The state board of education voted to revoke its contract with Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in eastern New Orleans on Wednesday, a step that could mean new management for the school and a potential legal battle with the nonprofit group that has run the campus until now.
The Pelican Educational Foundation, which founded the charter school in 2007, lost its right to operate the school by a vote of six to one at the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE...
...BESE decided to vote with the recommendation of acting State Superintendent Ollie Tyler, who told the board that early findings of a state investigation launched last month showed "a threat to the safety, health and welfare of students at Abramson."
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Sample excerpt from Exhibit 5, pg. 45 of pdf
False College Admittances:
"Near the end of the year many students who had not previously been accepted into any college began announcing they had been accepted into North American College. Surprisingly, students who were failing their English and Math classes and who would not graduate from Abramson on time were still being accepted to North American College. The principal used these acceptances as proof that Abramson was successful. The school that accepted these seniors who did not graduate from high school, North American College, is where Mr. Dokmen will be working this fall."
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"Records show glaring faults at school with ties to Turkish charter network.” Times-Picayune (LA) 7/15/2011
Inci Akpinar, the vice president of a company called Atlas Texas Construction & Trading, sat down with an official from the Louisiana Department of Education a little more than a year ago and made him an offer.
..."I have twenty-five thousand dollars to fix this problem: twenty thousand for you and five for me."
At the time, Dunbar was investigating numerous complaints against Abramson Science & Technology Charter School in eastern New Orleans...
Dunbar -- having declined to take money from Akpinar -- recommended more than a year ago that the state board of education yank Abramson's charter...
But after questioning by the The Times-Picayune, acting State Superintendent of Education Ollie Tyler late Friday wrote to the state board asking it to prevent the school from opening in the fall, citing problems discovered during the original investigation and a new information about an incident between two young students that was possibly sexual in nature...
That an executive from Atlas Texas, a Houston-based contractor, would speak on the school's behalf points to the somewhat opaque connections that link Abramson with other schools and businesses founded by Turkish expatriates. Atlas has won numerous contracts in the past from a Texas-based school operator called the Cosmos Foundation...
Similar allegations have cropped up in other states where the Cosmos Foundation operates. The group runs a charter network called the Harmony Schools in Texas, where they've encountered unfounded accusations that they somehow promote Islamic extremism, largely because of an interest by some of the group's leaders in the movement begun by a Turkish religious scholar named Fethullah Gulen.
Both Cosmos and Pelican have disavowed any official religious links, though Abramson teachers on a school-sponsored trip to Turkey received pamphlets on the Gulen movement...
In an email dated Feb. 2, 2010, and signed by [four teachers] to head of the state's charter office: "Though we are fully aware of the significant amount of autonomy given to charter schools, we are now concerned that this autonomy is being abused to the point that students are being forced to engage in unethical acts."
They also reported a "general feeling of fear" among the school's staff because of what appeared to be retaliation against teachers, parents and students who had spoken up about the school's practices in the past...
But the state investigation appeared to back up much of what the teachers had written in their note...
...several students confirmed they had done little or none of the work that went into their science projects...
...[students] described practice on items that were very close to the items on the test."...
The state audit also turned up a significant lack of resources for special-needs students...
There were also complaints from teachers and students about the difficulty of communicating with some of the foreign staff...
Still, Dunbar, the state's academic advisor for charter schools, described a series of bizarre encounters as he and others carried out the audit that suggest a network of associations at Abramson extending beyond Louisiana...
Dunbar concluded in the same memo that the state board of education should revoke school's the charter...
Ultimately, the state decided to renew Abramson's charter for one year, contingent on the school carrying out a detailed corrective action plan...
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The state's sudden shutdown of Abramson Science and Technology Charter School over revelations of a potential bribery attempt and other incidents came in part because of inquiries made by The Times-Picayune over the past few weeks.
Penny Dastugue, president of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, wrote to the head of the nonprofit that runs Abramson on Friday evening to say the board will close the school until the state can complete an investigation. The move came just a few hours after acting State Superintendent Ollie Tyler contacted board members to recommend that they shutter the school in eastern New Orleans while the state looks into the allegations...
Both incidents have come to light as a result of interviews and public information requests made by newspaper.
Several board members expressed alarm on Friday that information about the state's audit last year did not come before BESE ahead of a vote the board took last summer to renew Abramson's charter. The state education department recommended that BESE give the school a one-year renewal with a "corrective action plan" to address deficiencies in special education services. But the board had not seen [a] memo about the offer of money. And they hadn't seen records that provide accounts of classrooms going unstaffed for weeks at a time and potential cheating in science fair competitions...
[BESE member Louella Givens] and Linda Johnson, a BESE member from Plaquemine, also traveled to Turkey this spring at the invitation of the Pelican Foundation before the full findings of the state audit came to light.
Tevfik Eski, Pelican's CEO, denied inviting BESE members on the trip. But a copy of the invitation obtained by The Times-Picayune shows that it was signed by Eski...
Johnson said that she paid for her own flight but that some of her hotel expenses were picked up by the Texas Turkish American Chamber of Commerce...
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
