Soner Tarim gets sued by Alabama Education Association, regardless Woodland Preparatory Academy is revoked #Gulen

Soner Tarim at the last state charter educational meeting he appeard at
glaring at the people of Washington county .  Upset he can't get his way

http://www.larryeducation.com/aea-sues-soner-tarim-and-woodland-prep-charter-for-fraud/

AEA Sues Soner Tarim And Woodland Prep Charter For Fraud

by Larry Lee | Aug 3, 2019 | Charter Schools |

Attorneys for the Alabama Education Association filed suit in Circuit Count in Washington County August 2 alleging that Soner Tarim, the Texan with the management agreement with Woodland Prep, has submitted false information to the state charter school commission on behalf of Woodland Prep in his efforts to establish this charter school.

At the same time Tarim has been working with Woodland Prep he was also trying to get approval to open charters in Houston and Austin.  The AEA court document refers a number of times to the fact that Tarim made statements to the Texas state board of education about Woodland Prep that were untrue.

Some of this included false info about the performance of Washington County public schools, about the level of opposition to Woodland Prep from the local community, about why the application he says he wrote for Woodland Prep did not meet standards of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, about school enrollment numbers, etc.

As we have been documenting here for months, Soner Tarim is a fraud.

Granted, he could sell Eskimo pies to Eskimos, but he does it with smoke and mirrors and ignores facts.  And the fact that the members of the present Alabama charter school commission allowed themselves to fall under his spell, rather than doing their homework, is also shameful and even more reason members of this group should be replaced as soon as possible.

One of the more incredible pieces of this whole sordid mess is what Tarim told the good folks in Texas about his role in getting state approval for Woodland Prep.  He told, without hesitation, a Texas board member that he wrote the Woodland Prep charter application.  When the board member then asked why this application was rejected by the National Association of Charter School  Authorizers Tarim said this group does not what it is doing.  (I contacted NACSA and learned they have reviewed 500 applications from across the country in the last 10 years.  Yet, according to Tarim, they don’t know what they are doing.)

Then, incredibly, he said that the Alabama charter commission did not know what they were doing either until he showed them how to grade an application.  Alabama had used NACSA to grade applications since the charter law was passed in 2015.  We paid them more than $100,000 for their service.  Of course, Tarim has a ready-made answer for everything and it is ALWAYS the other guy’s fault.

Tesas has figured out who Tarim is.  This is why on June 14 the Texas state school board denied Tarim’s request to open four charters in Austin.  They have a long history with him because he opened his first charter in Houston in 2000.

As board member Georgina Perez told me in an interview after she voted against Tarim, all he deals in is “alternative facts.”  The people in  Washington County are well aware of this because time and time again he has cited “facts” about their public schools that are fiction–not facts.

Thankfully, AEA has stepped up to the plate.

But had the Alabama charter commission done their work, there would be no need for a law suit.  They would have listened to the national reviewers in May, 2018 and rejected the Woodland Prep application.  But they, and others, were mesmerized by Tarim and failed the people of Alabama and caused months of misery for Washington County.

It is one of the most shameful examples of failed government I have ever witnessed.

As the Saga continues expect Soner to reapply for Royal Public Schools in Texas in the El Paso District 

Proposed Gulen Charter School (Harmony Science) for Washington DC, has a prospective board member STEP DOWN

As reported in our article following this one about Salim Sharif and the scandal at a school he had to resign from.  Soner Tarim of Harmony Texas has replaced Salim with another board member.

The DC School district is to vote this week on whether to approve the school.  Based on Soner Tarim's poor business decisions and lack of oversight on this Washington DC school.  There are too many questions that are left unanswered at this point, especially about where Texas money fits into this latest Gulen Movement scam. 

In the usual predictable nature, the Gulenists have responded to the article in the typical "happy parents" from Texas that just happened to stroll by a Washington DC Article.  The words and comments are the same now as they have been for 4 years. 

Gulenists, you work way too hard to cover up the obvious.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/harmony-charter-vote-set-for-next-week-appplicant-group-replaces-one-member/2013/11/13/822d3fae-4be1-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html

Harmony Charter vote set for next week; appplicant group replaces one member

By Emma Brown, Published: November 13

The D.C. Public Charter School Board will vote next week on whether to allow Harmony Public Schools to open its doors in the District next fall, amid questions about its leadership and business practices.

