Why do we award tax dollars to schools owned by sketchy foreign entities with an anti-semitic past?
Turkish politics rarely makes a blip in the American media. Modern Turkey, which formed after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, was secularized by Young Turks (Attaturk, not Ugyur, and friends). The Turks sided with the Allies during World War II, which led to their charter membership in the United Nations. Adjacent to the Middle East, the Asia part of Turkey has provided the United States with a militarily strategic location since then. However, aside from casual mentions relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little media coverage in Turkey.
This news blackout, however, changed this summer when an attempted coup cropped up, only to be duly quashed by the Turkish government. The coup itself was a pretty much a joke. The plotters took over the national media, only to have President Erdogan use Face Time to call his supporters into the streets. Erdogan put the blame on Fetullah Gulen, an imam who claims to support a moderate form of Islamism and whose followers were believed to have infiltrated the government. Oddly enough, Gulen has been living in Saylorsburg, PA for the last 17 years, and has a network of 140 charter schools across 26 states.
Although he now preaches a sort of ecunemical Islam, Gulen has a history preaching some particularly noxious ideas about Jews:
This intelligent tribe has put forth many things throughout history in the name of science and thought. But these have always been offered in the form of poisoned honey and have been presented to the world as such. For instance, Karl Marx is a Jew; the communism he developed looks like a good alternative to capitalism at first sight, but in essence it is a deathly poison mixed in honey.
This passage appeared on the Gulen movement’s website until 2004 when it was removed. Professor Dani Rodrik, a noted Harvard University economist, translated from the original Turkish.
Gulen claims to have foresaken his anti-semitism, but it’s hard to believe the Commonwealth would grant a charter to an American with an anti-semitic past. It seems to have been no problem for Gulen and his movement, which are up to 140 schools in 26 states. Massachusetts has three of his schools: Hampden Charter School of Science (Chicopee), Pioneer Charter School of Science (Springfield), Pioneer Charter School of Science II (Saugus). UPDATE: SEE THIS BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE)
You won’t find an mention of Gulen on the school websites or find a clear, believable reason for Gulen’s charter school expansion. His followers once manufactured evidence for Sledgehammer trials in Turkey. Transparency is not one of Gulen’s strong suits.
The xenophobic American Right accuses Gulen of spreading Islam; however, The Atlantic reported in 2014 that there was no evidence of any religious focus in the curriculum. Gulen charter schools do have a record of corruption and HB1 visa abuse. don’t seem seems to be much less of a pedagogical problem than corruption and visa abuse.
Kickbacks, bid rigging, misuse of public funds, political influence
Gulen schools “don’t have a great track record when it comes to financial and legal transparency.”
Kickbacks. The FBI and the Departments of Labor and Education have investigated whether some employees at some of these schools are “kicking back part of their salaries” to the Gulen Movement, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in this story.
Bid Rigging. A financial probe launched by the Utah Schools Charter Board found the Beehive Science and Technology Academy, a Gülen-run charter school, to be nearly $350,000 in debt. Furthermore, as the Deseret News reported, the school’s administrators seemed to be reserving coveted jobs for their own countrymen and women: “In a time of teacher layoffs, Beehive has recruited a high percentage of teachers from overseas, mainly Turkey.”
The New York Times and CBS News as well as PBS have reported on the Gulen charter network, citing problems such as whether these schools give special preference to Turkish companies when handing out contracts.
Misuse of Public Funds. Even more unnervingly, the school’s money—public funds from the local community—was being donated to Gülen-affiliated organizations and used to pay the cost of bringing teachers to Utah from Turkey. To illustrate the level of fiscal mismanagement, the school spent about 50 cents to pay the immigration costs of foreign teachers for every dollar that it spent on textbooks. In 2010, after being the first charter school in Utah history to be shuttered, Beehive appealed the decision and was reopened the same year.
Buying Political Influence. HOUSTON — The secretive religious and political movement inspired by the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen has become a potent, and surprising, force in a set of obscure races for the House of Representatives, as Gülen sympathizers around the country donate tens of thousands of dollars to an overlapping set of candidates.
