Gulen Schools Investigation press conference Ohio 10/11/2016

US Educational Tax Dollars Used To Fund Turkish Coup- Harmony Science Academy

Gulen's Alp Aslandogan talks out of the sides of his mouth

New Gulen Schools for 2016-2017 #StopGulen

http://www.stopgulen.com 

A radical agenda, hidden in Pennsylvania: What does Gülen want?

Gulen Harmony Schools boast about selling $55 million in bonds shows off construction firm

and they have the audacity to claim they have 38,000 on a waiting list....

Harmony Construction Company  

Gulen Harmony Public Schools sells $55 million in bonds de Gulen Cemaat

Texas Charter Schools operated by Gulenists play victim and mention charter schools in California

Now why would a group of Charter Schools in Texas (Harmony Public Schools dba Harmony Science Academies) care about Charter Schools in California?  hint hint...because they are all GULENISTS!!!!!!!!

No more lying!!!

Texas Charter School Dispute Involves Turkish Government

Harmony Public Schools has 46 Texas campuses, including six in Austin.

Harmony has been accused of having ties to a controversial Muslim cleric; school officials deny it.

Harmony has been accused of hiring Turkish teachers over American teachers

Spending $7 million over a 15-year-period to hire foreign teachers. Paying those teachers as much as $18,000 per year more than their American peers. Awarding multimillion dollar contracts to former employees.

Those are just a few of the allegations that the Turkish government has hurled at the Houston-based Harmony Public Schools in what appears to be a foreign political battle spilling onto Texas soil.

Attorneys representing Turkey filed a 32-page complaint to the Texas Education Agency in May about the state’s largest public charter school network, whose founders are Turkish-American. The document details accusations of discriminatory employment and unethical contract bidding practices, and ties to Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who is accused of trying to overthrow the Turkish government.

“That’s a lot of money flowing out to these affiliated companies and the total dollars are north of we think over $150 million,” said John Martin, attorney with international law firm Amsterdam & Partners LLP, about Harmony’s vendors. “There’s every red flag there that there is extensive self-dealing going on.”

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Harmony Science Academy held a grand opening in November to celebrate the opening of its newest school building in Austin. The ... Read More

Harmony’s chief executive officer Soner Tarim said the charter network — which has 46 campuses in Texas including six in Austin — has been unfairly targeted. A majority of Turkish citizens who live in Texas voted against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2014 and the government thinks Harmony is behind it, he said.

“This is a baseless attack and it is nothing but harassment,” Tarim said. “I am sad to see a foreign agent … not only harass us but our state agencies. I’d rather spend my time to focus on Texas children.”

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/dispute-over-texas-charter-school-network-involves/nrk5f/

Gulen Harmony School of Excellence in Washington DC Discrimination

Complaint Gulen Harmony schools TEA Discrimination from Gulen Cemaat

Texas Harmony Schools claim to be "Gulen Inspired" look who their inspiration is

Robert Amsterdam Address to DHS Secretary Johnson over Fethullah Gülen

Gulen Charter Schools of Texas, causing problems fully state funded

Gülen Charter Schools Investigation Press Conference

Harmony Science Academy turned into Child Protective Services for child endangerment punishment

   

CARROLLTON — Harmony Science Academy has banned using a certain exercise as punishment after a parent said their child was injured.

A parent whose child attends the Carrollton school contacted News 8 about the incident. Harmony Science Academy is a public charter school.

Gloria Martinez said all of the students in a seventh grade physical education class were forced to do bear crawls last week because some students in the class were misbehaving.

Wednesday morning, she said she was not completely satisfied with the school's response. She believes what the teacher did is a form of child abuse.

Martinez provided pictures of her 12-year-old daughter's hands. She said she came home with blisters after doing the bear crawls on a soccer field that is under construction. Martinez said the field was dotted with gravel and rocks and the pain was so severe that her daughter was in tears afterward.

"She actually was found crying in the bathroom, distraught, "said Martinez. "That's when another student told her she needed to go to the nurse."  Martinez claimed her daughter could not do her homework and received a failing grade because of it. She also said her daughter was not one of the students misbehaving in class. She believes the teacher should face some sort of punishment.

"I feel like he should be suspended. This is too harsh of a punishment to be put on a bunch of 12-year-olds to make them crawl across the hot ground, "she said.

Martinez said she even called Child Protective Services to report the incident and said if a parent had done the same thing they would be investigated for abuse.

One other student also had similar injuries.  

