Gulen Movement / Religious influence at Ohio School

http://wkbn.com/2015/06/15/turkish-religious-movement-influence-alleged-at-ohio-school/


COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – A recent court filing raises anew allegations a Turkish religious movement is wielding influence inside a chain of Ohio charter schools targeted in federal raids last year, claims the schools’ operator maintains are false.
An ex-employee of Horizon Science Academy Denison Middle School made the allegations in a May affidavit filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in an ongoing discrimination lawsuit brought by his wife, a fired teacher.
Mustafa Emanet, who worked at the school from August 2006 to May 2009, says followers of the moderate Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen brought him to the U.S. from Turkey without a job interview, demanded cash kickbacks to the Gulen movement from his pay and pension and repeatedly deceived the U.S. government.
Emanet, of Elyria, says the school’s Turkish teachers and administrators were called to exclusive staff meetings, attended religious retreats and made regular visits to the Poconos compound where Gulen lives in exile. Emanet says he saw a man who was with him on a 2007 trip to the compound deny any connection to Gulen in a 2012 television interview.
The Chicago-based Concept Schools, which operates the Horizon and Noble academies in Ohio, continues to deny formal ties to the Gulen movement. Officials there have said many of them admire the teachings of Gulen, a promoter of universal education, but he doesn’t run their schools or benefit from the public money they collect.
Spokesman Mark Weaver said claims in the affidavit have been previously raised and disproved. He said Emanet and his wife, Mary Addi, have a longstanding vendetta against the school because of her firing and because it’s non-union and are spreading falsehoods. He produced a letter in which Concept’s attorney says Addi was terminated for reasons including “breach of contract, fraud, dishonesty, (and) insubordination.”
“The school fired this disgruntled former employee because she was caught lying and caught working another job when she had promised taxpayers she would work full time,” he said. “Later, she destroyed numerous public records to cover her tracks.”
According to the affidavit, Murat Sagnak, then-director of the Horizon Academy, instructed Emanet to tell officials at the U.S. Embassy in Istanbul if they asked “that he (Sagnak) had conducted several phone interviews with me, which never actually happened.”
Emanet says employees also were told to hand over the usernames and passwords to their State Teachers Retirement System accounts with the expectation they would “give the Gulen Movement our STRS retirement funds if we left the school.” Further, he alleges Concept raised his pay from $28,000 to $42,000 and he “was instructed to give the money back in cash to the Gulen Movement every pay period.” Federal labor officials settled an earlier claim between Emanet and Concept on his back pay.
Weaver said Addi’s claims surrounding Horizon were dismissed as unsubstantiated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission five years ago. He said fewer than 10 percent of Concept Schools teachers are Turkish and money they donate to any cause is up to them.
Emanet did not return a call seeking additional information on Monday.
(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Horizon Science Academies dba Concept Schools another lawsuit

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/local-news/investigations/lawsuit-alleging-discrimination-called-not-true-by-cleveland-charter-school-operator

Ohio Turkish Schools raided by FBI - Sponsor Buckeye Community Hope still stands by their racism, sexism and poor performance?

Buckeye Community Hope Foundation sponsors the Concept Schools (Horizon Science Academies)
in Ohio the same schools that were raided by the FBI, have sexism, racism and low report cards.
Yet Buckeye doesn't see any reason to pull back support from the schools after urging from
several groups.  Maybe they would miss that government MONEY

Send Peggy Young an email at http://buckeyehope.org/contact/
Tell her how you feel as a tax payer

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Ohio Foundation Faces Pressure to Shutter Charters Under FBI, State Scrutiny

By Arianna Prothero on January 28, 2015                             

Updated
A group of activists are calling for a chain of Ohio charter schools that have been under both FBI and state investigations to be shut down.
February 1 is the deadline for all state sponsors—the entities that authorize and oversee charter schools—to decide whether to renew charter contracts for the independently run but publicly funded schools.
Representatives from the Cleveland Teachers' Union; the Ohio Parent Teachers Association; and Policy Matters Ohio, a research and advocacy organization; are pressuring the Columbus-based Buckeye Community Hope Foundation not to renew nine charter contracts for Concept Schools, a charter management company.
Concept Schools, which runs campuses in Illinois and Indiana as well as Ohio, has been at the center of its fair share of controversy since last summer. Details from a July Cincinnati Enquirer story:

"[Nineteen] Ohio charter schools managed by Chicago-based Concept Schools are under investigation by state officials. Both the Department of Education and Ohio Auditor Dave Yost launched investigations after former teachers and a student at the Horizon Dayton school made complaints to the State Board of Education about alleged sexual misconduct and tampering with test and attendance records."

And the Akron Beacon Journal reported in June that Concept Schools had also been previously investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor for hiring foreign workers:

"Ohio audits found that public money for the schools had been used improperly for visas. Concept received more visas for immigrant workers than Google in 2009, and many of the school's employees are of Turkish descent. Most of the nonprofit schools' board members in Northeast Ohio are male and of Turkish descent."

