An investigation by the State Inspector General found that the district had not told its auditors about an IRS penalty that, with interest, had grown past $1 million by April 2026, and that it paid its superintendent at least $326,250 while her legal residence was outside the district. The day after the report came out, the state took full control of the district.
On June 2, 2026, the South Carolina Department of Education took over full management of the Marlboro County School District, a district of about 3,200 students and eight schools, based in Bennettsville. The State Board of Education approved the takeover in a unanimous vote that afternoon, at the request of State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver.
The vote came one day after the State Inspector General’s office, which investigates fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in state government, issued a report, focused mainly on July 2020 through June 2025, on the district’s financial management and purchasing practices. In announcing the takeover, the Education Department said the inspector general had found that the district had failed to “meaningfully implement” the plan it was supposed to follow to fix its finances.
The inspector general’s report found that the district had not told its outside auditors about an IRS penalty that, with interest, had grown to more than $1 million by April 2026. It also found that the district paid its superintendent, Dr. Helena Tillar, at least $326,250 while her legal residence was outside the district, even though her contract required her to establish a residence there. According to the report, Marlboro County’s school board raised its own pay and voted its members bonuses, and the district did not follow its own purchasing rules on any of the 18 contracts investigators tested.
Those findings came at the end of years of warnings from the state about the district’s finances. What follows is how the district got there, in the order it happened.
Tillar’s First Time as Superintendent, 2010 to 2018
The story starts with Tillar, who led the Marlboro County district twice. She first became superintendent in October 2010. Nearly seven years later, on July 24, 2017, the school board voted 5-3 to place her on paid administrative leave. According to the minutes of that meeting, the members who voted for the leave believed “that the Marlboro County School District and the community need different direction and leadership.” Tillar’s resignation took effect July 1, 2018.
That fall, Tillar signed a settlement agreement with the district. Dated Oct. 1, 2018, it called for three payments of $50,000, $50,000 and $100,000, for a total of $200,000, and for the district to give her a district-owned Dodge Durango valued at $2,500. The agreement says it was not an admission of wrongdoing by either side. The inspector general’s report gives the payout as $150,000, but the agreement itself adds up to $200,000.
The Years in Between, 2019 to 2022
While Tillar was gone, the district’s savings grew. A school district’s fund balance works like a reserve: money left at the end of one year that carries into the next. Marlboro County’s fund balance was about $5.1 million in June 2019 and rose during the years of federal pandemic funding, according to Dr. Michael Thorsland, a retired superintendent the Education Department later sent to help the district. By June 2022, it had reached about $14.8 million.
By then, though, the state had already found problems with how the district kept its books. South Carolina law sets out three escalating levels of state concern about a school district’s finances: fiscal watch, the lowest; fiscal caution; and fiscal emergency, the highest. In February 2022, the Education Department put Marlboro County on fiscal watch because of weaknesses in the district’s internal financial controls and because its audit for the 2020-21 fiscal year repeated an earlier finding about how the district closed out and reported its finances. The district submitted a plan to fix the problems, and the Education Department approved it in May 2022.
In November 2022, the school board voted to give district employees a bonus, the first of five such votes over the next two years. Each time, according to the inspector general’s report, the school board members gave themselves the same bonus. A member who served through all five payments, the last of them in November 2024, received $4,331.36 in all. The report puts the total for the school board at $38,982.24, which is nine times that amount, although the board’s membership changed during those two years. The school board has nine members, elected to four-year terms. Michael Coachman, whom Marlboro County voters elected as school board chair in 2022, was sworn in as chair in January 2023, along with four new members.
Tillar Returns, 2023 and 2024
In 2023, the school board needed a new superintendent. Its interim superintendent, Dr. Donald Andrews, said he would resign. The district paid at least $32,500 for a search, according to the inspector general’s report, and the school board offered the job to a candidate, who then asked for more money. The school board turned down the request. Then, on July 17, 2023, the school board voted 7-2 to bring back Tillar, with members Danny Driggers and Nikki Pruitt voting no.
Tillar’s new contract, signed for the school board by Coachman, ran through June 30, 2027, and paid $175,000 a year. A year later, her salary was raised to $190,000. The contract also had a residency requirement: by Jan. 31, 2024, Tillar “shall have established a residence in the District” and was to keep it for as long as the contract was in effect.