Students punished at Harmoney School LINK

Gulen "inspired" Schools are a danger to America

Harmony Science Academy - Federal Investigation finds problems with ELL and Special Needs Students

http://www.expressnews.com/news/education/article/Federal-investigation-finds-problems-at-Harmony-5920852.php

Harmony Public Schools, the largest charter chain in Texas, with two schools in San Antonio, has admissions procedures that could limit the number of students with disabilities and those learning English, a federal investigation found.

http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2014/11/federal-report-special-needs-students-english-learners-significantly-underrepresented-at-harmony-charter-schools.html/

Updated at 3:19 p.m.: I just spoke with Robert Schulman, a lawyer who represents Harmony. He called the agreement “a very positive thing.” Harmony does not discriminate against students, he stressed. “They had to make the appropriate policy and process changes that were necessary for full compliance, and they did.”
Original post: Harmony Public Schools, one of Texas’ biggest charter school networks, reached an agreement today with the U.S. Department of Education over how it enrolls and teaches children who have disabilities or are learning English.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights investigated the Harmony network and found that English-language learners (ELL) and students with disabilities “are significantly underrepresented in their enrollment in (Harmony) charter schools . . . compared to the enrollment of ELL students and students with disabilities in
the public school districts in the same geographic area.”
In the Harmony schools examined, 11.5% of students were learning English, compared to 22.5% of students in the neighboring traditional school districts. Students with disabilities comprised 2.7% of Harmony’s enrollment, compared to 7.3% of students in neighboring districts. Of the four Harmony school districts studied, three are in the Houston area. The fourth has campuses in Fort Worth, Grand Prairie, Euless and Duncanville.
Charter schools, which are public schools run by private non-profit groups, cannot exclude or discriminate against students based on their race, disability or language. They’re supposed to educate the same kinds of kids as traditional public schools — including students who may be more difficult or costly to educate.
The Department of Education did not find that Harmony blatantly tried to exclude certain students. But it did find practices and policies at Harmony that could have that effect. From the department’s letter to Harmony:

OCR (Office for Civil Rights) is concerned, however, that the exclusion from admission and enrollment in HPS (Harmony Public Schools) charter schools of students with a documented history of a criminal offense, juvenile court adjudication or discipline problems may improperly contribute to the lower enrollment of students with disabilities or ELL students in the HPS charter schools. Statistics show that students with disabilities and ELL students tend to be overrepresented among students subject to school discipline in Texas.
In addition, the published enrollment procedures (which require students to provide their birth certificates and social security numbers, among other documents) may chill or lead to the exclusion of students based on their or their parents’ citizenship or immigration status. OCR is also concerned that the publication of these procedures alone may dissuade some parents of ELL students from applying to HPS charter schools.

I called Harmony’s main office in Houston for comment. The voice mailbox is full. I’ve emailed the school system for comment, too. As soon as I hear something from them, I’ll post an update.
The Department of Education’s letter notes that before the investigation was complete, Harmony Public Schools “expressed an interest in voluntarily
resolving the review” and proposed an agreement to resolve compliance problems.
You can read Harmony’s agreement with the Department of Education below. It spells out the steps that Harmony will take. Below that, I’ve posted the letter.
RESOLUTION AGREEMENT Harmony Public Schools Compliance Review Case Number 06-11-5004

To ensure compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d

et seq

. (Title VI), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794 (Section 504), and its implementing regulation at 34 C.F.R. Part 104, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability in  programs or activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance; and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. § 12131

et seq

. (Title II), and its implementing regulation at 28 C.F.R. Part 35, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability by public elementary and secondary public elementary and secondary school systems, Harmony Public Schools (HPS), Houston, TX (hereinafter referred to as HPS) voluntarily agrees to take the actions listed below at all of its schools to resolve the above-referenced compliance review. HPS is committed to ensuring that it takes effective measures to promote and ensure equal opportunities for all students, including English Language Learner (ELL) students and students with disabilities, to enroll and participate in its schools and programs.

Harmony Science Academies a big part of the Gulen Movement business model - E Rate Technology Grant

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/education-inc/

 

Over the summer, FBI agents stormed nineteen charter schools as part of an ongoing investigation into Concept Charter Schools. They raided the buildings seeking information about companies the prominent Midwestern charter operator had contracted with under the federal E-Rate program.
The federal investigation points to possible corruption at the Gulen charter network, with which Concept is affiliated and which takes its name from the Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen. And a Jacobin investigation found that malfeasance in the Gulen network, the second largest in the country, is more widespread than previously thought. Federal contracting documents suggest that the conflict-of-interest transactions occurring at Concept are a routine practice at other Gulen-affiliated charter school operators.
The Jacobin probe into Gulen-affiliated operators in Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California found that roughly $4 million in E-Rate contract disbursements and $1.7 million in Department of Education Race to the Top grantee awards were given to what appear to be “related parties.” Awarding contracts to firms headed by related parties would seem to violate the FCC’s requirement that the school’s bidding process be “competitive” as well as “open and fair.”
Unlike most charter schools networks, the Gulen charter network has received significant scrutiny in the US press, primarily because of the international profile of its Islamic cleric leader and xenophobic fears of “education jihad.” Such coverage distracts from what appears to be systemic corruption at the public’s expense, a predictable consequence of the US charter school model. This has nothing to do with Fetullah Gulen’s religious teaching and everything to do with the private management of public education dollars.
Like most big-time charter operators, the Gulen charter network has developed a growth model more reminiscent of a Fortune 500 company than a public school district. As the sociologist Joshua David Hendrick told Jacobin, the Gulen charter school movement links “private Turkish capital with a shared sub-economy that builds upon an initial educational venture and then expands from there.”
Armed with startup capital from Turkish foundations, the charter school network has quickly grown to over 130 schools in twenty-five states while employing the same business strategy: invest in lawmakers to win charter school contracts, import Gulen adherents to staff schools on H-1B teaching visas, and award school contracts to education resource firms led by former employees.
The cycle can then repeat itself as enriched former school employees donate to the plethora of Turkish foundations, securing political influence for individual charter school operators.