The Turkish government has formally requested that Gulen be extradited to face charges. It is unlikely to happen. Erdogan, Turkey’s president, is currently making a bid to be dictator, and it’s not clear that there is any evidence of Gulen’s involvement, though Harvard professor and Turkey watcher Dani Rodrik thinks its likely.
For further reading, The Man Accused of Inspiring Turkey’s Coup Is Behind the Largest Charter-School Chain in America in The Nation.
How did the Sacklers build the 16th-largest fortune in the country? The short answer: making the most popular and controversial opioid of the 21st century — OxyContin.
Followed by this:
Jonathan Sackler helped Governor Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor, create Achievement First, Inc. the large charter school management company that owns and operates schools in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island.
Jonathan Sackler created ConnCAN, the charter school advocacy group that led the record breaking $6 million lobbying campaign to pass Governor Dannel “Dan” Malloy’s corporate education reform industry initiative in 2012.
Now why would a billionaire drug family spend its money to promote charter schools.
Short answer: They have already demonstrated they will to anything for a buck.
they must reinvent America in their image.
Then the billionaires said, “Let Us make America in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. As long as we can make a buck or feed our ego. And they saw that it was good.
…to say, “and let US rule…” since they do the exploiting.
supports Gulen. Popular opinion in Turkey is that he has CIA support. Dani Rodrik thinks he may have isolated support in the intelligence community.
Gulen people faked evidence in the Sledgehammer trials to get rid of secularlists, but the forgeries were so bad they claimed to be from the past and were written on very up-to-date Microsoft software. He and Erdogan purged a lot of the Kemalists (secularists); now Erdogan is purging Gulenists.
(If anyone wonders how I know about this stuff, I read a lot, but one of my good friends grew up in Turkey. So we talk about it a lot. It doesn’t make me right, but it gives me a check on my reading).
I must confess that I have so little regard for Mr. Erdogan that I have been ignoring his attacks on Mr. Gulen. My understanding is that Mr. Gulen is here legally, and enjoys the same protections from hostile governments that are extended to any other legal alien (and certainly to those who come here seeking asylum).
I wasn’t aware that the US was “supporting” Mr. Gulen, other than deflecting the apparently fabricated charges against him. I’m not saying that I support him myself, and I’m certainly not arguing for or against his schools. I’m just not sure it’s correct to describe US policy towards him as “support”.
There were certainly many prominent Soviet public figures who came here during the cold war. Most of those faced similar charges from the Soviet government. I’m under the impression that most of those received similar protection.
It appears to me that Mr. Erdogan is well on the way towards making himself a dictator. Sadly, he has the apparent support of his electorate. I am profoundly reluctant to assist him in making Mr. Gulen a scapegoat and pretext for what Mr. Erdogan seems to have wanted to do anyway.
It seems to me that the issue of charter schools in general, and Mr. Gulen’s network in particular, are better handled separately from the ongoing situation with Turkey and Mr. Erdogan.
at least in part, supports him. There was some sketchiness in his being here and in his application for a green card. Dani Rodrik, Harvard economics professor and Turkey-watcher, thinks some of the intelligence community supports him.
Gulen and Erdogan are both asshats. What Erdogan is doing with purges of Gulen people was done by Gulen people against the Kemalists. Turkey is a country that has a coup every twenty years or less. We might be tempted to side with the Kemalists because they are secular or Gulen because he’s not Erdogan. Doing so is a mistake. They all do, would do, or have done the same thing when in power.
Turkey has two sides: the European and the Asian. The Asian side is “less developed” and more conservative. (Think American coasts vs. American South). The more educated, European side (Istanbul) dislikes Erdogan’s Islamist bent, but the more rural and less- developed side kind of parallel the “War on Christmas” view of Islam. Bear in mind, modern Turkey was forcefully secular. Anyway, the educated have no love for Erdogan or Gulen and didn’t like living under a military group.
