When School Districts Lack Guardrails: A Mandate for Radical Transparency + a District 65 Case Study

How do you define the word "allegation?" Should school districts be paying $450 an hour for virtual leadership coaching?

It’s been a minute, but I am not done writing about education and specifically DeKalb Public Schools.¹

Today, I want to talk about two things: (1) the importance of being honest with ourselves about the hiring of Dr. Horton, and (2) an example of the type of contracts that result from poor financial disclosure and conflict of interest policies in school districts, or just a lack of oversight by those in charge (i.e., Boards of Education).

November Recap

Thanks to traveling during the government shutdown, I was unable to watch the November DCSD Board meeting. The SAP timeline has been extended and I support that decision.

One note: a year ago, at the November meeting, the public received a presentation on the annual October enrollment count and the first round of August MAP scores. I did not see that on the November agenda. According to the district website, our October 2025 enrollment dropped by about 1,670 from our March 2025 count. Our open seats increased from about 21K to 23K. We enrolled about 2,000 fewer students than forecasted.

Not great.

I am also supportive of the decision to appoint Dr. Sauce as Interim Superintendent and I wish him the best in moving our district through difficult times ahead. While we have just exited the Disrupting for Excellence era, which was primarily focused on the disruption part of the brand, I hope that Dr. Sauce embraces his Radical Transparency era.

Radical Transparency not only includes finding out who our contractors are and who spent what on a PCard, but also honest conversations about why DeKalb County has more schools on the state’s Promise Schools list than any other county in the state. I know some leaders and parents are ready to put Dr. Horton’s tenure behind us. I am not in that camp (shock). I believe that moving forward requires examining examples from the past few years to ensure we do not repeat mistakes.

Institutional Trust is Earned Through Honesty

The last five years have accelerated a general distrust of our institutions- government, corporations, and the media. Some of that is rightfully earned. It is hard not to feel crazy watching a federal employee on the news say costs are decreasing… while you look at your bills and know you are being lied to.

Some of the distrust is partisan. But in education and local politics, I have found a more significant divide is between people who believe the success of our district is based on people having “confidence” in our board and administrators, because they cannot be successful without that implied trust, and those who think institutions are only successful when there is a bright light shown on what they do. In the first camp, rocking the boat is bad because it harms the institution- we cannot reach the desired “stability” if everyone is distrustful. However, I lean more toward the second camp and feel DeKalb requires it.

Recently, the Board published a Frequently Asked Questions webpage on the DeKalb School District website about the hiring of Dr. Horton in April 2023. Unfortunately, it creates more questions than it answers.

According to the Board (bold from me),

6. Was the Board that hired Dr. Horton aware of these allegations from his prior district?

No. The Board that hired Dr. Horton was not aware of these allegations. However, the Board was aware of his prior personal bankruptcies and a 2021 civil suit related to his equity work in a previous district, which was dismissed in 2024. All applicants were vetted by the Georgia School Boards Association, and comprehensive background checks and media reviews did not identify any other litigation or charges connected to the current federal indictments. The vetting process also did not reveal any violations of state law or Board policy.

Informed parents know that this is an absolute stretch of the facts of April 2023, if not demonstrably false. While no charges had been filed yet, the concerns and “allegations” were heavily covered in the media before the vote. I’ll lay out some specific examples, but the Evanston Roundtable and the AJC’s Bill Torpy did a good job of laying out the 2023 timeline.

In March 2023, about 30 days before the Board announced Dr. Horton was the sole finalist, Tom Hayden, a local journalist in Dr. Horton’s old district, published a document trail that revealed Dr. Horton had steered contracts to his former coworkers and friends. While not a major publication, it was among the first results on Google when searching for information on Dr. Horton, and the recruitment and legal staff would have seen it when compiling any media review.

On April 11, 2023, 8 days before the Board voted to hire Dr. Horton, the AJC’s Cassidy Alexander summarized the controversies around Dr. Horton’s record in District 65 (spoiler: they were not good!), as well as the contract issues. DeKalb’s Board Chair at the time, Diijon DaCosta, acknowledged the board was aware of the allegations. His direct quote,

“Everything that the media, the public has perceived has been consulted with our attorneys,” DaCosta said. “And as far as we know at this point, those are just allegations.”

I assume those attorneys are Hall, Booth & Smith, whose contract renewal was placed on the November 2025 agenda and then removed. An RFP for new legal services was issued in mid-November.

On April 15, 2023, 4 days before the Board voted to hire Dr. Horton, Decaturish published a report, literally titled “DeKalb superintendent finalist didn’t disclose consulting work on economic interest forms,” detailing the Illinois laws that Dr. Horton had broken by omitting information on his mandated state financial disclosure form, the Statement of Economic Interest, with receipts.

Count 16, 3., d. of the federal indictment specifically mentions the filing of this false form.

On or about March 21, 2023, HORTON filed a false Statement of Economic Interests form with the Cook County Clerk in order to conceal his sources of income for calendar year 2022;

Any media review would have identified this violation of the law. I know that the Board reads Decaturish themselves. The Chairs constantly remind Decaturish to write good things about them as a running joke at board meetings.

Before the April 19, 2023 vote, the Board also solicited email feedback from the public for weeks. According to the AJC’s Cassidy Alexander, public emails mentioned these allegations. I know mine did. If you take the published FAQ at face value, it suggests the Board did not read the emails.