A Suspect Bidding Process 

Records indicate that Gulen charter schools nationwide may be regularly violating federal competitive-bidding laws by disbursing contracts and grants to firms owned by other Gulen schools or former Gulen school employees.
In August, the Chicago Sun Times reported that in Chicago alone Concept management may have engaged in nearly a million dollars worth of related-party transactions with E-rate contractor Core Group, Inc. An analysis of Core Group’s E-Rate program disbursement shows their only successful bids have come from Concept charter schools across the Midwest and that these fifty-eight bids amount to over $3.2 million.
More obviously suspect are the contracting deals sometimes crafted between Gulen chains. Apex Educational Services, for example, presents itself as a stand-alone education technology firm, but a 2013 IRS file from a Chandler, Arizona, branch of the Gulen-affiliated Sonoran Science Academy chain lists Apex Educational Services, Inc. as one of its properties.
Hence it is no surprise that nearly all of Apex’s forty-eight E-Rate bids have gone to Gulen-affiliated chains across California, Nevada, and Utah, and all four of Apex’s successful bids have come from Magnolia Science Academies, one of the country’s largest Gulen charter chains. To date, Apex has earned about $114,000 from Magnolia’s E-Rate disbursement.
Ties between other Gulen-affiliated chains and their E-Rate providers may also violate the FCC’s competitive-bidding requirements.
There appears to be an intimate relationship, for example, between Harmony Public Schools, a Gulen-affiliated Texas charter chain, and the telecommunications firm Brighten Technologies, which from 2010 to 2014 earned roughly $670,000 off of twenty-three Harmony’s E-Rate contracts. Set up and staffed by former Harmony computer-science teachers, Brighten Technologies exists almost exclusively for Harmony contracts (94 percent of Brighten Technologies’ E-Rate applications have been for Harmony Public Schools).
In an email to Jacobin, Harmony denied these practices constitute a conflict of interest, claiming that their contracting approach to federal grants is “fair and open.” Nonetheless, despite being unaware of their close relationship, the Universal Service Administrative Company – the independent agency responsible for reviewing E-Rate applications – has rejected thirteen of Harmony’s applications to contract with Brighten Technologies for failing to prove it had a competitive-bidding process.
Regarding their contracting with Brighten Technologies, Harmony officials wrote, “A range of factors, including price, product availability, and demonstrated ability to deliver are evaluated in selecting vendors, and all the criteria for ‘best value’ have to be met, not just low price.”
Such a response is telling; rather than simply explaining why no conflict of interest exists with Brighten, Harmony officials stressed twice to Jacobin that “low price” is not their only contracting criterion, a line they used to justify what appeared to be overly generous contracts to Turkish-owned construction firms three years ago.
Additionally, federal data does not support Harmony’s claim that Brighten Technologies offered any “better value” in lieu of its overcharging. In fact, most of Brighten’s applications were rejected for failing to provide basic planning standards. To date, only twenty-six of Brighten’s ninety-eight applications have been accepted. Had Brighten been competent enough to meet USAC’s basic requirements when applying for Harmony contracts, it could have netted well over $5 million from past applications alone.
But Harmony’s apparent competitive-bidding violations go beyond the E-Rate program. In February 2014, Harmony’s school newspaper announced that the Cosmos Foundation had secured a $29.8 million Race to the Top grant from the Department of Education to purchase Google Chromebooks for over 16,000 students.
Brighten Technologies received a roughly $905,000 Department of Education Race to the Top grant, secured for them by Harmony Public Schools — another potential federal violation of Race to the Top grant rules, which stipulate that recipients must foster “full and open competition” when contracting for goods and services.
Further analysis of the same Race to the Top grant shows that Harmony also awarded $805,000 in contracts to the Gulen-affiliated Texas Gulf Foundation for various consulting and instructional services. But as the New York Times reported in 2011, the foundation, like Brighten Technologies, was started by former Harmony employees and used to have its offices on a Harmony campus.
Harmony officials denied that this contract award violated competitive-bidding guidelines; Brighten Technologies has not returned Jacobin requests for comment.