I think Gulen and his charters illustrate a problem with the charter school movement writ large. We are sacrificing public education for the benefit of sketchy, foreign political movements. It shows how far the charter school movement is willing to go to spread charter schools. It shows the poor vetting that we do of charter schools.
I agree with all of the above.
I’m uncomfortable about coupling the publicity associated with events in Turkey to our issues with charter schools.
In my view, Mr. Gulen’s schools would be an issue if Mr. Gulen were born and raised in the American heartland. I don’t know anything about his background beyond what you’ve cited here — that background is horrific and repulsive whether he’s Muslim, Baptist, Catholic, or atheist.
As far as I can tell, we don’t need to look at “foreign” political movements to find sketchy. I’m under the distinct impression that “Charter Schools” are to the venerable “School vouchers” — born in the 70s-era ruse of sending children to “private” and “religious” schools that just happen to be all-white — as “Creation science” is to old-fashioned “Biblical inerrancy”. Both strike me as attempts to smear moderate-sounding lipstick on the same extremist (and fundamentally racist) pig. Not coincidentally, each has the same devastating impact on public schools, each is supported by the same political forces, and each focuses its worst impacts on our most disadvantaged children.
I’m therefore fine with arguing passionately and loudly against Mr. Gulen’s charter schools. I’m profoundly uncomfortable with citing his national or religious heritage as part of that criticism.
…I’m not aware of charters being set up as an attempt to impose socially conservative dogma and worldview. They are also often supported by minority communities and families looking for any alternative to public schools.
There is a school in Worcester that, by reputation, has exceptionally strict policies on discipline, uniforms, and mandated parental involvement. Spots are more coveted among minority families than among others, for the reason you cite. They don’t seem to do measurably better than the overall district, yet the spots remain coveted.
I am sorry I could uprate this post only once.
But I am also a supporter of the Kurdish people, having worked with them in a few countries. As much as I support their creation of an independent nation, I know that once they pull into their own homeland, the world will lose a stabilizing force. They are the single best defense against Daesh (I refuse to use the MSM moniker as it gives them credit for being a “state”) and Sunni extremism.
Turkey treats Kurds harshly. They fight back in ways that no person can like. It is time for a divorce. Turkey needs to focus on the Gulenists and not the Kurds.
The Kurds will have their problems, being split between a right and left politically, but I’m with you.
Erdogan loves scapegoats. Right now, he’s focused on the Gulen, but he will scapegoats the Kurds when it suits him.
I am going back again this winter to be with Kurds, probably in Turkey (gotta brush up on my language skills). If you want to make real change in the world, you have to to be at a place of conflict. That is where your change the world.
I am in total admiration that a person who (I think) has never been to Kurdish territory still gets what is happening there. You get big street credit with me. And if you ever want to go there, I will be glad to take you there. And if you want to go further, like to Iran, then I am your guy.
If I ever get out of this place, I may take you up on the offer!
I thought in MA charter schools had to be non-profit by statute. Is his entire enterprise a non-profit? Are the schools here? To what extent is their coordination as a ‘chain”?
Comment – if you posted an ethnic/religious profile like this against any other Middle Eastern individual or entity, CAIR-Massachusetts would be calling you bigoted haters. So apparently, you are entitled to the benefit of the doubt on ethnicity only if you support progressive causes.
However, the non-profit charter school board of trustees can hire a for-profit management firm. In that instance, the charter board is merely a veneer over a for-profit agency.
Even when there is no for-profit management organization, these boards can rent buildings, buy curriculum and materials, and conduct other business with the for-profit business of their choice. Lots of room to funnel tax dollars into private interests.
Or are you speculating what could be done?
Bright Horizons (quarter profit over $!00,000,000) operates schools in Mass. As does SABIS, an international concern that is privately owned.
Organizations are the trick to profiting from non-profit. The Robert M.Hughes Charter that was closed in disgrace was renting a building at an inflated rate and then loaning the money to another non-profit. I don’t know if that was enough to revoke its charter. It was caught in an audit. (I’m not saying the names of the principals in the school, but they were Springfield people, the brother of one felon is a retiring state rep).