"I think this represents the first time we've seen a trifecta of bad behavior from a charter school operator," Amy Hanauer of Policy Matters Ohio said during a call with reporters. "Clearly, these ... schools should not be renewed."
Policy Matters, along with its coalition partners, sent a letter to Buckeye Community Hope Foundation saying just that.
"Buckeye Community Hope Foundation does not base its sponsorship decisions on unproven allegations - that would be grossly inappropriate and unfair to countless students who attend the schools managed by Concept Schools," Peggy Young, the director of Buckeye's education division, said in an email. "We implement a comprehensive performance accountability and compliance monitoring system that provides the information necessary to make these rigorous and standards based renewal, and intervention decisions."
This situation in Ohio represents a bigger shift in the state and nationally.
Charter schools have long endured criticism from skeptics who say they misuse taxpayer dollars. But the laws and sponsors, often called authorizers, that govern charter schools are facing more and more scrutiny.
It's a trend that's even welcomed by some in the charter school movement in Ohio and beyond who fear sensational headlines, like those generated by the Concept Schools investigations, will undermine the sector at large.
The Fordham Institute, a Washington-based education reform think tank and advocacy organization, recently commissioned a well-known third party research group, the Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes, to examine the Ohio's charters. (The Fordham Institute's Ohio-based sister-organization, the Fordham Foundation, sponsors some schools in the state.)
CREDO researchers found that Ohio charter school students, on average, learn less in a year than their peers in regular, district schools. Following the release of those results, Ohio governor John Kasich has called for a rewrite of the state's charter law.
"I think it's pretty clear unless you've been living under a rock, Ohio has had its fair share of troubles for a long time," said David Quolke with the Cleveland Teachers' Union on the call with reporters. "Even the stories of the successful charter schools tend to get drowned out by stories of FBI raids and corruption."
This post has been updated to include a statement from Peggy Young and, following a corrected statement from Policy Matters Ohio, to change the number of charter school contract renewals the coalition is seeking to have denied from 11 to nine.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2015/01/foundation_overseeing_charter_schools_under_fbi_scrutiny_faces_pressure.html

Concept Schools Quest Academy must cut ties with Concept

 

By Pam Adams of the Journal Star
Posted Jan. 22, 2015 @ 10:15 pm

PEORIA — The board of Quest Charter Academy will cut ties with Concept Schools, the not-for-profit charter-school management company that has run Peoria’s public charter school since it opened in 2010.

Board members disclosed the decision during a regular board meeting Thursday in which they also announced they’ve reached a tentative agreement with Peoria School District 150 to extend the school’s charter for another five years.

Tom Fliege, vice president of the charter school board, said the two actions were not related.

Concept’s contract with Quest’s governing board, the Peoria Charter School Initiative, expires July 30. The decision not to renew the contract was not motivated by finances or the FBI investigation of the Des Plaines-based company’s handling of federal money for school technology improvements, according to Fliege.

Instead, the charter school board has always planned to eventually take over school operations, he said.

“There’s no acrimony, this was mutually agreed upon. We’ll continue to work together as the contract comes to a close.”

Concept staff, which includes Quest Principal Ali Kuran, will help with the transition. The board has tentatively selected an interim executive director, who also will help with the transition, until an executive director is hired.

Details of the tentative agreement to extend the charter school contract will be released at District 150’s board meeting Jan. 26. District 150 board members are scheduled to vote on the contract Feb. 9. Quest board members will take a vote at a special meeting that has yet to be announced. Both boards must approve the final agreement.

“As is true with any agreement, they’re not totally happy, we’re not totally happy,” Fliege said.

The charter school board wanted more money from District 150, while the district maintained it was not fair for Quest to expect more money because the school district’s revenues are declining.

The charter school board had refused District 150’s last counterproposal. Apparent delays in negotiations prompted Quest board members to discuss the administrative process for closing the school.

But negotiations started moving, according to Fliege, when he and Quest board member Will Ball began meeting with Debbie Wolfmeyer and Linda Butler, the District 150 board’s president and vice president, respectively.

Initially, board members were not fully aware that the charter school board had to have negotiations completed within a specific time frame, according to Fliege. He complimented Wolfmeyer and Butler for “having the courage” to resolve the issue.

Also, for the second time, the charter school board tabled a proposal to partner with Peoria Heights High School to offer football for Quest High School students.

Read more: http://www.pjstar.com/article/20150122/News/150129639#ixzz3PtHLeY4M


Concept Schools aka GULEN INSPIRED schools PORN on website?

By Josh Sweigart

Staff Writer

Vice and publicly funded charter schools don’t mix, officials advise. That means what happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas. And people shouldn’t be looking for love on a charter school management nonprofit’s website.

A Las Vegas trip was made in 2013 by two employees of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, an e-school with students across the state of Ohio. The staffers were there for a school safety conference, but when the conference ended on a Friday they stayed through the weekend.

Since the hotels and meals were on the school’s credit card, a state audit said the cost of the weekend stay must be repaid. Each employee repaid the $196 in findings in the audit.

More recently, officials from Concept Schools — a charter school management nonprofit that runs the Horizon chain of schools here and across the state — removed a lascivious link from their company’s website when asked about it by the I-Team.

The web page, brought to our attention by a reader, offered to help people “find a new sex partner.”

“We already have 2 million members registered on our website. This is YOUR chance to find a new sex partner easily (as well as discreetly),” it proffered. “Hundreds of people join our website every day, who have the same wish like you do: a sex date!”

Concept schools officials offered this explanation:

“The mentioned link is a result of one of our departmental web sites being affected by some malware/adware. The link has been removed and additional precautions put in place to prevent future attacks. Moreover, we are in the process of screening individual school sites to ensure that they have not been exposed to such malware/adware attacks recently either.”

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/gov-watch-e-school-employees-charged-school-for-we/njmbH/