the market pays. It does not tell them whether the market price is justified by results.

Consider what the district looks like alongside those peer-level salaries:

Enrollment has declined from 24,236 students in 2016 to 20,556 in 2026, a drop of roughly 15%. The district projected further decline for the 2026-27 school year. Fewer students would ordinarily suggest less administrative overhead, not more. That headline decline needs one caveat: about 1,699 students left Bibb’s rolls in 2019 when the Academy for Classical Education became a state charter school, and the district estimates roughly 600 more students accepted Georgia Promise Scholarships, at a revenue impact of about $2.4 million to $3.0 million. Even after those accounting changes, Bibb is educating far fewer students than it did a decade ago.

Multiple Bibb schools sit on the state’s Turnaround Eligible Schools list, including Rutland High, Southwest High, Westside High, and several elementary and middle schools. These are schools the state has identified as needing additional support.

The district’s financial controls have drawn state scrutiny, the moderate-risk designation discussed below, and the budgeting process produced a $7.417 million post-approval correction.

None of this proves that any individual administrator is overpaid or underperforming. But it does suggest that “we pay what everyone else pays” is a weak standard for a district with shrinking enrollment, persistent financial strain, and schools struggling academically. The question isn’t just whether Bibb pays the market rate. It’s whether the number, structure, and cost of these positions make sense for a district in Bibb’s condition, and what measurable results taxpayers are getting for the investment.

Teachers I worked with sometimes called Sims the “Instagram superintendent”, a reference to his highly visible presence in district videos, photographs, and social-media posts. That is an anecdotal characterization from people I worked with, not a finding in any audit or official review, and readers should treat it accordingly. Whether a public-facing leadership style is effective is a matter of judgment. The financial figures are not

The nickname did not stay in the faculty lounge. On June 30, 2026, with the FY2027 budget fight still in the papers, the official page carried a designed graphic celebrating the superintendent himself: “31 YEARS. 3 DISTRICTS. 1 PURPOSE,” stamped with the words “I’M NOT DONE” (the post). It drew more than 1,400 reactions. In April, the district page had announced his Georgia School Superintendents Association President’s Award with a formal portrait (the announcement). Milestones, awards, portraits. The feed keeps a production schedule, whatever the fund balance is doing.

Parents have graded the production. Under a Bibb mother’s post this spring, one commenter wrote that he “only makes it look good for the camera,” and called him a “social media” superintendent, the teachers’ nickname, coined independently by a parent. A Bibb educator posting under her own name aimed the same point at the whole top floor in June: “Skip the photo ops. Come into a school and cover lunch duty for a week” (her open letter). Teachers coined the nickname. The community seconded it.

There is a quieter way to measure a communications operation: how long a parent waits when there is no audience. In May, Bibb mother Karmen Chantell published a detailed public account of two school years spent trying to get a meeting about her special-needs son’s problems at Vineville Academy. She wrote that Sims promised her, in front of a room of people, that he would follow up within a week. “Chile he makes it look good and is very accessible in front of a camera,” she wrote. “But when there is a real problem he is no where to be found.”

Her account says the follow-up never came, that a promised meeting collapsed into repeated cancellation calls and was never rescheduled, and that letters up the chain of command brought no answer. Her post carried its own running updates that day: “Update. 1:23p. No call.” Then: “Update. 2:09p. Finally have a meeting scheduled!” Two years of letters produced silence. One public post produced a meeting by that afternoon. Readers can decide what a parent is supposed to conclude about the correct way to reach this district.

Her thread did not read like one mother’s bad luck. Another parent answered with a story of her own: “Saw Sims pulling up at the school one morning and told him I had been trying to reach him and he said to call back (as he was headed in to take some pics 🙄).. This went on for MONTHS!!” (her comment). A second parent in the same thread wrote: “SAY IT LOUD SIS! I can testify to alllll of this and my son was also a student at Vineville Academy and treated horribly” (her reply). One mother can be waved off as a grievance. A thread is harder to wave off.

