Ga. school chief’s home in foreclosure

School Superintendent Kathy Cox, whose Peachtree City home is in foreclosure, said she hopes to resolve the problem before her house is sold on the courthouse steps.

The house is scheduled for auction July 7 at the Fayette County Courthouse, according to a legal notice published last week in the Fayette Daily News.

Cox was out of town Friday, attending a family reunion, and was not available for comment. But a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Education said Cox was optimistic she could avoid her most recent financial calamity.

Cox and her husband, a developer, filed for bankruptcy last fall. Spokesman Dana Tofig said Cox said that she and her husband “have been working on a loan modification for the past few months and they hope it will still go through.”

Earlier, Cox had offered a statement in an e-mail that her office forwarded.

“My husband and I, like so many other families across America, were deeply affected by the sudden and unprecedented downturn in the housing market,” Cox wrote in the e-mail. “For the past several months we have been trying to resolve our financial situation and, as part of that process, we have been working closely with our mortgage company and banks. Those negotiations continue and I am hopeful we will come to a resolution very soon.”

Last November the superintendent and her husband, John Cox, filed for personal bankruptcy, citing more than $3.5 million in liabilities and less than $650,000 in assets accrued during the nationwide housing slump.

Most of the debt is tied to John Cox’s business, Pebble Hill Homes. His wife, who makes about $120,000 a year, had no role in the business but was a co-signer on loans for it.

The Coxes’ home, which they share with two teenage sons, was their biggest listed asset, valued at $450,000. The balance on two mortgages on the home total $442,907.55, according to court documents.

“The collapse of the home-building market has been well documented and small builders, like my husband, have been hit especially hard,” Cox said last November. “In the end, we felt that we had no choice” but to file for bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy filing came barely two months after Cox won $1 million on the television game show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” She said at the time that she would donate the winnings to two schools for the deaf and one for the blind, but in December the investment firm that was managing the money that was to go to the charities returned the check to Fox Broadcasting Co. The company, Fidelity Investments, did not want to become involved in the bankruptcy case.

One of the Cox lenders had put in a claim for the money but has since retreated, Tofig said.

He said there has been no resolution as to what to do with the $1 million won on the show.

“She is still very hopeful that all of the money will go to the state schools for the deaf and blind as she always intended,” Tofig said.