There is a tendency (I can be guilty of it too) to want to avoid unpleasant facts. I’ve actually struggled with how to handle this issue. There are people on the right that oppose Gulen because he’s Muslim. If a member of Opus Dei or the Family Research Council were running charter schools, you can bet that I would mention that. Even if the schools were secular. If CAIR has a problem with it, that’s tough noogies.
The fact is, we have a sketchy religious figure trying to build a global movement exploiting the American charter school system to get the largest number of HB1 visas in America. Google is runner-up.
I’m not completely against charter schools, particularly those already in existence, but I oppose their thoughtless proliferation.
The chargers are non-profit, but I have seen payments in some that go to their for-profit parent organizations, usually for “intellectual property”. In 2014, SABIS, in Springfield, paid $2m per year to a related organization, Springfield Education Management LLC, “to manage the teaching, accounting and business administration functions of the School”, and they paid $683,554 for textbooks from SABIS Educational Systems (a MA LLC owned by someone in Lebanon).
The now-closed Robert M. Hughes charter school used to pay to rent its building from another non-profit that was closely connected to the school (I believe they employed relatives of members of the RMH board), and they purchased computer equipment from a board member’s company. The state warned them about this, but that was not why they were ultimately shut down – it was due to bad test scores.
I agree with you that the linkage to happenings in Turkey is tenuous, at best. Still, I do find it interesting that a number of charter schools are owned by foreign corporations. I wonder why?
We have no control over other states, and what is done elsewhere is irrelevant to this discussion. You want to prevent charters from opening IN MASS. What is this foreign ownership?
As far as the rent problem you cite, it appears that the systems worked. Charters must be audited and renewed every five years, unlike other schools that can fail for decades with no noticeable effect.
originated in the Middle East and is headquartered in the UAE, I think. They were one of Massachusetts first charter schools. As charters schools go, they are decent: less attrition than others, for example.
Gulen tends to organize its charters into groups: Harmony Charter schools in Texas; Concept Charter schools in Chicago. Apple Education Services is one of Gulen’s EMOs. The right-wing is aware of charters and Gulen.
If you look in my post, you’ll see I list the three Gulen charters that are in operation in Massachusetts:
Hampden Charter School of Science (Chicopee)
Pioneer Charter School of Science (Springfield)
Pioneer Charter School of Science II (Saugus).
I don’t know who’s behind this website–it could be the Turkish government, for all I know–but the information I’ve checked is accurate.
They are expressing concern about HIS history of ethnic bias.
Please reread the comments here. For example: “It boggles my mind that the United States … supports Gulen. Popular opinion in Turkey is that he has CIA support. Dani Rodrik thinks he may have isolated support in the intelligence community.”
The thread-starter says “Charter School Chain Owned by Sketchy Turkish Imam”. How is “Turkish” anything BUT a reference to his ethnicity, and Imam anything but a reference to his religion?
Perhaps this guy is a bad guy. I have a deep dislike of Charter Schools, I’m on board with attacking his.
I think the pervasive references to Turkey, Mr. Erdogan, and the attempted coup don’t belong here. If the thread is about charter schools, then it should focus on those. If the thread is a claim that Mr. Gulen is part of the attempted coup, then it should focus on that claim and leave charter schools out of it.
His charter schools, no matter how good or bad they are, have nothing whatsoever to do with his ethnicity, his religion, or his relationship to the emerging dictatorship in Turkey.
It offends our liberal sensibilities to imply that Gulen is a Muslim, who we tend to defend. It would be easy to appeal to Islamaphobia to smear charter schools. In fact, that’s what the Right is doing.
But the fact is, Gulen is a foreigner from a much different country. That’s important. If that’s important, his country is important. He’s a religious person who owns the largest charter school network in the United States. That’s important. He’s a Muslim (Sufi, I think) preacher. What if Billy Graham had the largest chain of charter schools in the United States?
What ifI changed the title to
Outsourcing Education: Charter School Chain Owned by Opus Dei, Sketchy Catholic Organization
or
Outsourcing Education: Charter School Chain Owned by Family Research Council, Conservative Christian Organization?
