ATLANTA -- A suburban Atlanta school district's problems are so severe, it needs new leadership to even have a hope of maintaining its accreditation, says the head of the regional accrediting agency.

The Clayton County school system does not have "the ability to repair itself," and will lose its accreditation Sept. 1 unless significant change is made, said Mark Elgart, CEO of the Atlanta-based Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Losing accreditation would jeopardize federal funding, student acceptance into college and eligibility for scholarship money. The regional agency has stripped a district of its accreditation only once in the past decade. If it happens to Clayton County, it would be a first for a Georgia school system, Elgart said.

"The school system is filled with distrust, misdirection and insecurity," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "They lack respect and trust for one another. The politics of their individual agendas get in the way of their responsibilities."

Elgart stopped short of calling for any resignations, but local citizens haven't been so reticent.

A growing list of community, parent, student, education and business organizations is demanding either some or all of the nine-member board resign immediately.

The Clayton County Chamber of Commerce took out a half-page ad Sunday in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution calling for the entire board to resign.

Others calling for resignations include the Clayton County Education Association, the Clayton Students' Coalition and the Georgia NAACP.

The allegations detailed in a scathing Feb. 15 SACS report include one board member having a football coach fired for not handing over a game film featuring her son and another spending more than $500 of school money at an Atlanta hotel.

Meanwhile, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel said Wednesday she has opened an investigation into the election of board members. Gov. Sonny Perdue asked Handel to investigate whether board members reside in their districts as required by law.

Handel said that her office's inspector general will verify whether the school board elections were legal.

The turmoil has generated an angry public outcry.

Visitors to the district offices and board meetings now must walk through metal detectors -- a move district officials say they have planned to make for months, not linked to the uproar over the accreditation. A recent board meeting included a special command center, a dozen officers and a police helicopter.

Chamber President and CEO Lacey Ekberg said losing school accreditation would be "devastating" to the county.

"We're going to see a mass exodus of people," she said.

Elgart said meeting the nine goals set forth in the SACS report will likely mean new faces on both the school board and in the administrative offices of the 50,000-student district.

The SACS report calls the school board "fatally flawed" and "dysfunctional," and recommends that the district's accreditation be revoked if the system can't prove it is fixing its problems. The report outlines issues including unethical and disruptive behavior by board members, low morale among staff members and a shoddy curriculum.

This is the second time in five years the school district has been dinged by SACS. In 2003, it was put on probation for issues similar to those detailed in the Feb. 15 report, but the problems were addressed and the system was cleared.

The issues emerged again last fall when board members began filing grievances against each other with SACS, which launched an investigation just before Christmas.

SACS' national board, which has the final word on accreditation, is scheduled to meet in Chicago on March 15 to adopt the investigation team's report.

The school district is working on a plan to address SACS' concerns with the help of the state, which has promised to provide advisers and other resources.

But board members have said publicly they will not step down.

Board chairwoman Ericka Davis could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press. Eddie Long, vice chairman of the board, deferred comment to Davis and Glenn Brock, the private attorney hired by the board to help with the SACS issue.

Brock did not return calls for comment.

Meanwhile, the board has moved its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday to the county's performing arts center to accommodate the large crowd expected to attend.

Parents like Monika Penny -- who says she is angry and feels helpless about her children's future -- will be there. She and her husband have discussed sending their children to live with her parents in Virginia if the district loses accreditation.

"We need the right leadership in there," she said. "If we could get a clean slate and start with new leaders -- leaders that have a history of working with children investing into the community and don't have their own motives and agenda -- that would be a start."