Some Dougherty County School Board members are calling for the staff who violated policies to be removed from their positions.
"If your personnel doesn't follow policies then in my opinion that's ground for dismissal. And I think it's pretty evident that policies haven't been followed. I don't know whether it's out of ignorance of the policies or whether it's just an effort in deception," said school board member, Carol Tharin.
"I would like to see the administrator, led by the Superintendent do a detailed investigation and then require the staff to follow policies and those that have not been following policies be either disciplined or dismissed," said school board member, David Maschke.
School system attorney Tommy Coleman investigated a $91,000 contract between the Dougherty County School System and Darrell Sabbs and Associates to run a Saturday Academy for remedial students. Coleman says it violates school policy because the board never approved the contract.
He recommends that action is taken so staff complies with polices and "...staff members who have engaged in conduct contrary to the Board's policy be disciplined accordingly."
"It was very poorly done. The contract itself doesn't protect the board. It's skimpy and it's as bad of a piece of document to spend money on that I've ever seen," said Coleman.
Betty Graper, the Director of Federal Programs, signed the contract with Darrell Sabbs last year. The report states Graper and Sabbs did not provide information to Coleman, so it's impossible to know how this contract came about.
Coleman says the two didn't cooperate and he doesn't feel like the investigation is complete.
He says he was only charged with looking at this one contract, but when he started investigating, he found numerous other problems.
"Many of the contracts that were entered into on behalf the system were for a good, valuable things, but yet they almost all avoided any kind of approval by the board of education," explained Coleman.
Coleman says in addition to the $91,000 for this contract, the system will likely have to repay $18,000 from another contract, and there could be more.
"It could run into a lot of money and as you know we don't have a lot of money in the school system so it could be a huge problem. But it needs to be corrected and it needs to be corrected quickly," said Tharin.
The board asked the Superintendent to fix the problem and if nothing is done, the board will step in.
"If the superintendent doesn't follow up on it or doesn't take appropriate action then the board can still step in after that and follow in behind him," said Maschke.
Tommy Coleman has not been asked to review these other contracts, but that may be coming.
We tried to contact Betty Graper, Darrell Sabbs and Dr. Murfree, but they've not returned our calls.
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