Board member Henry Ficklin has been the most consistent voice questioning the district’s spending trajectory. During the 2026 millage deliberations, he opposed the staff recommendation to increase the rate by a full mill, proposed lowering it to 14.000 mills instead, and, after that motion failed, ultimately supported retaining 14.674. Other board members argued that cuts had already gone deep enough and that additional revenue was necessary to maintain operations. Reporting that disagreement is more useful than declaring a winner; readers can evaluate the arguments themselves.

What the District’s Own Consultant Found

The district paid $58,050 for an organizational and efficiency review by LEAN Frog Consulting. The study examined 10 noninstructional departments and reviewed operations from 2022 through 2025.

According to reporting on the study, consultants found a heavy reliance on individual employees to compensate for gaps in systems, along with fragmented workflows, unclear accountability, and inconsistent management practices in some departments. They suggested using upcoming retirements as opportunities to redesign jobs and workflows rather than automatically filling every position exactly as it existed before.

That does not prove the central office is “bloated.” It does not prove employees are unproductive. But it does mean that a consultant hired by the district itself identified organizational weaknesses that deserve follow-up.

Some secondary summaries attributed additional savings estimates to the study. I have not included those figures because I could not verify them against the original report. That is how watchdog reporting should work: if the receipt isn’t solid enough, don’t spend it.

The FY2027 Budget: A Moving Target

By June 2026, the district was wrestling with the next fiscal year, and the numbers kept shifting, which is itself worth documenting, because it illustrates why precision matters when discussing school budgets.

The June 25 adopted FY2027 budget projected approximately $287.4 million in General Fund revenue and transfers against $302.4 million in expenditures and transfers, an operating gap of roughly $15 million (the district’s budget brief put the precise figure at about $14.93 million).

That June budget included:

• 21 state-mandated literacy coaches for grades K-3;
• Increased health-insurance and Teacher Retirement System costs;
• A reduction of 77 K-12 instructional positions (the district’s own language from its budget brief);
• $1.5 million in operational reductions; and
• A $10.1 million increase in the state equalization grant.

The June plan initially eliminated salary-step increases for employees. In July, however, the board reversed that decision and restored approximately $1.71 million for step increases for eligible employees. That restoration increased the projected gap.

By August, after the step increases were restored, the district was projecting a FY2027 operating gap of about $16.63 million before the millage decision.

The board’s September decision to retain the 14.674-mill rate, generating about $8.34 million more than the rollback rate would have produced, was projected to reduce that gap to approximately $8.29 million.

So the accurate story has several layers: the June budget showed a ~$15 million gap; restoring step increases pushed it to ~$16.63 million; the millage decision brought the projected gap down to ~$8.29 million. Presenting only the June $15 million figure as the “current” deficit would be stale. The $8.29 million projection reflects the board’s subsequent decisions.

This is also why the phrase “the budget” can mislead. A school district budget is not a fixed document, it is amended, revised, and adjusted throughout the year. The June adoption is the starting point, not the final word.

Financial pressure became serious enough that the board authorized obtaining a tax anticipation note, short-term borrowing to cover expenses until property-tax revenue arrives later in the year. District officials described it as a cash-flow timing issue. More on that below.

And Yes, School Closures Were Really Discussed

This wasn’t social-media rumor. It was on the board’s agenda.

The FY2027 budget process included a directive to study consolidating or closing at least two elementary schools. By August, consultants had presented scenarios involving Sonny Carter Elementary, Hartley Elementary, and VIP Academy.

Board members pushed back against the scenarios. No school closure was approved. On September 11, the district formally announced that it was pausing the previously presented consolidation scenarios and beginning a new advisory process with additional data and community feedback.

So the accurate statement is neither “Bibb is closing schools” nor “the closure story was made up.” The district seriously examined consolidation as a cost-saving measure. No closure had been approved as of this writing. The advisory process may or may not revive the question.

The fact that consolidation reached the board table reflects the district’s effort to reduce costs as enrollment declines and budget pressure continues.

Then the State Flagged Bibb’s Financial Controls

This development deserves its own section because it occurred after much of the earlier budget debate, and because it comes from outside financial oversight, not from critics or journalists.

Bibb County Schools is now classified as a moderate-risk school district under Georgia’s financial-oversight system.

That does not mean auditors said the district’s financial statements were fraudulent or materially false. In fact, the audit received an unmodified opinion, meaning the financial statements were presented fairly in all material respects. That distinction matters, and it should not be glossed over.

