In slight fairness to the school district the article does say that the purchase was made by an earlier school district that went bankrupt and that Contra Costa came later, acquiring the debt of the earlier district. I dont know all of the political back story behind that change over(was it purely a cosmetic name change or is CC truly utterly different everyone from the earlier group?). IBM does deserve to be paid for any purchases made but it does sound to me more like a situation where you inherit your fathers debt when he died rather than just trying to not pay your own bills.