Building Influence, Building Schools

Gulen-affiliated chains have grown most rapidly in the Midwest, Texas, Arizona, and California, where, as in Chicago, stories abound of Gulen-affiliated charter officials appealing to state authorities to override the contracting decisions of local school districts.
In Illinois and Texas, Gulen-linked Turkish cultural foundations have invited lawmakers on numerous trips to Turkey, and consistently fund the campaigns of those in a position to expand their fast-growing network. When the Chicago Public Schools declined Concept’s offer to build two more schools, for example, Concept appealed to the Illinois State Charter School Commission, an agency formed by Illinois Democratic Chairman Michael Madigan, among others. The commission overturned the school board’s decision and approved Concept’s expansion.
Madigan had taken four trips to Turkey that were hosted by the Niagara Foundation, whose honorary president is none other than Fetullah Gulen. From 2010-2012, the Niagara foundation paid for at least thirty-two sojourns for Illinois lawmakers.
In New Orleans, two members of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education traveled to Turkey at the invitation of the Gulen-affiliated Pelican Foundation. The trips prompted local rumors of a quid pro quo when one of these members was the sole dissenting vote against revoking Pelican’s right to operate Abramson Science and Technology Charter School, despite shocking stories of alleged mishandling of sexual-abuse cases.
Similarly, the Houston-based Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, which a Stratfor email leaked by Wikileaks described as “definitely a nonprofit related to the larger Fethullah Gulen movement,” has been called into question for its lavish trips for Texas lawmakers. Prominent members of the nonprofit have close ties to Harmony Public Schools, Texas’ largest charter chain, and its 2012 IRS 990 form alone lists nearly $1.9 million in travel expenses.
The founder of Harmony Public Schools, Yetkin Yildirim, is also the Austin branch representative of the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, a position from which he regularly lobbies local politicians.
And their influence may extend beyond their regional bases. On February 9, 2010, Kemal Oksuz, the president of the Turquoise Council, and Yildirim, the founder of Harmony Public Schools, both attended a White House “Briefing for Turkish American Leaders.” In a statement to Jacobin, Harmony Public Schools claimed to have no affiliation with the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians and denied any connection to the Gulen movement, despite several investigative reports that have linked the two.
Additionally, Buzzfeed reported this summer on the tens of thousands of dollars that Gulen adherents were pouring into Texas races, particularly to that of US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee. School officials denied these donations were part of a centrally coordinated influence-building effort. Nonetheless, in July, Harmony CFO Erdal Caglar admitted that Jackson Lee was helping the chain expand to a location in DC.

Education or Immigration?

Despite the financial success of many Gulen schools, several sites have driven themselves to bankruptcy, spending enormous amounts of public funding on immigration fees for fellow Gulenists. As the Atlantic recently reported, Utah’s Beehive Academy, a Gulen school, spent “about 50 cents to pay the immigration costs of foreign teachers for every dollar that it spent on textbooks.” This eventually caused the school to be temporarily shuttered.
In California, Magnolia Science Academies, a Gulen-affiliated chain, recently made headlines for allegedly misusing $3 million in public funds to cover the immigration costs of six non-employees. The Los Angeles Unified School District ordered the closure of two Magnolia schools, citing financial mismanagement, but a July court order reversed the decision.
For Gulen, it goes beyond financial impropriety. Gulen chains appear to use H-1B slots for teaching positions to facilitate immigration and further business expansion, rather than to improve teaching quality. According to Canadian consular officials, teachers being brought from Turkey to teach in Gulen schools on H-1B visas are often not credentialed. “While the H1B petitions were for teaching positions at charter schools in the United States,” wrote one Canadian official, “most applicants had no prior teaching experience and the schools were listed as related to Fethullah Gulen.”
Records indicate that from 2001-2010, Cosmos Foundation, the charter operator of Texas’ Harmony Public Schools, filed 1,157 H-1B visa applications and brought in 731 employees — higher than all other providers of secondary education combined.
In a statement to Jacobin, Harmony officials explained “the national shortage of math and science teachers” had pushed them to hire a “small percentage of international teachers” whose qualifications were “based primarily on academic professional credentials.”
The story of Brighten Technologies, the telecommunications provider closely linked to Harmony, illustrates how Gulen schools use H-1B visas not only to guarantee American residency to fellow Gulen adherents, but also to create in-house companies to profit off of federal and state grants.
Take Joseph Duzgun, the founder of Brighten Technologies, who came to the states sometime around 2002. According to his Linkedin page, Duzgun studied mathematics at Ondokuz Mayis University in Samsun, Turkey, though his profile does not include any information regarding teacher training.
Nevertheless, Duzgun served a short teaching stint at Harmony Schools from as early as 2004 to at least 2006. Two years later, he started Brighten Technology Solutions (later called Brighten Technologies), which has benefitted from numerous publicly financed contracts from his former employer, Harmony Public Schools.
Likewise, Turkish immigrant Gökhan Sancar was a computer teacher and technology instructor at Harmony Science Academy Lubbock from 2008-2009 and at the Harmony School of Ingenuity from 2009-2010. He joined Brighten Technology Solutions in 2010. He currently lists his position as Brighten’s VP of Sales. Neither Duzgun nor Sancar responded to Jacobin requests for comment.
Brighten Technologies exemplifies the Gulenist corporate expansion strategy. School officials bring over fellow Gulenists on H-1B teaching visas, keep them in Harmony schools for a few years, then organize them to found companies — which are guaranteed a profit from providing services to Gulen schools, often at inflated costs.

