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Police raid superintendent’s home, offices in construction investigation

Superintendent Crawford Lewis
DeKalb County law enforcement officials raided the home of school district Superintendent Crawford Lewis and several district offices Feb. 25 in search of documents related to a months-long investigation in alleged construction contract tampering. It...

Expert to give free seminar on starting business

Bob Thiele remembers one proposal in particular from about two years ago. Someone wanted to start a daycare center specifically for 3 year olds and younger. Why? Because they wanted to work only with toddlers. After some research, Thiele sat them dow...

School district to lay off 148 district employees following $88M deficit

School district to lay off 148 district employees following $88M deficit Teachers spared from cuts   The DeKalb County School System will lay off 148 employees to manage a ballooning $88 million budget deficit for next year, Superintendent Crawford ...

Residents to vote on mayor’s future in Doraville

Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins initiated the first steps this month toward asking voters whether they want to hire a city manager and decrease the mayor’s power. Photo by Jonathan Cribbs
Mayor Ray Jenkins’ days as top banana in Doraville may be numbered. The City Council voted Feb. 16 to ask residents in November whether Doraville should hire a city manager and significantly diminish the responsibility and power of the mayor’s of...

Business owners vow to clean up tract under threat of annexation

From left, property owners Lynn West, Don Shaver and Charles Blalock meet with, in foreground, DeKalb County Commissioner Kathie Gannon and Amber Greer-Weaver from DeKalb Beautiful.
A group of property and business owners under threat of annexation along East College Avenue plan to start tidying up the area this month with the help of a county commissioner. On Feb. 27 commissioner Kathie Gannon will join on a small group of busi...

Up to 20 DeKalb county schools suspected of cheating

The Georgia Department of Education has widened its investigation of standardized test cheating, and as many as 20 DeKalb County public schools are likely to be investigated for changing students’ answers, according to state data released this mont...

Mayor: Too early to hire development professional in Doraville

Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins protested a city councilman’s claim that Doraville isn’t prepared to manage redevelopment of its shuttered General Motors plant. City Councilman Bob Roche told The Champion this month Doraville wasn’t equipped to neg...

Committee to recommend school closures in April

A citizen committee will recommend the closure of possibly four schools this summer as the DeKalb County School System works to cut costs by closing severely under-enrolled schools across the county, a district official said this month. The committee...

Rep. gets signatures to push annexation to House vote then loses one

State Rep. Stephanie Benfield said this month she had enough delegation signatures to move forward with a proposal to annex a tract of unincorporated land between Decatur and Avondale Estates. That is, until she didn’t. After she gathered the 10 si...

Commission considers heavy cost-cutting measures to avoid tax increase

The DeKalb County Board of Commissioners is considering a series of significant pay reductions and operational changes to plug a possible $80 million hole in next year’s budget while avoiding a tax increase that CEO Burrell Ellis proposed in Decemb...