But auditors identified four findings involving:

• Receivables and revenue accounting;
• Expenditures and accrued liabilities;
• Capital assets; and
• Accounting for the district’s Section 125 cafeteria plan.

According to district documents, management oversight was identified as the cause for each finding.

Moderate-risk status brings additional requirements, including a corrective-action plan, monthly budget reporting to board members, and additional state financial oversight. It is distinct from the more severe high-risk designation, but it is not a clean bill of health.

This belongs in the story for a straightforward reason: earlier in the year, the district had already discovered $7.417 million in salary and benefit obligations that were not properly included in an approved budget. Now an outside financial review has formally identified additional control weaknesses requiring state oversight and corrective action.

Those are separate events, and they should not be conflated. The January amendment was a budgeting failure; the audit findings concern accounting controls. But together, they make financial management a legitimate subject of sustained scrutiny, not just a one-time news cycle.

And Then Bibb Borrowed $35 Million

Separately, the district authorized $35 million in tax-anticipation notes, short-term borrowing designed to cover operating expenses until the bulk of property-tax receipts arrive later in the year.

The borrowing consisted of $22.4 million in tax-exempt debt and $12.6 million in taxable debt, with an estimated combined gross interest cost of about $440,000 (before investment earnings on the borrowed funds offset part of that expense). The notes must be repaid from 2026 tax collections by December 31.

District officials describe this as a cash-flow timing problem, not insolvency. That is an important distinction. Governments frequently receive revenue unevenly throughout the year, property taxes arrive in lump sums, while payroll and operating expenses continue every month. Borrowing to bridge that gap is a common and legitimate cash-management tool.

Still, $35 million is a substantial amount of short-term borrowing, and the $440,000 interest cost is real money paid to lenders rather than spent on students. It is another reason taxpayers should pay attention to liquidity and fund-balance trends, not just the headline size of the annual budget.

One Correction to My Own 2023 Article

Watchdog journalism loses its purpose if it demands precision from government but won’t correct itself.

My December 2023 article, “Macon-Bibb Education Budget: A Watchdog’s Analysis for Taxpayers”, compared a 68.5 CCRPI score for Bibb County with 83.1 for Houston County, presenting them as contemporary figures.

Those scores were real. But they were 2019 figures, not 2023 results. The district’s own December 2019 release confirms Bibb’s CCRPI at 68.5 (up from 67.2 in 2018), and contemporaneous reporting put Houston County at 83.1 with Georgia overall at 75.9.

That distinction matters because Georgia’s accountability system has changed since then. Today’s CCRPI reporting uses component scores rather than the old single districtwide number, so there is no clean apples-to-apples continuation of the 2019 comparison.

The current data tell a more complicated story:

• Bibb’s elementary-school Progress component improved from 76.3 to 82.6;
• High-school Progress declined from 77.2 to 66.3;
• High-school Closing Gaps rose, but the Georgia Department of Education specifically warned that 2024 and 2025 Closing Gaps figures were not directly comparable due to changes in the mathematics assessment;
• Reading performance remained below state averages in most areas;
• Nine Bibb schools received GaDOE Literacy and Math Leader Schools recognition for 2024-2025;
• Howard High exited its state Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) designation in December 2025;
• At the same time, Bibb’s FY26 district improvement plan listed 13 schools in intensive-support tiers: eight CSI, two TSI, one ATSI, and two district-designated Tier IV schools.

The data don’t fit neatly onto a bumper sticker. Which is exactly why they should be reported in full rather than selectively quoted.

The district touts its Class of 2026 graduation rate of 87.64%, the fourth consecutive year above 87%, with Central High School reaching 96.4%.

Graduation Is Not the Same as Academic Mastery

The state’s own data tell a more complicated story. Twenty-one Bibb County schools appear on Georgia’s 2026-27 Promise Scholarship list, which identifies schools in the state’s lowest-performing 25% under the program’s methodology.

Separately, Bibb’s FY26 district improvement plan lists 13 schools in its intensive-support tiers. Eight are federally designated Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools, the marker for the state’s lowest-performing schools; two are Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI), one is Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI), and two are district-designated Tier IV schools.