A Charter to Steal

Harmony’s E-Rate and Race to the Top programs federal grants have netted Brighten Technologies over $1.57 million in dubiously legal related-party transactions. Such transactions appear to violate many federal grant application rules, and also occur at the state level, where such nepotistic practices are often even more difficult to regulate.
In Texas, where Harmony has quickly grown to become the largest charter school chain, nine regulators oversee the operations of 671 charter school campuses — a number that hasn’t changed since 2011, according to Texas Education Agency spokesperson DeEtta Culbertson. This regulatory force is so inadequate that in 2011, even Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, admitted, “They don’t have the capacity at the state level to do the job.”
From 2009-2011, Harmony awarded thirty-five contracts worth a total of $82 million to Turkish construction firms with close links to school officials. Despite offering substantially lower bids for the same jobs, competitor firms were shocked to find out they’d lost.
Investigation into Harmony Public Schools’ contracting practices from 2009-2013 indicates that tens of millions in public dollars have continued to flow to closely associated Turkish firms. Since 2009, TDM Construction has brought home over $45 million, Solidarity Construction over $45 million, and Atlas Construction over $3 million, totaling well over $95 million from Harmony contracts alone.
To finance their massive construction projects, Harmony Public Schools has also issued hundreds of millions in bonds, which will rely heavily on public financing to pay off. A 2012 New York Times report, for example, found that Harmony has been granted $200 million in bonds since 2007, making it Texas’ largest charter school bond issuer by far. Last July, the city of Houston alone issued Harmony a $101,555,000 bond to build two more schools, renovate four existing ones, and refinance some of Harmony’s existing debt.
Harmony’s plan to finance their overall debts is projected to cost nearly half a billion dollars over the course of twenty-nine years, a plan which could come back to haunt taxpayers, given that in the last five years the Texas Education Agency has shut down eleven Harmony schools. And unfortunately for the people of Texas, the state’s permanent school fund will guarantee the principal and interest of these bonds, thus exposing Texas higher education funding to considerable risk.
While these sweetheart deals, guaranteed windfalls, and potential financial collapses are troubling, they are endemic to the charter school movement nationwide. The widespread corruption at Gulen charter schools is not due to the religion of Gulen charter school executives, but rather because doling out millions in public funding to private education operators with little to no oversight protects and encourages such fraudulent practices.
Indeed, despite the FBI raids this summer, Chicago’s Board of Education authorized Concept to expand to two more sites just one month later.
The move came as a shock to many Chicagoans, still recovering from the Chicago Board of Education’s historic move to shut down fifty schools last year, mostly in working-class black and Latino neighborhoods. As Chicago NBC reporter Mark Anderson lamented, “a federal raid on a company doesn’t seem to mean much anymore, especially if that firm is a politically connected charter school operator ready to take millions in taxpayer dollars to stay in business.”
The contracting practices of Gulen-affiliated charter schools appear to be not just nepotistic, but illegal. Such corruption, however, must not be ascribed to the ideologies of the Gulen movement, but rather to the structure of the charter school sector, which it has successfully gamed.
In addition, the Gulen expansion strategy should be viewed not as an outlier within the charter school movement, but as its most successful example. Gulen foundations invest in politicians to win charter contracts, and use the resulting public funding to import Gulen adherents on H-1B teaching visas. Though these employees do not necessarily have teaching credentials, they are often qualified to form education resource firms, which consistently earn generous contracts from Gulen schools across the country. The cycle then expands as employees of these firms give back to the very foundations that initiated the process.
It’s a process that enriches private actors and hurts students. But as long as US lawmakers push for private control over public education, the corruption and public plunder that Gulen schools exemplify will only continue.

FBI raid sister school of Harmony Science Academy in Louisana, Texas Gulen group Turquoise Council implicated

http://www.educationviews.org/finally-fbi-raids-turkish-gulen-charter-school-la/

“Finally FBI Raids Turkish Gulen Charter School in Louisiana”
by Donna Garner
12.13.13

 
12.12.13 -- To view the FBI raid of the Gulen charter school in East Baton Rouge, please go to the following link on WBRZ.com. The Gulen charter schools are tied to Fethullah Gulen who is an Islamist imam. Kenilworth Science and Technology School is connected to the Pelican Foundation, Cosmos Foundation in Texas, Atlas Texas Construction and Trading (a Houston-based contractor), Harmony Charters in Texas, and to other Gulen/Turkish entities around the United States and Turkey: http://www.wbrz.com/videos/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/

===========

12.11.13 -- To read the full story about the FBI raid on the Gulen charter school, please read further:“FBI Raid Another Scandal for Gulen Charter School Company”
http://www.wbrz.com/news/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/

EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE:

BATON ROUGE- Wednesday evening's FBI raid on a charter school in East Baton Rouge is the latest item in a list of scandals involving the organization that holds the charter for the Kenilworth Science and Technology School.

Pelican Educational Foundation runs the school [and also Abramson] and has ties to a family from Turkey. The organization lost its school in New Orleans amid allegations of sexual misconduct among students that prompted a state investigation on campuses in the Crescent City and in Baton Rouge. It has also faced lawsuits and allegations from teachers about bad learning environments.

"It was an atmosphere where there was a double standard," one former teacher told WBRZ News 2 in an investigation into the school in EBR. Former teachers were not happy with how things were handled when they spoke with a station reporter two years ago.