The inspector general’s office later concluded that she did not meet that requirement. The report says Orangeburg County property tax records show Tillar received a property tax exemption on her primary residence in that county for 2022 through 2025. The county’s tax notices for 2024 and 2025 classify the home as her legal residence and assess it at the 4 percent rate that, the notices say, is available to owners who lived in the home during the tax year. They also show school tax credits of $4,051.85 and $4,084.13. Investigators found that from February 2024 through November 2025, while her legal residence was outside the district, the district paid Tillar at least $326,250. They called that money unallowable compensation and said the district lacked “adequate oversight and basic contract management” of the residency requirement. The report does not include a response from Tillar.
Also in 2024, a problem with the IRS began. On May 3, the IRS wrote to the district that the district might have been required to file two federal tax forms for 2022 and had not done so. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers that offer health insurance must file these forms, known as 1094-C and 1095-C, which report the coverage they offer. The inspector general’s report notes that without them, district employees may not have received forms they needed to complete their personal income taxes. Investigators found no evidence that the district answered the IRS letter.
By the end of June 2024, the district’s reserve had dropped to $7.37 million, about half of what it had been two years earlier. That same month, the school board’s own pay was set to go up. School board policy sets members’ pay at $625 a month and the chair’s at $833.33. On June 24, 2024, according to the inspector general’s report, the school board’s chair emailed the district’s finance director to say those amounts would rise to $1,000 and $1,333.33 a month. The policy was not changed, and the report says there was no apparent public discussion. The higher pay ran from July 2024 until December 2025, according to the report, and during that time only the school boards in Horry and Greenville counties paid their members more.
In September 2024, the Education Department told the district it had to pay back $476,859.74 in federal pandemic-relief money. An audit of how the district had spent that money found spending outside the allowed time period or without approval, expenses that were not allowed, poor tracking of assets bought with it, and inadequate records of how employees’ time was spent.
The IRS matter, meanwhile, was getting more expensive. On Oct. 21, 2024, the IRS proposed a penalty of $92,730 over the missing forms. The district answered in a fax dated Dec. 5, asking for more time. It said it had been “unaware of the possible penalties.” It also said that it had new staff since 2023, that its previous finance director had retired and that a benefits coordinator had died suddenly that year. It added that it had not been able to reach anyone at the IRS who handled Affordable Care Act matters by phone or email.
2025: From Fiscal Emergency to State Control
The state’s warnings had been building. In February 2023, the Education Department told the district it would stay on fiscal watch because of weaknesses found in its audit for the 2021-22 fiscal year. In February 2024, it kept the district on fiscal watch again, this time over its audit for 2022-23, and warned that one more year on fiscal watch would bring an automatic fiscal emergency, because by then the district would have been on watch for three of the previous five fiscal years. On Feb. 18, 2025, the Education Department declared that fiscal emergency. Its letter cited material findings in the district’s audit for the 2022-23 fiscal year and said the district’s audit for 2023-24 was more than two months overdue.
Because the district had been on fiscal watch for more than three of the previous five years, the letter said, state law required the Education Department to raise the level to fiscal emergency. The school board had 60 days to submit a recovery plan, and the Education Department said it would provide technical help, visits and inspections. If the district failed to produce a reasonable plan or fix its problems, the letter said, the state superintendent could recommend that the Education Department take control of the district’s finances.
In early April, the IRS wrote that it had received a response from the district on March 11 and was still reviewing it.
Less than two months into the fiscal emergency, the district bought its superintendent a replacement vehicle. Tillar’s contract entitled her to a district vehicle for travel within the district. The one she had been driving was declared a total loss after a traffic incident on or about Nov. 13, 2024. The other driver’s insurance company denied responsibility, so the district’s own insurer paid the district $16,221 for the loss, in a check dated March 11, 2025.
On April 11, 2025, the district wrote a check for $47,153 to CarMax for the replacement. According to the inspector general’s report, a senior district official asked to see the school board minutes approving the purchase. Tillar said the school board had approved it in executive session, the closed-door part of a meeting that the public cannot attend, and asked that the purchase go ahead. The official agreed, on one condition: Tillar had to sign the check herself.