On the 2023-24 Georgia Milestones, Bibb students who took the American Literature EOC trailed the state and neighboring Houston County by wide margins on the reading-status measure, the Lexile-based check of whether students are reading at grade level. Southwest High offers the starkest illustration of why the year matters: its 92.9% graduation figure belongs to the Class of 2025, and its Class of 2026 graduation rate was 90.26%. A graduation rate says students accumulated the required credits. It does not, by itself, say what they mastered.

When schools are struggling on many state measures but graduating nearly everyone, taxpayers should ask what the diploma actually certifies.

2023 vs. 2026: What Actually Changed?

Three years after the original Global Watchdog investigation, the most useful comparison looks like this:

One finding deserves emphasis because it surprised me: starting teacher pay has risen about 11.0% since the figures used in my 2023 article, while Sims’s current $262,500 base is 5.0% higher than his original $250,000 salary (10.25% once the $275,625 rate takes effect in January 2027). At Sims’s current base, the superintendent-to-starting-teacher ratio has narrowed from about 5.7x to 5.4x, though his scheduled January 2027 increase would put it back at roughly 5.7x, making the ratio essentially flat over the longer period.

That deserves to be reported plainly. The 2023 article leaned hard on the pay ratio, and the district has, at least temporarily, narrowed it. Watchdog journalism shouldn’t hide numbers merely because they complicate the expected storyline.

What the Record Shows, and What It Doesn’t

The record shows a district that has repeatedly adopted General Fund budgets in which planned spending exceeds anticipated revenue, roughly $9.35 million in FY2025, $20.77 million in FY2026, and a June FY2027 gap of about $15 million later revised to a projected $8.29 million after the millage decision. It shows administrative and central-support categories growing considerably faster than instruction between FY2025 and FY2026. It shows $7.417 million in personnel expenses that had to be added after the FY2026 budget was already approved.

It shows a declining student population, 24,236 to 20,556 over a decade. It shows a reduction of 77 K-12 instructional positions in the FY2027 budget. It shows school-consolidation scenarios reaching the board table. It shows a millage rate maintained 9.33% above the rollback rate for the third straight year. It shows a moderate-risk financial designation following four audit findings, and $35 million in short-term borrowing to manage cash flow.

It also shows genuine academic successes: nine schools earning GaDOE Literacy and Math Leader recognition for 2024-2025, Howard High exiting its TSI designation, elementary Progress scores improving, and four consecutive graduating classes above 87%.

What these documents do not establish is that any current administrator stole money, committed fraud, or engaged in criminal misconduct. Nobody in these records has been accused of anything resembling the Dallemand era. This article does not allege crimes.

The question the records leave behind is less sensational but more useful than any accusation: Are Bibb County Schools’ staffing levels, administrative structure, and spending priorities sustainable, and what measurable results are taxpayers receiving for hundreds of millions of dollars a year?

That is the question the rest of this series will follow.

Next: What Is Bibb County Schools Buying?

Personnel is one place the money goes. Another is vendors: software, consultants, subscriptions, licenses, and branded education programs.

One familiar name is already back on the list.

On June 18, the Board of Education approved another $363,759 in General Fund money for Leader in Me for the 2026-27 school year. The district says 17 schools have achieved the program’s “Lighthouse Status” and describes the initiative as part of its work on school culture and climate.

Longtime Global Watchdog readers will recognize that name. I’ve been asking questions about Leader in Me since long before this series.

But this time the investigation goes deeper. How much has Bibb County actually spent on Leader in Me since the program began? What other software products, subscriptions, and instructional programs are taxpayers funding? How many licenses are purchased each year, and how many are actually used? Which contracts renew automatically, year after year, without competitive review? What evidence does the district require before renewing a vendor contract?

Those questions can’t be answered with slogans from either side. They can be answered with purchase orders.

The first records are already public, and they begin with Leader in Me. Georgia’s Open Government database, maintained by the state Department of Audits and Accounts, lists what the district paid FranklinCovey, the company behind the program: $846,564.63 in fiscal 2022, $480,457.13 in fiscal 2023, $415,216.42 in fiscal 2024, and $409,285.51 in fiscal 2025. That is $2,151,523.69 across four fiscal years, $1,304,959.06 of it in the three fiscal years since Dr. Sims took office, and most of it classified by the state as consulting and dues rather than books or materials. The board’s June vote adds the next installment.