No one was ever charged in the sex allegations a school spokesperson pointed out Wednesday as federal investigators moved through the campus collecting items, putting them in boxes and then loading them into a van.

…The school receives about $5,000,000 in local, state, and federal tax money. In 2012, the Pelican group was accused of improperly handling money by the Legislative Auditor. A report found about $8600 was improperly used to buy gifts for students who scored high on LEAP tests.

…About the same time as allegations and lawsuits began dealing with Pelican charter schools, a BESE member took an improper trip on behalf of another Turkish organization. Linda Johnson, who is no longer on BESE, was fined for breaking the law by the ethics board. She got an all expenses paid trip to Turkey.

Kenilworth Science and Technology School will be open Thursday.

Gulen Texas Turquoise Council Kemal Oksuz implicated in FBI raid on Gulen Charter School

Kemal Oksuz (AKA fondly called the little troll)  of the Gulen Movement, who is also a part of the Gulen Turquoise Council, and other Gulen front

groups is seen here at yet another Gulen Institute dialog dinner with an award for Ambassader Ahmed.

The Turquoise Council is implicated in the latest FBI Raid on the Kenliworth Science and Technology School in Louisana.

The Turquoise Council is one of the Gulen Front Groups that sponsors tribes to Turkey and Azerbaijan for politicians, academia and media in the USA.  Kemal Oksuz was also one of the biggest campaign contributors to Lousiana politicians to squash the bill that would limit foreign operators of American tax supported charter schools.

MORE ON KEMAL OKSUZ HERE 

http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/is-the-turquoise-council-the-paid-lobbying-firm-of-azerbaijans-government.html

about the FBI RAID HERE:

Wednesday afternoon the story broke in Baton Rouge media that the Kenilworth Science & Technology School had been raided by the FBI.

The FBI indicated that the raid, which evidently was conducted to gather material evidence in the form of documents and computers, was not a matter of public safety. As a result, it probably was not related to a report earlier this year that a teacher at the school was accused of having inappropriate pictures of children on his cell phone.

Had those charges stuck, that would have been the second scandal of a sexual nature involving a Gulenist school in Louisiana. Abramson Science & Technology Charter School in New Orleans was shut down back in 2011 in the wake of a scandal that started as an investigation into sexual activity involving students at the school and evolved into a possible public bribery investigation. Abramson operated under the same charter organization that Kenilworth operates under: Pelican Educational Foundation.

During the course of the investigation into Abramson, Pelican’s ties to the Gulenist movement were revealed.

By now you’re wondering what the Gulenist movement is, no doubt. The Gulenist movement is a secretive, controversial Islamist movement founded by Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Islamic scholar with a controversial history and a great many followers and admirers in both the Islamic and Western worlds. However, a close analysis of Gulen and his movement reveals what may very well be a disturbing threat, rather than the benign movement that many suppose. (Gulen fled Turkey for the US in 1998 and settled in a massive, fortified compound in rural Pennsylvania.)

Gulen preaches peace on the one hand – while on the other hand, credible reports indicate that the Gulenists control the secret police and judicial bureaucracy in Turkey, both of which have been key to brutally suppressing recent pro-democracy protests there. But Gulen’s primary relevance to Americans comes from something quite peculiar – namely, the fact that his movement is associated with roughly 1,200 schools in numerous countries around the globe, including approximately 135 schools here in the USA. The American Gulenist schools are mostly taxpayer-subsidized charter schools and there is much to be concerned about, both in terms of their goals and operations. And Americans – and in particular those Americans charged with credentialing these schools – know scant little about with whom they’re dealing.

In reviewing the long-form literature on Fethullah Gulen, without exception, every single book about Gulen paints him in a positive, almost saint-like light. In order to fully grasp the man and his motivations, one has to read his own work – the most troubling and revealing of which is his 1998 book Prophet Muhammad as Commander.

While much of the book details the life of Muhammad as a military commander and political leader, the opening sections of the book reveal more about the author than they reveal about Muhammad, about whom much is already known and documented. The first 37 pages of Prophet Muhammad as Commander contain revealing, troubling passages that provide a window on Fethullah Gulen’s views on Jihad and warfare.

In Prophet Muhammad as Commander, Gulen explains Muslim hostility toward non-Muslims in a similar manner that most non-Muslims will find at least very curious:

“For this reason, a Muslim’s enmity towards unbelievers is, in fact, in the form of pitying them.”

Gulen ties this pity in with the concept of “compassion.” Unbelievers who deny that Allah is the only god and that Muhammad was his prophet are thought to be committing an “injustice.” Out of “compassion” for those unbelievers and to prevent them from committing further injustice, Muslims have enmity towards them and in some cases fight them as enemies.

Jihad as a concept fits in with justice. In fact, according to Gulen (page 20), Jihad is integral to justice:

“God does not approve wrongdoing and disorder. He wills that human beings should live in peace and, accordingly, that justice should prevail amongst them. It is therefore incumbent upon those who believe in One God and worship Him faithfully to secure justice in the world. Islam calls this responsibility jihad.”