With shipping, window tint and an extended warranty, the replacement cost $51,952.20 in all. The insurance money covered $16,221 of that, and the district’s general fund paid the other $35,731.20. The district’s own purchasing policy requires formal sealed bids for any contract of $50,000 or more. The inspector general’s report counts the extras as part of the purchase, which puts it over that line, and says the district did not use sealed bidding. A senior Education Department official told investigators that, under the fiscal emergency, the district did not need state approval for purchases.
How the purchase was approved was a separate problem. State law says a public body may not take any action in a closed executive session except to adjourn or return to the open meeting. Based on Tillar’s response to investigators, the report concludes that approving the purchase behind closed doors violated the state Freedom of Information Act. The minutes of the school board’s seven meetings from Feb. 3 through May 19, 2025, show closed sessions on personnel matters at every meeting, and on legal matters at six of them, each followed by a note that no action was taken. They show no public vote on a vehicle.
By the end of June 2025, the district’s reserve had fallen to about $4.9 million, a figure the district’s auditor later confirmed to the school board. In July, the Education Department sent Tillar a letter about staffing. It showed that the district’s enrollment had dropped 9.72 percent from the 2021-22 school year to 2024-25, to 3,183 students, while its number of teachers had grown 21.92 percent and its other staff 36.61 percent.
Then the state moved in. On July 10, 2025, Weaver asked the State Board of Education to let her department take over the district’s finances, and she asked the inspector general to investigate. In her letter, she wrote that her department had received “credible information from current [district] leadership regarding the potential of past procurement irregularities.” In plain terms, that meant possible problems with how the district had bought goods and services in the past. The State Board approved the financial takeover on July 18.
On Aug. 11, the IRS billed the district $584,739.28, after adding a much larger penalty and interest to the original $92,730. Nine days later, on Aug. 20, the Education Department brought in Thorsland, the retired superintendent, to serve as a liaison between the district and the state and to help the district get back on sound financial footing.
Fall 2025: Tillar Leaves
That fall, Tillar’s time as superintendent came to an end. On Oct. 13, 2025, the school board voted 6-2 to change her contract so the school board could extend it by a year and so she could keep her district vehicle when the contract ended. Driggers and Pruitt voted no. A week later, on Oct. 20, the school board voted 7-0 to undo both changes.
At that same Oct. 20 meeting, Thorsland walked the school board through the district’s finances. He said the reserve had shrunk three years in a row. He also compared the district’s central office with those of three other districts: Marlboro County had 45 people in those roles, he said, while the others had 24, 27 and 25, even though Marlboro had the fewest students of the four.
On Nov. 3, Thorsland told the school board the district still owed about $2.2 million to the Public Employee Benefit Authority, which runs retirement and health insurance for public employees, for retirement contributions due in August, September and October. He said the district was covering payroll by putting off certain payments, and that if it paid everything it owed, including the retirement money, its reserve would be below zero. At the same meeting, the school board voted 6-3 to have its lawyer negotiate Tillar’s departure with her lawyer.
On Nov. 12, the school board accepted what the minutes describe as Tillar’s proposal to retire. Under the terms, she would receive her salary for the rest of the school year plus three months, the district’s annuity payment for the year and pay for her unused leave. Coachman abstained, saying the school board had earlier given Tillar a favorable evaluation by a 7-2 vote. One member voted no. Board members’ comments, as recorded in the minutes, credited Tillar with helping the district regain its accreditation and pointed to three schools that moved out of the state’s “Unsatisfactory” rating and a graduation rate that rose from 63 percent to 75 percent over two years. In its timeline, the inspector general’s report describes Nov. 12 as the date Tillar was terminated.
The report’s timeline shows Thorsland was hired as interim superintendent on Dec. 1, 2025. The school board’s higher pay ended that month, the report says.
2026: The Report and the Takeover
In January 2026, the school board formally moved to return to its pay policy, voting 8-0 on Jan. 12 to “take all of the necessary steps” to comply with it. At that meeting, the minutes show, the district was still behind on its retirement contributions for September through December. On Feb. 9, Thorsland said the district was paying September’s contribution.
