Bibb County schools won't be paying Dallemand the $10 million he wanted

The two-year-long arbitration battle between the Bibb County school district and former school Superintendent Romain Dallemand has ended.

The case was dismissed after Dallemand failed to pay outstanding deposits by a Feb. 18 deadline set by the American Arbitration Association, according to an order from the association dated March 8.

“This is a victory,” said Daryl Morton, the board president. “I wish it had not taken so long to get there. That was beyond the system’s control. There were a lot of participants in this. There were things that had to be sorted through. I’m just glad that it’s behind us.”

In February 2015, Dallemand filed a claim with the association seeking $10 million from the school district. He contended that board members “flagrantly and intentionally” violated portions of his severance agreement with the system.

That agreement paid him $350,000, with language that board members released him of “all claims, known and unknown” and would not “disparage or impugn” his work or reputation. Dallemand alleged that the district subsequently committed “acts of libel and slander” against him.

The school board filed its own $7.5 million counterclaim, which was later dismissed.

The board bought out Dallemand’s contract in February 2013. A year after his departure, an audit of the school system said he had violated school board policy when he ordered more than $26 million of technology equipment without approval. The audit was part of a report later filed with the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, the state’s educator watchdog group, which ultimately revoked Dallemand’s educator certification.

Lawyers Hunter Hughes, Anne Rampacek and Penn Payne made up the arbitration panel for the case. According to their report, payments Dallemand owed to the arbitration association for expenses were long overdue as of December 2016. The school board, on the other hand, had paid all its bills.

“By that time, there were insufficient funds on deposit to cover expenses anticipated for the remainder of the arbitration proceedings,” the order states.

The school board had until Dec. 12 to let the association know if it was willing to “advance the deposits” owed by Dallemand so the arbitration could continue, but the board did not respond. That gave Dallemand until Feb. 18 to pay his bills in full, and the arbitration was canceled after that date.

“At this point, it has been dismissed without prejudice, which means it could be brought back. But I think that would be unlikely, based on what I understand,” Morton said.

Bibb County school Superintendent Curtis Jones declined comment on the arbitration ruling, referring questions to Morton.

The case, which began in early 2015, has cost between $40,000 and $50,000, said Jerry Lumley, the Macon attorney who represented the school system during the proceedings. But Western World Insurance Group, which insures the school system, has borne those costs, he said.

“I’m very pleased with the disposition,” Lumley said.

Steve Smith, who led the system on an interim basis after Dallemand’s departure, said he was glad the case had ended.

“It was just another distraction (for board members) that kept them away from their main task of educating the children of Bibb County,” he said.

During the arbitration proceedings, the school board produced thousands of pages of records, including audits, invoices, purchase orders, board policies and more.

Dallemand himself produced documents, including articles from The Telegraph about an audit by the accounting firm Mauldin & Jenkins, as well as the Georgia Professional Standards Commission report that led to the revocation of Dallemand’s educator license.

During the proceedings, attorneys for Dallemand also produced a letter from David Larson, executive director for the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, that said Dallemand “has no prospect whatsoever of obtaining gainful employment in the field of education” because of news reports and the revocation of his license.

Lumley noted that a federal lawsuit the school system filed against Dallemand in December is still pending.

That suit alleges that Dallemand, who was hired Feb. 1, 2011, and others participated in a series of fraudulent acts, racketeering, wire fraud and mail fraud while also violating school district policies. Those actions were part of a pattern that cost the Bibb County school system millions of dollars for unneeded or nonexistent services or products, the suit said.

Those claims, Lumley said, “will be pursued very aggressively.”

Many of the lawsuit’s contentions were included in a 2014 state investigation that said the purchase of millions of dollars in technology equipment and services without competitive bids or school board approval signaled possible collusion among Bibb County school officials and several vendors they did business with.

Defendants named in the lawsuit were: Dallemand; the system’s former executive director of technology, Thomas Tourand; Progressive Consulting Technologies Inc. and its CEO, Isaac Culver III; CompTech Computer Technologies Inc. and its president and CEO, Ellen J. Stephen III; and Pinnacle/CSG Inc. and its president, Cory McFarlane.

After the suit was filed, the school system issued a statement, which said in part that after Dallemand’s departure in 2013, new policies and regulations had been established, and the system now has a procurement office to monitor contracts and the processes involving vendors.

This story was originally published March 9, 2017 at 12:55 PM with the headline "Bibb County schools won't be paying Dallemand the $10 million he wanted."