DCSS owes state more than $90,000 - WALB.com, Albany News, Weather, Sports

DCSS owes state more than $90,000

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Tommy Coleman Tommy Coleman
Rev. Bush Rev. Bush

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It's another embarrassment for Dougherty County Schools.

It looks as if the system will have to repay the state at least $90,000. 

Monday night, the school system attorney presented board members with the results of his investigation into how administrators hired contractors without board approval.

That violated board policy and also apparently violated state rules for how the system can spend what's called Title 1 grant money.

Monday's school board meeting was full of disgust and shame from some school board members after finding out how Title 1 grant money from the state was used.

Among contracts totally more than $90,000 is one with Darrell Sabbs and Associates to run a Saturday school academy.

"That contract and others I looked at violated completely the policies that the board has established long ago to govern how we select vendors and how we deal with contractors," said school board attorney Tommy Coleman.

The Superintendent says he was not aware of the misuse of money. Some board members say he must have better control over administrators' use of funds.

"The board was circumvented by slicing it up into $13,000 when the Superintendent has a $40,000 ceiling," said school board chairman Rev. James Bush. "But, this was $92,000 in the form of $13,500 checks."

And there were other questionable expenditures.  

"There is another contract with a guy named Joseph Washington," said Coleman. "He was paid $18,000, $6,000 a day to give motivational speeches."

The Board wants to make sure that this problem, which they has gone on for many years, will be resolved.

"We the board is going to give the Superintendent a chance to fix this," said Rev. Bush. "If not, the board will fix it."

Now they will have to pay back the misused funds to the state, and even worse, they could be in jeopardy of not getting the grants back.

"If you don't spend it well and they come and take a look at what you have done, they can take the money away and not give you a grant in the future," said Coleman. "That would be devastating."

The money paid back to the state would come from the school boards general fund.

Some board members want to form a task force to make sure administrators fully understand fiscal policies. 

The board chairman and the superintendent assured them that the problem would be handled.

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