The contract with Darrell Sabbs and Associates seemed to open a doorway into much greater problem for the school board. Now some board members want to make sure the people who violated policies are held accountable.
Several contracts with the Dougherty County School System that violated policy remain under scrutiny.
Board member Darrel Ealum says the $91,000 contract with Darrell Sabbs and Associates to run a Saturday Academy for remedial students is just part of a bigger problem.
"My focus is not to continue to focus on the Sabbs contract," said Ealum. "My focus is to realize that this showed us that we have a systemic problem in the system for writing contracts and not following board policy that exists as it is written right now."
The school system attorney says that contract with Sabbs violated policy because it was never approved by the board.
The finance committee, which is composed of three board members has just been given the task to review board policies with the board attorney and make changes if necessary.
Right now any contract with the school system that is $40,000 or more must be approved by the board.
"I think that limit is too high. It needs to be lowered, maybe to $20,000. With money as tight as it is the board really needs to be on top of expenditures," said Carol Tharin, a school board member.
But some board members say this is simply not enough.
"I have no problem if we have some muddy areas that need to be clarified. But that's really not our issue here, that's not our problem. Our problem is the policy we have in place right now has not been followed," said Ealum.
"There's a smoke screen being laid down in my opinion right now by various administrators and others to try to create an atmosphere that the policies are the problem," said David Maschke, a school board member. "The policies are not the problem. The problem is that there are certain staff members, administrative staff members that have not been following the policies and in fact have been ignoring them."
Maschke is now calling on the superintendent to conduct a full and thorough investigation into the staff members who violated policy. He says there needs to be accountability in addition to policies.
Yesterday, Darrell Sabbs and Associates paid back $6,000 to the school system. Maschke thinks the company still owes the system at least $5,000 and says he'll continue to work to get that money back.
The finance committee has not yet scheduled a meeting to review the system's policies on hiring contractors and consultants.
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