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Missouri auditor says Francis Howell officials failed to properly vet former superintendent 57%
By Hiba Ahmad0%
6/10/2026, 4:25:41 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Self-Serving Bias, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 29% saturation with 141 hits. Analysis detected 813 faulty-reasoning hits from 486 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 54.2% and a BS Rank of 57% (9,171 of 21,173 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 56.70% of the article peer group.
A new report from the Missouri state auditor’s office says Francis Howell School District leadership failed to properly vet its former superintendent before offering him a three-year contract last year.
Mike Dominguez was hired by the Francis Howell Board of Education in March 2025, but was placed on leave in the summer before ever working with the district.
Francis Howell paid him about $230,000 in severance when the school board terminated his contract.
The board installed longtime district administrator Mark Delaney as its superintendent in response.
“The enormous amount of money paid out to a man who never worked a day for the district certainly raised a lot of questions for taxpayers and numerous red flags for my office,” State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said in a statement.
“Given what our investigation has uncovered, I firmly believe the district could have and should have identified the concerns that led to its separation from Dr.
Dominguez prior to hiring him in the first place."
Jennifer Jolls, a spokesperson for the district, said in a statement that the findings in the auditor’s report did not outline “any violations of Missouri law, board policy or contract regarding the previous Superintendent.”
The school board has made changes to the way it handles superintendent contracts, according to Jolls, but she did not specify what the changes were.
“We have strong leadership in place and are focused on the future,” she said.
Fitzpatrick’s report states the recruiting firm the district used to find and hire Dominguez didn’t conduct a thorough application review.
The report found “several typographical errors” and noted the application did not include references or letters of recommendation from his previous employer, Garden City School District in Kansas.
The report also states the school board did not review or question Dominguez’s early resignation from the Kansas district before his contract was up.
The recruiting firm also failed to flag social media posts that relayed concerns about Dominguez’s tenure with his former school district to the school board.
Once the board learned of concerns about Dominguez’s ability to lead the district, it acted swiftly to place him on administrative leave and eventually terminate his contract to prevent disruption to school operations, according to the report.
“The board believes it engaged in due diligence in compliance with the law and Board policy, particularly when it relied upon the services of a professional search firm.
We disagree with the Auditor’s conclusion as we believe that the conclusion is speculative,” states a letter sent by the school district’s attorney to Fitzpatrick.
One of the recommendations outlined in the report encourages the school board to adopt a more competitive bid process for contractors to protect taxpayer dollars.
The school board acquired bids from four recruitment firms and went with one that had done superintendent searches in the region.
The contract cost more than $40,000.
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100%flagged-word coverageScott Fitzpatrick
76 attributed words61% of attributed speech97% writer coverage
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