The Bibb County School District is getting back $1 million in settlements after approving them Tuesday night. The settlements stem from a lawsuit filed back in 2016.
The Bibb County school board claimed former Superintendent Romain Dallemand conspired with assistants and vendors to defraud the system of more than $7 million.
They say that includes paying $3.7 million for 15,000 computers that were unusable and not compatible with their system. Those computers now sit in a Bibb Schools warehouse. The school system claimed Dallemand paid $3.2 million for various software systems. The district received a single server, which was blank, they claim.
The district also alleged Dallemand and others violated school procedures and bidding laws, and deceived other school officials about what he was doing.
Now the school district will be getting some of that money back. Tuesday, the board of education voted to accept two different settlements in the fraud case.
The board settled with Computech for $250,000 and Progressive Technologies for $750,000. Progressive denies any liability in the case.
Board President Lester Miller says it's a start toward getting some money back.
“People talked about that we would never get any money in the case,” Miller said. “We’re satisfied with that. We look forward to being able to pursue the other defendants, including Romain Dallemand, Cliffard Whitby, and all the companies associated with him. There are multiple defendants that we can still recover from.”
Miller expects even more money to come in from the other defendants.
“We're confident based on the $1 million that we'll get with the settlement we reached today and the amount of money that’s still out there that we'll get more money in,” Miller said. “The question is whether we're going to get it this year, next year, over a period of time, against the remaining parties.”
Miller says these settlements are only for the civil case against the defendants, not the ongoing criminal trial.