The inspector general’s report later put the amount the district owed the Public Employee Benefit Authority at $726,206.62 as of February 2026, for the district’s share of employees’ health insurance premiums and retirement benefits. The email the report cites lists that figure as the “PEBA retirement amount due” for the month of February, next to $736,882.13 for January.
The IRS debt had kept growing as well. By April 13, 2026, the IRS put the district’s balance, with interest, at $1,013,202.38, about a fifth of the roughly $4.9 million the district had in its reserve at the end of June 2025.
The inspector general’s office released its report on June 1, according to the Education Department. The report has 13 formal findings, and several of them cover events described above. It also explains how the IRS debt stayed out of the district’s financial statements. Because the district had not told its outside auditors about the penalty, the report says, the penalty did not appear in those statements, which understated what the district owed by more than $1 million. For comparison, the IRS bill was $584,739.28 in August 2025, and the balance was $1,013,202.38 by April 2026. The auditors told investigators they had not known about the penalty because the district had not disclosed it, though the report’s formal finding faults both the district and the auditors. Investigators also found that the district had not asked the IRS about a payment plan or a reduced settlement and had instead been paying the debt down a little at a time through overpayments of its payroll taxes, five of them in the 2026 fiscal year, totaling $11,319.04.
The report also looked at how the district spent money more broadly. Investigators tested 18 district contracts from 2020 through 2025, worth $1,045,646.26 together, and found the district did not follow its own purchasing manual on any of them. In 13 of those cases, the district did not publish a public notice before opening bids. Investigators also reviewed 342 purchases made with district credit cards, totaling $696,861.89, and found problems covering nearly all of that money, mostly missing paperwork, such as approvals, or receipts without account numbers. The report also said the district wasted money on two contracts for equipment-tracking software it did not use. It puts their total at $72,800, but the two purchase orders it describes, for $39,500 and $33,000, add up to $72,500.
The report also identified personal charges on district cards. It lists six of them, totaling $5,137.11, at dental and oral surgery offices and a medical laboratory between November 2020 and August 2022, before Tillar returned to the district. Investigators said records of a former superintendent’s use of a district card for personal expenses showed possible criminal and fraudulent activity. Under a state law that requires the inspector general to report suspected crimes to law enforcement and prosecutors, they referred that matter, along with late or missing ethics disclosures by several board members and a former superintendent. A referral is not a finding that anyone committed a crime. The report does not say whether these six charges are the records it referred. It does not name the cardholder, does not say which agency received the referral and does not say whether anyone has been charged.
Investigators also weighed in on the school board’s pay. In the body of the report, they say the raise and the bonuses violated the state ethics law and board policy; the report’s formal finding says they “potentially violated” both. In May 2025, after all five bonus payments and after the raise had taken effect, the State Ethics Commission said in an advisory opinion to a different school district that, unless a specific law says otherwise, the ethics law bars a school board member from voting to approve a pay raise for that member during the member’s term.
On June 2, the day after the report came out, the State Board of Education voted to approve Weaver’s request for the Education Department to take full management of the district. In announcing the decision, the Education Department said the inspector general had found that the district had failed to “meaningfully implement” its fiscal emergency turnaround plan. It also said governance concerns remained unresolved after the school board’s unsuccessful search for a new superintendent. The Education Department said its own help, including an interim superintendent and a financial team that it brought in and paid for, had already produced “measurable progress, including the District’s first balanced budget since the 2018–19 school year.” In a statement, Weaver said the recommendation “comes only after every lesser intervention failed to produce the level of governance necessary to sustain the District’s recovery.” The takeover, the Education Department said, was effective immediately.
The version of the report posted on the inspector general’s website does not include a response from the district, its school board or Tillar, although its table of contents lists one. Whitestone checked the report against the contracts, letters, notices and minutes it links to. Where they differ on a point that matters, this article follows the records and notes the main differences in the text.
Status: Ongoing. Whitestone is waiting on any response from the district, its school board or Tillar, on what becomes of the inspector general’s referral, and on how the state’s management of the district proceeds. This story will be updated when any of that changes.
Consistent with Whitestone’s standard practice, no one named in this article was contacted for comment before publication.
If you believe something in this article is inaccurate or incomplete, contact Whitestone at whitestonealpha@proton.me.