A chain of
19 publicly funded Ohio charter schools, founded by Turkish immigrants, is
taking the position that the United States lacks a qualified pool of math and
science teachers and is importing perhaps hundreds of Turks to fill the void.
The schools
are run almost exclusively by persons of Turkish heritage, some of whom are not
U.S. citizens — a new twist in Ohio’s controversial charter-school movement.
In
addition, the Horizon and Noble academies, run by Chicago-based Concept
Schools, are related through membership, fundraisers and political giving to
the nonprofit Niagara Foundation, which provides trips to Turkey for state,
local and federal lawmakers.
Among those
touring Turkey has been State Rep. Cliff Rosenberger, a Clarksville Republican
on the powerful finance and appropriations committee and considered to be a
leading candidate for House speaker next year. He was joined on the trip by at
least four other state legislators and local government leaders from his area
in southwest Ohio.
There have
been other trips from Ohio, and in Illinois, there are allegations that state
officials who took trips showed favoritism in disbursing public dollars to
Concept schools.
Public
records show that since late 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor has allowed 19
of these schools in Ohio to hire 325 educators almost exclusively from Turkey.
However, as
early as 2002, state audits found thousands of public dollars “illegally
expended” to finance the U.S. citizenship process for Turkish employees — some
fresh out of college with no classroom experience and broken English. Help with
legal and immigration fees also extended to their children and families,
including the spouses of directors.
The auditor
also cited suspect wire transfers, totaling $36,000, and checks made out to
“cash” to repay personal loans issued by individuals in Istanbul, Turkey.
Seeking answers
Three of
the Ohio schools have been visited by the FBI as part of a multistate probe.
The agency said it is part of a white-collar criminal investigation.
Federal
agents have not disclosed details, only that the investigation originated in
Cleveland, has spread to Indiana and Illinois, and may or may not be connected
to previous investigations at related schools in Baton Rouge, La., and
Philadelphia.
Last school
year, these Ohio charter schools, called Horizon and Noble Academies, received
nearly $50 million in public funding transferred from local school districts
where students otherwise would have attended.
At $50
million, Concept is among the larger players in Ohio’s charter-school movement,
totaling $914 million last year. For years, charter schools have come under
fire for poor academic performance and questionable finances.
Concept,
founded in suburban Chicago by Turkish men, manages the Ohio charter schools
and 11 others in five Midwest states. Its status as a for-profit or nonprofit
under IRS standards is not clear.
Murat Efe
oversees Concept operations in northern Ohio. His boss, Sedat Duman, controls
the company from Des Plaines, Ill.
Former CEOs
of Concept schools control Breeze Inc., a real estate company that owns many of
the school buildings. As landlords, they collect rent from the publicly funded
charter schools. Breeze shares office space with Concept in a building
northwest of Chicago.
A Beacon
Journal interview scheduled for June 27 with Efe and Salim Ucan, vice president
of the company, was canceled by Concept less than a half-hour before it was to
occur.
The Beacon
Journal also requested records June 12 seeking taxpayer-funded contracts,
emails discussing recent FBI investigations and visa applications filed by the
schools.
The records
were requested of three Concept administrators and 18 school board members.
Only three,
all board members, acknowledged that they received the request. One forwarded
it to a principal. The other two passed it along to Efe, who has not responded
to repeated attempts to reschedule an interview.
In
addition, The News Outlet, a student journalism lab headquartered at Youngstown
State University, conducted a survey this spring of 20 school board members at
Horizon and Noble academies in Northeast Ohio. Few answers were received.
Better than average
Last school
year, Ohio’s Turkish-run schools — which offer the Turkish language and promote
themselves as specialized in math and science — enrolled more than 6,700
students.
In
Cleveland alone, $12 million was transferred from the municipal school district
to Concept schools. Academies also exist in Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton,
Euclid, Toledo and Youngstown.
According
to the Ohio Department of Education, the academies’ performance on state tests
varies widely from school to school and year to year. In 2013, 12 received D’s,
four C’s and three B’s.
Those
scores are better than the average Ohio charter school and often higher than
most city school districts where they are located, although some have lower
graduation rates.
Political connections
In 2012,
Secretary of State John Husted visited Horizon Academies in Cleveland, Columbus
and Cincinnati, then another in Dayton a year later. In the weeks before and
after each visit, people who identified themselves as with Horizon, Concept,
Noble or Turkish interests donated $5,400 into Husted’s campaign fund.
A spokesman
for Husted said the “donations were really received through fundraising events
that were publicized and open to the public” and that the secretary “had no
conversations” with donors.
Husted, who
has been a leading advocate of charter schools for a decade, is pictured on
many Concept school websites, smiling with officials and children.
State Rep.
Cliff Rosenberger, who could be the next Ohio House speaker, also received
$1,850 in 2012.
Three
months earlier, Rosenberger joined two other House Republicans and two local
officials for a trip to Turkey. The trip, focused on economic development, was
paid for by the Niagara Foundation, which also has sponsored dinner at the
state capital.
Rosenberger’s
office did not answer Beacon Journal requests for information.
Long-distance hiring
Between the
fall of 2012 and 2013, the latest year for which numbers are available, the 19
Ohio charter schools sought to import 97 Turkish teachers.
In
contrast, Ohio’s public school districts (which enroll roughly 270 times more
students) looked overseas only 11 times. More than half of the requests,
including one filed by Akron Public Schools, sought Mandarin or Chinese
teachers — languages that economists say are in high demand.
Concept
Schools, however, pursued visas for 13 Turkish language teachers that year.
To put the
hiring practice in perspective, records show that Horizon and Noble academies
have attempted to import as many teachers in four years as it would take to
staff the state’s largest public high school, with more than 100 teachers to
spare.
Former
employees allege that Turkish employees generally are paid more than U.S.-born
teachers, then asked to contribute as much as 40 percent of their pay to an
Islam-based religious movement known as Hizmet that supports interfaith dialog.
The
movement is led by Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in self-imposed
exile in Pennsylvania.
A Beacon
Journal review of visa applications indicates that most teachers recruited from
Turkey would receive a starting salary of more than $40,000. That’s higher than
the salaries of many existing employees whose names do not reflect Middle
Eastern heritage, according to pay data kept by the state treasurer’s office.
And,
“They’re not qualified,” said Mary Addi, a former teacher at a Horizon middle
school in Cleveland.
One state
audit supported her contention by finding as many as 20 percent of teachers at
one school were not licensed, and nearly half of all treasurers at 19 schools
lacked proper credentials.
“American
taxpayers are just so ambivalent about all this. Do they know they are paying
for all this?” said Addi, whose husband, Mustafa Emanet, has worked for the
schools.
“I worked
for them. I was one of them,” he said, saying he and his wife were fired then
rehired multiple times. Emanet said he was asked to return 40 percent of his
salary, which started at $44,000 in 2006.
“They know
the system here and they use the system here,” Emanet said.
State
audits also show reimbursement to high-level employees for their pursuit of MBA
degrees, along with credit card purchases for alcohol, shampoo, Red Bull and
other non-school-related goods.
Now, the
Ohio Department of Education is probing allegations that grades and attendance
records have been tampered. The matter, first investigated in 2012, has been
reopened after the department was publicly criticized for taking it easy on the
school’s independent sponsor, which in Ohio handles academic and fiscal
oversight.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com.
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