Your title says “sketchy turkish Imam”.
To use your alternatives, I think they would be:
Outsourcing Education: Charter School Chain Owned by Sketchy Catholic Priest
and
Outsourcing Education: Charter School Chain Owned by Sketchy Protestant Pastor
But it’s not just his religious affiliation, it’s your conflation of the complaints of Erdogan with the criticisms of this organization that trouble me the most.
I just don’t see the relevance of the allegations from Mr. Erdogan to the issues you raise with his organization. As I understand it, his charter schools would be just as bad if he were anywhere else in the world.
I think the allegations of Mr. Erdogan should kept separate.
right now.
Gulen and Erdogan were allies in a political movement to push Islamism in a country established as secular. Gulen’s people, using the legal system in which they had a serious presence, were behind the Sledgehammer trials that purged much of the secular presence in the Turkish government. They manufactured and forged evidence to do so. He and Erdogan had a falling out and Gulen moved to the United States without a green card or asylum. He’s been living here for 17 years. Erdogan wants him back. Dani Rodrik–our best source on this events–thinks Gulenists were involved, though not necessarily Gulen himself. Joe Biden is currently in Turkey discussing Gulen and extradition. Liberal publications from The Atlantic to the The Nation have reported on Gulen and his charter schools. If a head of state were calling for the extradition of a different charter school operator, would there be a problem?
In response to your last question … “If a head of state were calling for the extradition of a different charter school operator, would there be a problem?”, yes.
I think that when a foreign official demands the extradition of someone in the US for what appear to be fabricated and self-serving reasons, the US should do exactly what we are doing — go slow, and follow the rule of law. At least for me, that question really does have nothing at ALL to do with charter schools.
I don’t know anything about Mr. Gulen’s immigration status. I make the perhaps rash assumption that his documentation is in order, but I certainly don’t claim to know that.
It sounds to me as though our government is doing the right thing regarding the extradition request targeting Mr. Gulen.
I agree with you that such is not the point. The complaint is that Gulen has some views that many would find objectionable about the ethnicity of others.
I’m inclined to agree with Mark that the Gulen affiliated charters ought to be more carefully looked at, because of finance irregularities and lack of transparence.
But some things bear note. The charters are not ‘owned’ by Fethullah Gullen, as Mark writes in the title. The ownership structure seems to be through foundations affiliated with the Gulen movement. But Gulen himself is a ‘spiritual leader’. How much money Gulen makes personally in this enterprise has not been revealed.
It could very well be that Fethullah Gulen lives the simple life, and is used a symbol by his followers.
Another aspect is the quasi-religious aspect of the Gulen movement. Charter schools are public schools, and are not supposed to be non-affiliated from a religion stand point. The schools are supposed to keep the demarcation clear with religion. Yes, religion can be studied, but as a social movement, with historic and cultural characteristics – but not as an act of divine revelation to the students.
Certainly, Catholic schools are not permitted to get charter status. The same standard should apply to Muslim schools.
It remains unexplained how religious (and how Muslim) the Gulen-affiliated charters are.
Additional note: only a handful of the Gulen affiliated charters are investigated for finance irregularities. It might be a stretch to conclude that all Gulen affiliated charters must have similar problems.
owned per se, they are owned by the movement or organization or network.
Dani Rodrik is probably the best source on Gulen and (for our needs) perhaps Turkish politics. Of Gulen and charter schools, he writes:
That’s a good summary about Gulen, with many references about politics in Turkey – thanks for sharing.
Interesting stuff – it talks among other things of the Sledgehammer affair, a coup prepared by Kemalists, which resulted in the 2010 purge from the military of about 250 people, who were thrown in jail, with additionals fired. A smaller-scale rehearsal, it seems, to the purge of the recent coup plotters.