Gulen then goes on to explain the various forms of jihad, including warfare. Again, on page 20, Gulen states the purpose of Jihad:

“…to establish the supremacy of His religion and to make His Word prevail.”

In the same section, Gulen then clearly articulates the aim of establishing a worldwide caliphate:

“Besides the holy struggle, the principle of amr bi ‘l-ma’ruf wa nahy an al-munkar (enjoining the good and forbidding the evil) seeks to convey the Message of Islam to all human beings in the world and to establish a model Islamic community on a world-wide basis.”

Most ominously, Gulen makes a call in the book that reads an awful lot like a call for the Islamic world to acquire nuclear weaponry:

“…believers should also equip themselves with the most sophisticated weaponry. Force has an important place in obtaining the desired result, so believers cannot be indifferent to it. Rather they must be much more advanced in science and technology than unbelievers so that they should not allow unbelievers to use ‘force’ for their selfish benefit. According to Islam, ‘right is might’; so, in order to prevent might from being right in the hands of unbelievers and oppressors, believers must be mightier than others.”

“An Islamic state…should be able to secure peace and justice in the world and no power should have the courage to make corruption in any part of the earth. This will be possible when Muslims equip themselves with a strong belief and righteousness in all their affairs, and also with scientific knowledge and the most sophisticated technology.”

What does all this have to do with a charter school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana? Well, Gulen’s most significant foreign enterprise is his network of charter schools. As such, it is important for people to be aware of the philosophy of the man who started the movement.

Gulenist Charter School Scandals

The one overriding characteristic of Gulen charter schools here in America seems to be their propensity for scandal of all sorts. Here is a partial list of articles online dealing with these scandals. In reviewing this list, ask yourself: should taxpayer money be going to a foreign organization founded by an Islamist whose schools seem fraught with scandal?

1. Turkish-Gulen Charter Schools Under Federal Investigation

The FBI, the Department of Education and the Department of Labor are reported to be investigating a systematic kick-back scheme used by the charter school employees to funnel money—taxpayer sourced money—to the Gulen movement.

2. Discrimination lawsuit filed against Truebright Science Academy Charter School in Pennsylvania

Truebright is a Turkish-Gulen charter school. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in its 6 April 2013 online edition that a former English teacher at the school had filed a civil rights suit alleging the Turkish-run charter school discriminated against employees based on gender and national origin. In addition to the suit, at least nine Truebright staffers filed initial discrimination complaints with the EEOC.

Truebright’s board, top administrators and 1/3 of its teachers are Turkish.

Truebright is currently in a battle to renew its charter. The School Reform Commission voted not to renew Truebright’s charter on 18 different grounds, including poor academic performance and a lack of certified teachers. And the school is the defendant in a lawsuit long in coming.

3. Louisiana Gulen Charter School Scandal

Abramson Science & Technology Charter School in eastern New Orleans was shut down by the state of Louisiana. Among the reasoning for the decision: (i) Turkish teachers who had trouble communicating in English; (ii) Students attending courses with no teachers; (iii) Possible improprieties involving standardized testing; (iv) Allegations of attempted public bribery by Turkish organizations of Louisiana Department of Education officials.

4. Lancaster, Pennsylvania school districts rejects Gulen Charter School application

It is not necessarily noteworthy that a Gulen charter application would be opposed, or even rejected, but the reasons behind this rejection indicate oddities at best, namely errors cited in the application, including carelessness and numerous “cut and paste” segments from other charter school applications which had no relevance to the application at hand. A total lack of knowledge by the applicants of curriculum planning and a probably insufficient amount of lesson plans.(This would appear to border on fraud.)

5. Ohio Gulen Charter Schools Targeted by Department of Labor Investigation

The federal investigation which we mentioned at the outset of this memorandum is not the only mention of Gulen charter schools as targets of federal investigation. In 2011, one of the sixteen Gulen charter schools in Ohio was reportedly targeted by the Department of Labor for its use of H1-B visas. The investigation had been ongoing since 2008.

Auditors found some very unusual line item entries on the school administrator’s books, including fees paid to people living in Turkey and people never employed by the school. There was even an item listed as $13,000 for “illegal immigration fees.”

Note also that the property owner of the schools, from which the schools lease property, is located in Turkey. That property owner gets $600,000 over 5 years of Ohio taxpayer money!

6. Peoria, Illinois Gulen Charter School Operator Denies Association with Gulen

The operator of Quest Charter Academy in Peoria, Illinois, Engin Blackstone (aka Elgin Karatas), told CBS’ 60 Minutes that his school had no association with Fethullah Gulen. However, that may have been a lie. In this article, in the comments section, the spouse of a former Quest employee claims that her husband accompanied Blackstone/Karatas on a trip to visit personally with Gulen in Pennsylvania.

7. Massachusetts Gulen School Gets High Marks Despite Bad Data

The Pioneer Charter School of Science won praise from state education officials. But an examination of the school’s actual performance told a different story:

• Students with disabilities experienced a high attrition rate, possibly impacting test scores.
• The overall attrition rate among students was unusually high.
• $84,215 of the school’s annual budget went to legal and immigration-related fees. An interesting sidenote, while Pioneer was hiring foreign teachers to fill its needs, a Boston charter school (not a Turkish-Gulen school) had openings for 58 teachers and received 4,100 applicants!
• Only 56.7% of Pioneer’s teachers were licensed in their teaching assignment. By comparison, in local public schools, 99.5% of teachers were licensed and statewide in Massachusetts, the figure was 97.5%.

