Dr. Norman Sauce III, serving as interim superintendent of the DeKalb County School District since his predecessor resigned in October amid out-of-state fraud accusations, is on a tour to detail plans to move the school system forward.
The Jan. 22 Forward Together forum at Cross Keys High School in Brookhaven was Sauce’s third stop on his countywide speaking tour. Attendees wanted to know why the Board of Education picked him to lead as interim superintendent and how to get the DeKalb County School District back on track.
Sauce, who is on a one-year contract expiring this fall, centered his 90-minute address on early childhood literacy, the need to review the district’s under-enrolled schools, and how to improve student outcomes.
“My love of this school district is immense and unwavering,” Sauce said when asked why the school board chose him to take over day-to-day operations. “Every day, I am invigorated, enthused, and enthralled to get up in the morning and to use what my position affords me to do great things for other people’s children.”
Sauce said he acknowledges community concerns across DeKalb County and wants to hear them.
“Your perspective, your viewpoints, your experiences, those have to be known to us,” Sauce said. “We have to do our part to understand those. You’ll hear me often say, ‘What’s working, what’s not, what do you recommend?'”
Road to superintendent
The former Chamblee High School principal began his career as a U.S. history teacher in Southern California. After growing up without a father and running into some trouble in high school, Sauce said he decided early that his mission in life would be education.
Sauce said he took a job as an assistant principal at Roswell High School in north Fulton County after marrying his wife, who was a school resource officer there.
The Sauces now live in Fayette County with their twin sons. After later serving as an elementary school principal at Fulton County Schools, Norman said he found his home.
“I longed for a more diverse community, if I’m being honest,” Sauce said, explaining his move to Chamblee High School in 2015. “I really fell in love with the school district … I knew immediately this is where I belong.”
Before he took the role of interim superintendent, Sauce served as chief of student services for the DeKalb County School District, overseeing English language learners, gifted education, early learning, and pre-K.
The forum saw more than 100 community members in attendance, including local mayors and council members from north DeKalb, a few principals, and most of the DCSD’s leadership team, including School Board Chair Allyson Gevertz.
At a high level, his priorities are clarity, consistency, coherence, relationships, receptiveness, and responsiveness.
The crowd applauded Sauce’s guiding principles, which he calls the three Cs and the three Rs. In a school district with nine different superintendents since 2020, the transition away from a superintendent facing 17 federal charges brought dozens of parents who wanted to hear his plan to right the system.
“We haven’t always been perfect with [the 3Cs and the 3Rs], I know that,” Sauce said. “That’s okay because we are going to be introspective, honest, and transparent about when we haven’t lived up to our highest ideals and why we haven’t.”
Dunwoody mayor weighs in
During the Q&A session, Dunwoody Mayor Lynn Deutsch said she appreciates that Sauce is looking back on what has gone wrong in the past.
“Too often, our new superintendents walk into these meetings and say, ‘We’re not going to look back, we’re only going to look forward,'” Deutsch said. “[That] has repeatedly failed tens of thousands of children in DeKalb.”
Deutsch said she got her start in public service while her children were in the public school system because the “DeKalb way wasn’t working.”
Deutsch hinted at the school district’s ongoing Student Assignment Project, which is a countywide review of attendance zones, buildings, and programs. Once the board develops an action plan, DeKalb residents can expect school closures and boundary changes.
“And to the board, SAP is going to likely be the hardest thing you ever do,” Deutsch said. “But you owe it to the children of DeKalb … to rip off the Band-Aid and make the decisions that need to be made because that is what we elected you to do.”
DeKalb officials say the district faces several competing issues: declining student enrollment, needed repairs to aging buildings, and severely over- and under-capacity schools.
The school board is set to consider changes and may make decisions this fall after county staff refines potential scenarios based on community feedback. This fall is also when the school board will make a decision on whether Sauce continues in his current role.
Gevertz said the search for a new superintendent has not been discussed.
“At this time, the board has not discussed initiating a superintendent search at a public meeting,” Chair Allyson Gevertz said. “Any future decisions would be shared with the public.”
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