Before all this, the Kemalists were busy running their own purges from the military. One trick, as explained in a wikileaks diplo.atic cable from Turkey, was to invite officers and their wives to pool parties. If the wife did not wear bathing suit, her husband would be branded as closet-religious and would be kicked out. The person reporting this scheme was complaining that wives of Gullenists have gotten used to the scheme, and willingly wear two piece bathing suits, thus making the wives of Kemalists look bad when they show up to the pool party with a single piece bathing suit.
This gives a nice background to the recent purge of Gulenists by Erdogan. Turkey has a long tradition since the time of Ataturk to use state institutions as enforcers of westernization. The purpose of army, police, law enforcement, schools, administration is half to provide services, half to enforce the politics of those at the top of the food chain. Army and civil servants take it for granted that they can hire and fire based on poloitical affiliatuon.
It’s just an old ailment of the Turkish republic that Erdogan has taken to new level, not seen in decades.
I, too, would be surprised to learn that Massachusetts allowed three charters to be approved that have connections to a network of charters affiliated with Mr. Gulen. In fact, the state did not, because the schools do not. By the way, charters aren’t “owned” by anyone. So, you lost me right there. They’re public schools; they’re just not run by school districts; nor do they operate under teachers union contracts. Now it’s hard to disprove something that isn’t true. Much easier to just state a myth and then back it up with incidents from other states that aren’t relevant. Massachusetts regulates its charter schools pretty heavily; if there were issues with these schools of the sort that have cropped up elsewhere, they’d be shut down. Instead, these schools have been renewed several times and expanded. And do you think parents from Everett, Saugus and Chicopee would put up with their children being taught someone else’s religious views in a public school setting? Or are you saying that somehow the school only takes families who agree with Gulen’s doctrine and therefore don’t complain about it? I detect a bit of Islamophobia running through this thread, which is surprising for a Democratic commentary blog.
I couldn’t care less whether I “lost” you or not. And since you lack any evidence to back up your assertions, what you say has as much value as your anonymity. Zero. You look a lot like a troll–you’ve never posted here, you’re dramatically misinformed, and ignorant enough to use you prejudices as source for erroneous arguments. I’ll respond because some people might find my answers helpful. You’ve yet to prove you’re worth an extended conversation.
Charters are indeed owned. SABIS, KIPP, MATCH own their schools. These are all brands. Ownership is “The complete dominion, title, or proprietary right in a thing or claim.” If charters weren’t owned, companies wouldn’t control them. Non-profits are owned.
Charters and MGL both claim that charters are public schools. Calling them public is at best inaccurate, at worst misleading. Charter schools are actually quasi-public: type of corporation in the private sector that is backed by a branch of government that has a public mandate to provide a given service. Fannie Mae is another example of a quasi-public entity.
It is, in fact, true that 3 MA charters are connected to Gulen, and since there are 140 in the United States, it really shouldn’t be a surprise. The good folks in Texas are finding this out now, if they didn’t know already. Breitbart is reporting on it today. Are you telling me that parents from Texas parents from “would put up with their children being taught someone else’s religious views in a public school setting?”
I’m not surprised you detect a bit of Islamaphobia. You really haven’t showed much ability to discern much of anything but your own prejudices and embarrassingly limited knowledge and curiosity.
You provide no evidence whatsoever. And you call me ignorant. That’s not how intelligent debate works in a democratic society. You sound more like Donald Trump to me. You’re citing Breitbart? And some conspiracy theorist website. And then the schools are left to try and defend themselves against baseless accusations. Charters are set up in the law as nonprofit public schools. The Boards that oversee them are not profit and unpaid. They are not quasi-public. Three of Massachusetts charters work with SABIS. Out of 72. And I noticed some people question the fact that SABIS is based in Minnesota and the Middle East – whatever that’s supposed to mean. And all three of those schools do very well academically. I thought this was a forum for ideas and discussion. So I thought I would try it out. But evidently some people can’t take criticism. Fact remains that charters are heavily regulated by the state. More heavily regulated by the state than district schools are at the local level. And there are a lot of for-profit companies that do business with district schools. So I’m not sure what those comments are all about.
is that a troll? just because i have facts at my disposal and have done my homework doesn’t qualify me as a troll. i’m a parent who supports charters and has followed the debate for many years. i also believe that people can have differences of opinion but should stick to facts. what you wrote about schools in other states i trust is accurate since it was reported by reputable news outlets. and you aggregate that coverage. but Mass charters are not part of that network and there’s no evidence that they are. you can’t apply what’s happening in other states and smear Massachusetts schools with it.