8. Loudon County, Virginia School Board Turns Down Charter for Gulen School

This received a great deal of publicity. Again, that the charter was denied is not the story. The reasons why the charter was denied is the story:

• Significant gaps in academic and operational plans submitted by the applicants:
• Loose curriculum
• Questionable financial assumptions
• Inadequate transportation plan

The Loudon school was going to be modeled after a Gulen school in Anne Arundel County that had a troubled past with questionable management practices, including financial ones. In fact the school ended up in a lawsuit with the school board over its charter.

We could easily supply a dozen more examples of Gulen schools with sketchy – or worse – administrative, ethical and academic issues. The movement has a very ugly record of performance as a charter school operator, so much so that since the Gulen movement is the largest operator of charter schools in America the repeated instances of scandal threaten the charter school movement. That’s a shame – charters in New Orleans have shown great potential for educational improvement thanks to their record in New Orleans, but the teachers’ unions and others invested in the educational status quo are seeking any angle to derail their progress.

And the never-ending string of scandals surrounding Gulen schools is just such an angle.

The Louisiana Connection And Wednesday’s FBI Raid

One recurring theme in all Gulenist schools is their use of the H1-B visa program to import male teachers from Turkey to teach at the schools. This activity has gotten the movement accused of discrimination, and worse. In many cases American teachers have lost out on jobs, only to find out that the Turkish aliens brought in to teach in their place could barely speak English.

Further, allegations have been made that what’s really going on with all the H1-B visa recipients brought in as teachers in Gulen schools is an intricate fleecing of taxpayers, which works like this: the going rate for charter school teachers in a given community might be, for example, $40,000 – and the state funding for a charter school would reflect salaries of that size. But in Turkey, a $40,000 salary would be considered a king’s ransom – per capita income in that country was just $15,200 last year. Therefore, the Gulen schools won’t encounter much resistance when it tells teachers it offers to import from Turkey that they’ll have to kick back a huge portion of their taxpayer-funded income to the Gulen movement – and thus that’s exactly, it’s alleged, what happens.

This caught the attention of State Representative Cameron Henry in the 2013 legislative session when he filed a bill that would have limited the number of employees hired by Louisiana state-funded charter schools who were in the country on H1-B visas. Henry’s legislation would have gotten right to the heart of the matter – with a very reasonable restriction that no more than 3.5 percent of the school’s employees be H1-B visa recipients (or 1 in 29), and that the people or groups submitting requests to start charter schools be American citizens.

Unfortunately, Henry’s bill hit hard where it hurt for some powerful, politically connected people in Louisiana. It seems that the number one donor to the Louisiana Republican Party in 2012 was none other than a Gulenist organization out of Texas. Kemal Oksuz, president of the Turquoise Council, a Texas-based group closely related to the Gulenist movement and the Harmony charter schools in that state, donated $83,000 to the state GOP, making him its largest donor during 2012.

I am not making an accusation that this donation bought the Gulen movement any special treatment by the state GOP, or the Jindal administration. In fact, members of that administration told supporters of the Henry bill that they were in favor of it.

But the charter school industry itself, which has stood by silently as this foreign influence in US education spawns scandal after scandal, didn’t share that position. In Louisiana the industry went even further, defending Kenilworth and Pelican despite the prior scandal involving Abramson. This took the form of hiring high-priced, politically-connected lobbyists to label Henry’s bill “racist” and “xenophobic.”

And the bill was killed in the House Education Committee after a host of parents with children in charter schools testified against it. This followed an interesting bit of romance the Gulen movement attempted within the state legislature the Hayride was able to expose.

It’s worth mentioning that the Executive Director of the Louisiana Charter Schools Association is Caroline Roemer Shirley, the daughter of the former governor. Shirley’s brother is Chas Roemer – the president of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Earlier this year, BESE granted a five-year extension of Kenilworth’s charter – a decision which, in light of the FBI’s visit to the school on Wednesday, doesn’t look like the wisest BESE could have made.

The question is, does the charter school industry know about all of these disturbing details surrounding the Gulenist movement and its charter schools and choose to look the other way, or are they simply ignorant as to the facts?

With the FBI raid a new chapter in this saga has opened in Louisiana – and the charter school industry and lobbyists won’t be able to run interference for the Islamists any more. For many of us who are in favor of school choice and charter schools, the Kenilworth-Gulen debacle is a disaster on two levels: first, granting charters and dispensing taxpayer dollars to an Islamist movement with such a shady history is outrageous and dangerous in its own right. And second, there will be real damage from this scandal – damage those who are comfortable trapping disadvantaged children in lousy public schools will use to their advantage.

- See more at: http://thehayride.com/2013/12/holton-maybe-now-theyll-pay-attention-to-the-gulen-schools/#sthash.J1olEoNy.dpuf