After three days of community forums this week, Brad Draeger, a consultant working with City Schools Decatur, said the school board hopes to announce a new superintendent by September.

A former superintendent himself who now works for the search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, Draeger admitted the proposed timeline is “very aggressive.” He said that 55 have already applied for a job that’s been advertised for three weeks.

Draeger said that eventually 70 will apply, with the board interviewing six or seven finalists beginning in “mid-to-late July.”

Current Superintendent Phyllis Edwards, who resigned in February, has held the job since 2003.

During an interview with the AJC, Draeger said the average tenure for a superintendent in an “urban setting” is one-to-two years and three-to-five years in suburban systems. For a superintendent to last 12 years, he pointed out, “is very unusual.”

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Mathew Palmer, a former Delta Air Lines employee, at his home in Atlanta on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025.  Palmer was fired less than two weeks after writing a post on social media about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. (Natrice Miller/AJC)