Pope HS principal retiring after career in Cobb school district

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New Pope gym
Thomas Flugum, at left, attending the ribbon-cutting for the new Pope High School gymnasium in 2018.

The Cobb County School District announced Thursday that Dr. Thomas Flugum is retiring as the principal of Pope High School.

The news was announced after the Cobb Board of Education held an executive session where personnel matters are discussed.

Flugum’s retirement is effective June 1, according to Keeli Bowen, the Cobb school district’s chief human resources officer. His replacement has not been named, but new principal appointments are typically made in the spring for the following school year.

Flugum has been the principal at Pope since 2017, after arriving at the East Cobb high school in 2010 as a teacher and coach and later serving as an assistant principal.

He is a former Army officer and Cobb police officer who became a teacher and coach at a number of Cobb high schools. He was an assistant football coach at Sprayberry and Lassiter and was head football coach at Wheeler.

In October 2020, Flugum was charged with DUI in Woodstock in a case that is still pending in the Cherokee County court system.

Last year, he and Cobb school district officials came under fire from local Jewish groups after swastika graffiti was found in a boys bathroom at Pope. Flugum’s letter to the school community did not specify that it was an anti-Semitic incident; Rabbi Larry Sernovitz of Temple Kol Emeth later spoke to students on the campus.

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