The Board’s FAQ appears to want the public to define “allegations” as criminal charges, rather than the most common definition: a claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong. Ultimately, the hiring of Dr. Horton in April 2023 told the public that the Board didn't care that Dr. Horton had broken the law in Illinois. It may have been because it was not a law we had in Georgia. And that is a problem we will continue to have without a change in both culture and laws.

Updates From District 65… and a Contract Case Study

Like me, District 65 is also not moving past the Horton era quite yet. On November 4th, the Evanston Board voted to issue an RFP for a forensic audit for his tenure.

It’s important to note- at least to me- that unlike the DeKalb Board, the D.65 Board discussed the RFP in public, as required by open meeting laws. DeKalb discussed their own RFP in executive session, which is not what executive session is for. The audit is for the school system, not a personnel matter.

As of December 8th, the District 65 Board is considering hiring legal counsel to pursue the collection of funds they believe Dr. Horton may owe them.

Like DeKalb, District 65 will find, through its audit, that Dr. Horton was generous in awarding high-paying contracts to associates, beyond those involving kickbacks. They will likely find more contracts that were not reported to the Board as required by IL law due to a lack of oversight.

As an example. I recently received the contract that Dr. Horton entered into with Michelle Dillard while he was at District 65. Michelle Dillard is the current Chief of Schools for the DeKalb County School District. This position did not exist before July 2023.² Here is a chronological timeline of the contract between Ms. Dillard and District 65.

• Ms. Dillard and Dr. Horton worked together in Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 2018 to 2020. He was the Chief of Schools, and she was the Assistant Superintendent, a position she held from 2013 until her retirement in 2023. They both began their respective positions in DeKalb County in July 2023.

• Dr. Horton became superintendent of District 65 on July 1, 2020. On October 1, 2020, he entered into a contract with Ms. Dillard, d.b.a Dillard Educational Consultant Firm, on behalf of District 65 to provide professional services to the district through July 2021.

• The services contracted were for Ms. Dillard to provide virtual leadership coaching at $450/hr, not to exceed $35K. Contracts over $25K were mandated to be reported to the Board under IL law. It does not appear this contract was. It was also not put out for bidding.

• In March 2021, the agreement was amended to add $22,725 in additional funds through October 31, 2021. The District 65 annual financial report shows that Ms. Dillard was paid $57,725 between October 1, 2020 and June 1, 2021. According to public records, Ms. Dillard’s salary in Jefferson County was approximately $172K a year.

• In the fall of 2022, Dr. Horton applied for the superintendency position in DeKalb Public Schools and used Ms. Dillard as one of his three references. He was interviewed between January and March 2023.

• More than a year after her contract ended, Ms. Dillard was paid $12,500 by District 65 between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023.

Jefferson County Public Schools does not have specific financial disclosure procedures for outside employment; they do mandate that it cannot interfere with the school day.

Generally speaking, $450 an hour for contract work is reserved for highly specialized services, such as celebrity life coaches, best-selling authors of mainstream publications, and specialized consultative physicians & scientists for in-person work. As a comparison, DeKalb’s lawyers get paid $225-$250 an hour.

Why is this important? Awarding no-bid contracts to former co-workers is a conflict of interest. Secondly, District 65 ended the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, with a $4 million budget shortfall. It is easy to dismiss $70K in payments with a high hourly rate as the cause of a district’s financial distress. But that is the problem with a culture of excessive spending- it is hard to assess its individual parts after the fact without it feeling like nitpicking. One cannot avoid the cumulative impact of giving a little here and there, and the overall negligence of a superintendent with his own goals. Ms. Dillard may be talented enough to warrant $450 an hour for virtual coaching, but a competent superintendent knows that taxpayers cannot afford it.

Radical Transparency is not supposed to be comfortable. Without official guardrails or enforcement of existing ones, the public is forced to look at contracts and wonder who is looking out for whom, and most importantly, the kids our districts serve.

Odds and Ends

Dr. Horton appeared in court last week. His next court date will be February 4th. A trial date will be set if he does not take a plea deal before then. As a reminder: less than 2% of federal cases go to trial.

Finally… here is an odd one that has been bothering my policy nerd brain. When Dr. Sauce was announced as the Interim Superintendent, the press release stated that

Dr. Sauce was fully vetted prior to this appointment. This comprehensive process included a full background check, verification of professional credentials, review of credit history, and confirmation of eligibility for the District’s bonding and insurance policies.

The statement reminded me that the Board did not approve a bond for Dr. Horton until May 2024, per the minutes from a board retreat. That was a year into his contract. According to GA Code, all superintendents must obtain bonds payable to a surety company and provide a copy to the State Board of Education. According to the GADOE, they only received a bond for the June 2024 to June 2025 period. You can read the requirements for obtaining a surety bond from the company that issued it.

It is unknown why a bond was not issued for the 2023-2024 term or why a new bond was not issued in June 2025. Is it a weird administrative oversight? Did he not qualify? Are the lawyers to blame? It will likely be one of the many odd mysteries of the Horton era. Luckily, it seems they thought about it when it came to Dr. Sauce.

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1. Let me know what you would like to read about. I am interested in policy beyond DeKalb and trends; I am not interested in individual disputes with schools. However, stories about recess going astray at many individual schools would qualify as a trend, for example.

2. I have reported previously on Ms. Dillard’s connection to Solutions Tree, one of the largest instructional contracts in the DeKalb district ($368K in FY2025).