If the commenter has something to disclose he should, but s/he would hardly be the first to jump on BMG for the first time on an issue s/he is passionate about or interested in. Trolling usually involves repetition, which by definition can’t be done on one’s very first comment. By all means argue the merits, links and all, but it’s not very welcoming to label a newcomer with a different perspective a troll right out the gate.
first line of his post:
“Only problem with this post is it’s not true that MA charters are connected to Gulen.”
You know me. Everything I post is meticulously sourced. The commenter then goes on to present no evidence to support the erroneous conclusion he leads with. I guess he could just be an idiot rather than a troll, but he comes into our community, never having commented or posted, and tells me that I don’t know what I’m talking about and have no facts. He offers no facts at all.
See the link that I posted from the Globe. I just came across that last night.
I’m going to agree with Mark here – although perhaps not legally “owned”, these charters are fully controlled by other entities, and those entities are not public. So you can’t say they are public schools because the public can’t set policy in them – their “owners” do that.
Let me simplify it for you: do you think that SABIS in Springfield could decide to not buy their textbooks from SABIS International (a MA LLC whose President is Carl Bistany of Lebanon, with two directors, Laila Saad, of Lebanon, and Ralph Bistany, of Lebanon), or that they could decide to not be managed by “Springfield Education Management LLC” (a MA LLC corporation managed by Ralph and Carl Bistany of Lebanon)?
If not, then I would say it is fair to say that SABIS is “owned” by Ralph and Carl Bistany. They set the curriculum, they sell the school the books, and they take a fee to manage it.
people mean by “owned.” Are they owned like the corner drugstore? Not really. Are they owned like a corporation? Sort of. They have a board. I assume they have their own management documents. Some charter schools have kicked out their founders.
Ownership presumes control by someone. The state owns parks. Towns own school buildings, town halls. We could quibble about types of ownership, but there has to be leadership.
Or better yet, how could charter schools NOT be owned? We live in a capitalist society based on the ownership of property.
Isn’t that one of the signs of end times?
out to a troll!
I’ve done a serious amount of a research. I can provide links from liberal and MSM sources. I’ve been tripping over the fringe on google for days.
East is west, left is right, up is down and black is white. Inside out, wrong is right, back to front and we’re all uptight.
There is a cursory check every five years from the charter boosters at DESE. That doesn’t seem heavily regulated to me.
@sdylan963
The charters are indeed not ‘owned’, since they are public – but when they are managed by a private corporation, or foundation, they are not fully public anymore either – even though they have public overseeing boards, and are supervised by the state DoE.
It was a mistake for me to say they are ‘owned’. Instead, read ‘managed’.
Yes, some of the allegations about Gulen movement affiliated schools are lax and are thrown around too easily. I’m with you on that.
Where we differ, I think, is in the concern about the religious aspect of the schools. I don’t think it is OK for public schools to be affiliated with a Muslim movement, or Christian, for that matter.
And this is not a judgement call on Islam, or Christianity. My view is that religion can do a lot of good, and the ecumenical aspect of the Gulen movement is laudable. It’s just that it should not intersect with public charter schools.
But, as stated before, we don’t know whether Gulen-movement affiliated charter schools are really affiliated from a religious view, or as a group of people who leave religion at the door when entering the school space.
The distinction we make is between religious association, and association of people practicing the same religion. It is, I think, a distinction without much difference.
Perhaps what is happening here is intrinsic to the mechanism of charter schools. Parents self-select and apply for the charter lottery for charter school A but not school B. It is inevitable that similar parents will want similar types of charter schools. This may be on exhibit here – Gulen movement parents seek the Gulen affiliated charters.