Harmony, the largest charter-school operator in Texas, has a solid academic record but faces lingering questions about its contracting and immigration policies, as well as allegations of connections to a controversial Muslim cleric.

There has also been a recent change in the group that would lead the effort to establish the D.C. school. A member of the group who has been involved in a controversy in Prince George’s County school system resigned in late October, and has been replaced, Harmony’s superintendent told the Washington Post in an interview.

In its application, the charter network listed three members of the D.C. founding group: Harmony Superintendent Soner Tarim, Communications Director Julie Norton and local educator Sharif Salim.

Salim, a former administrator in D.C. Public Schools, was co-founder and principal of Village Learning Center, a D.C. public charter school that was closed in 2004 for fiscal mismanagement and other problems.

Salim went on to work for Prince George’s County Public Schools, according to the resume submitted as part of Harmony’s charter application.

According to county court records, Salim was demoted in 2011 from his position as a middle-school principal after an employee at his school — who was also his son — admitted to hitting a disabled student. Salim has sued the school system, alleging that he was the victim of discrimination because he was the only practicing Muslim among the county’s public school principals.

Neither Salim nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment.

Asked about Salim’s work history, Tarim said Salim resigned from the founding group in late October “for personal reasons.” Tarim said that he met Salim at a conference last year and was impressed with his reputation in the community, but was unaware of the details of Salim’s past employment.

Tarim said he had identified a new member of the founding group, a lawyer for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, an advocacy group. The lawyer, Renita Thukral, could not be immediately reached for comment.

 

Harmony Science Academy, Dr. Soner Tarim the Superintendant

Letter from Dr. Soner Tarim--why is it better to be a coward and not speak like your Hocaefendi.  Hiring Julie Shussler of the expense public relations firm of Burson-Marsteller will not put out the fires or be successful in damage control.  You must do the deposition, remember we will pay for it any time you feel like being truthful to American people.  Here is the expensive public relatons firm Julie Shussler works for.
What a shame to spend $$$thousands of money that should go to education, instead of trying to fix lies.

http://www.burson-marsteller.com/default.aspx

Dear Texas State Board of Education Representative,  

Last December the television news show 60 Minutes contacted Harmony Public Schools (HPS) about a story they were working on, and in which they intended to include HPS. The overall story is about the Turkish scholar and author Fethullah Gulen and his alleged influences in the United States.

We explained repeatedly that HPS has no affiliation of any kind with Mr. Gulen or the Gulen movement but, ultimately, the 60 Minutes producer said that HPS was going to be in the story no matter what we said, and whether we cooperated with them or not.

We have now been advised that the story will be aired on CBS this Sunday, May 13, and we wanted to alert you to the broadcast, share some perspective and background, and note that we may need your assistance in responding to the story.

• The story is expected to be about 12 minutes long, with approximately three minutes devoted to HPS. We expect the story to allege a link between HPS and Mr. Gulen, despite the fact Harmony Public Schools is not affiliated in any way, formal or informal, with Mr. Gulen or his organization, or with any other religious or political organizations or movements.                                                                          

• The producers of the show admitted that no such link or affiliation could be proven, yet we fully expect their story to suggest such a link. As such, we believe the story may be unfair to HPS and contain unsupported allegations.

• HPS has cooperated extensively with 60 Minutes over the past six months, supplying dozens of documents and records, answering hundreds of questions, and providing full access to our school in Houston for an entire day of filming students and classrooms, and interviewing teachers, students, administrators and the head of the Texas Charter School Association, David Dunn.

• The only request we did not grant was to interview me in my role as Harmony Superintendent. We chose not to grant that request when it became apparent, after numerous lengthy discussions, that no matter what I said or did, the producers intended to link HPS to Mr. Gulen, despite having no proof of such a link.

Depending on how HPS is treated, and the factual accuracy of the 60 Minutes program, we may ask for your support in responding to CBS. We will be in touch immediately after the show airs to provide you our thoughts, and our plans for a response.

Thank you for your continued support of the HPS family.

Sincerely,

Dr. Soner Tarim, Superintendent

Harmony Public Schools

www.harmonytx.org 

Soner if you have "no link" to Gulen why do you describe your inspiration for these schools as Fethullah Gulen in the Texas Monthly?  Not to mention you were on the board of the Gulen Insitute in Houston.  Your schools openly admitted this on the PBS interview and in fact interviewed your teachers.

Your are slipping old boy must be from your days around that slippery fish.