And that is where Part 2: What Is Bibb County Schools Buying? begins.

Bibb taxpayers supply hundreds of millions of dollars to educate more than 20,000 students. They deserve to know not merely how much the district spends, but what it receives in return.

Part 1 of 5. Work inside Bibb County Schools and know about software, programs, subscriptions, or contracts that deserve scrutiny? Send Global Watchdog a tip. Documents are especially welcome.

References

Primary documents, official data sources, news reporting, and prior Global Watchdog investigations consulted for this article. All URLs verified as of October 2026.

District Budget Documents

1. Bibb County School District FY2025 Adopted Budget (General Fund revenue $261.86M, expenditures $269.82M)
2. Bibb County School District FY2026 Adopted Budget (General Fund revenue $267.22M, expenditures $286.59M)
3. Bibb County School District January 15, 2026 Budget Amendment #1 ($7.417M in previously unbudgeted/underbudgeted obligations)
4. Bibb County School District FY2027 Budget Brief, June 25, 2026 ($287.4M revenue/transfers, $302.4M expenditures/transfers; reduction of 77 K-12 instructional positions)
5. Bibb County School District official millage notice (14.674 mills; 1.252 mills above 13.422 rollback; 9.33%)
6. 41NBC News / WMGT-DT reporting on millage adoption (September 9, 2026), moderate-risk designation, and $35M tax-anticipation notes
7. Macon Melody, “Bibb County Schools Scrutinize 2026 Salaries” (July 9, 2026), assistant superintendent average $160,866 vs. $154,094 statewide
8. Macon Melody reporting on Sims contract extension ($262,500 base; $275,625 January 2027)
9. Macon Newsroom (Laura Corley) reporting on Sims contract obtained through open records (May 24, 2022)
10. Bibb County School District FY26 Central Office Salary Scale (grades A1-A5)
11. U.S. Department of Justice, Middle District of Georgia, Dallemand guilty plea announcement
12. Bibb County School District press release on $47.5M civil judgment against Dallemand (August 13, 2019)
13. Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, Open Georgia (open.ga.gov): Sims salary and travel records; FranklinCovey (Leader in Me) payment records, fiscal 2022-2025
14. Georgia Department of Education / GOSA, 2025 Turnaround Eligible Schools list
15. Bibb County School District, Class of 2026 graduation rate (87.64%)
16. Macon Telegraph reporting on 2019 CCRPI (Bibb 68.5, Houston 83.1, Georgia 75.9)
17. “Macon-Bibb Education Budget: A Watchdog’s Analysis for Taxpayers” (GWMAC, December 2023)

Academic Performance Data

1. Georgia Department of Education, Georgia Milestones Assessment System (2023-24 results)
2. Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA), 2026-27 Promise Scholarship eligibility list and calculation rules
3. Georgia Department of Education, Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) school designations
4. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Bibb County Schools profile (35 schools)
5. Macon Telegraph, Milestones test results reporting (August 2025)

Prior Global Watchdog Investigations

1. “A Comparative Study of Georgia and Sweden’s Education Systems” (GWMAC, May 2023): superintendent salary comparisons, Dallemand profile
2. “Bibb County Board of Education Set to Approve Property Tax Increase” (GWMAC, August 2024): 14.674-mill rate, board member Morton quote
3. “PhD vs. EdD: The Undeniable Supremacy of the PhD over EdD” (GWMAC, December 2023): dissertation rigor, NCTQ findings
4. “More Details Emerge Involving Missing $52 Million from Bibb County Schools” (GWMAC, 2014): Dallemand-era technology spending
5. “Vindication for Opponents of Romain Dallemand” (GWMAC): PSC license revocation
6. Global Watchdog, “Leader in Me Phenomenon: Leadership Elixir or Educational Mirage?” (September 2023)
7. Global Watchdog, “Leader in Me: Expensive Illusion”
8. Global Watchdog, “Update: Part 2 of My Reply to the Charles Richardson Editorial”