The end result is that a religious movement – laudable as it is – might get reinforced through public schools. If that’s the case, we have a problem.
As strange as it seems, it is, in fact, true that charter schools are owned:
These schools do not revert to the Commonwealth if they decide to abandon them. They could conceivably sold. Aside from air, there is almost nothing in our society that is not owned.
Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/ownership.html
Are the overseeing boards public? Subject to Open Meeting Law, for example?
I need a primer on charter school governance…
Charter boards are self-appointing. They do spend public funds, and are subject to the open meeting law, but I wouldn’t exactly call them a public entity. You can’t vote for them, or vote for their appointing authority, so they are pretty much exempt from the accountability structure of elected or appointed public officials.
and honest term is quasi-public:
The Commonwealth grants a charter, that is, “a public mandate to provide a given to provide [an education] service. Like Fannie Mae.
The Commonwealth grants a charter, that is, “a public mandate given to provide [an educational] service. Like Fannie Mae provides loans.
Which makes the boards immune to union pressure. It’s not surprising, then, that charters tend to be non-union.
As long as test scores on English, Math, Science are up there, I guess, and there’s no financial irregularities, the board is fine. The gating is really done at the approval of the charter.
What an arrangement!
pointed out, charters can and do have unions.
I think the lack of union membership has to do with what charters see as their mission, which usually see unions as an impediment, but more importantly, the turnover of teachers is so high in charters that it would be hard to organize a union if one were actually wanted. Many charters turnover 50% of their staff every year. Having a small cadre of teachers in a school is an impediment to union organizing in general. Even in public schools.
They must have an annual meeting open to the public. The public is entitled to tax documents, etc., like a 990 the same as other non-profits. In fact, because they ARE non-profits many more of their documents and policies are more readily available than those of, say, the Legislature…
Unless SABIS of Springfield is incorporated as something without SABIS in its name, there is no listing of them in Guidestar, the website that lists data on all nonprofits (including form 990s). I also could not find them listed in the Secretary of State’s corporate database.
Instead of Form 990, I have seen financial statements posted on the school website – probably a state requirement, though I couldn’t find one for the Hampden Charter School of Science.
Millions of bona fide non profits are not on it. And a nonprofit with a value of less than $250,000 doesn’t need an audit or an examination. In fact, there is a 990-EZ for very small on-profits. IS SABIS the legal name? What is the SCHOOL name? The board could be incorporated as that.
We’re talking about non-profits that are fully funded with tax dollars. There should be much higher expectations in terms of openness.
There are 990s there for some really obscure Springfield-area 501c3s. Their “about” page says this:
Here at GuideStar we gather and disseminate information about every single IRS-registered nonprofit organization.
They wouldn’t say that if they only featured the nonprofits that gave them their data out of the goodness of their hearts.
that was founded in 1981. It had no Guidestar profile until I created one a few years ago.
It seems like you’re going to reject anything I give to you, but I’ll try one last time:
* They do not appear on the IRS Nonprofit website – nor does any other charter school in Springfield.
* There are several “friends of” organizations registered as nonprofits. This is something that is done to create tax destructibility of donations to organizations that do not qualify as charities. Typically this means governmental organizations, although they can also be set up for foreign-owned charities (“friends of the Louvre”).
My guess is that the charter schools fall into the former category – a quasi-public organization that is allowed to exist at the whim of the state, but one that is controlled by a self-perpetuating board of trustees. I will concede that the trustees of SABIS do appear to be all local, so it isn’t as controlled as I previously stated – however I still have no doubt in my mind that the local control boils down to a “take it or leave it” deal with the aforementioned international companies.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/02/21/turkish-born-educators-seek-expand-charter-schools-massachusetts/SmJnApodZogoT1esK2NQVN/story.html
Pioneer Charter School “…serves a predominantly African-
American and Hispanic population.” There does not seem to be a self-selection of Turkish parents, Gulenists or not, filling the ranks of the school. That solves one of my concerns.
Turkey? Just asking, not trying to make any sort of point.