- Friendship Collegiate football residency investigation deemed 'inconclusive' [Friendship Collegiate PCS mentioned]
- New claims surface in Options charter case [Options PCS mentioned]
- Sounds of silence on Options PCS from the Charter Board [FOCUS and Options PCS mentioned]
- Before creating plan to improve D.C. middle schools, chancellor wants community input
- Three linchpins of education reform
Friendship Collegiate football residency investigation deemed 'inconclusive' [Friendship Collegiate PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Roman Stubbs
January 2, 2014
A D.C. State Athletic Association investigation of the residency and eligibility of four Friendship Collegiate football players was determined to be “inconclusive,” and neither the school nor the players will face punishment.
In a letter sent to Friendship Athletic Director Michael Hunter, DCSAA Executive Director Clark Ray notified the public charter school that the matter is closed and the “student-athletes’ athletic eligibility is considered valid and current.”
Ray first requested that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and D.C. Public Charter School Board investigate the matter in late August, after a review of Friendship Collegiate’s roster raised questions — including three players who had submitted “insufficient sworn statements by other primary caregivers” explaining their residency. All four players under investigation played at schools outside the District in 2012, including two who played at Maryland public schools last fall.
Ray was not available for comment.
Although the DCPCSB reviewed the matter, the body never conducted an investigation. The DCSAA took over and launched its own probe Nov. 14, according to DCSAA spokesperson Ayan Islam. The DCSAA worked with a private investigator and concluded the investigation in about four weeks, Islam added.
Hunter said the school fully cooperated with the investigation, providing further residency documentation that was requested by the DCSAA in August.
“We’re happy that everything’s over, that the investigation is closed. We did everything that was asked of us by the charter board and the DCSAA to make sure that all of our student-athletes were eligible and able to participate in any extracurricular activities,” Hunter said. “We were pretty confident that we followed the proper procedures and that everything would work itself out.”
Friendship Collegiate Coach Aazar Abdul-Rahim did not respond to a request for comment.
Although Ray notified Hunter in the letter that the matter is closed, he added that the DCSAA would consider any evidence presented in the future.
“DCSAA reserves the right to reopen this investigation if any new evidence and/or signed complaint lodged against Friendship Collegiate and/or any of its student-athletes is deemed viable,” Ray wrote.
Friendship Collegiate finished the season 7-5 and made its second consecutive appearance in the DCSAA AA title game in December, where it lost to H.D. Woodson. The four players in question continued to play throughout the season despite the probe, and Hunter said the presence of an investigation “wasn’t a distraction.”
It was at least the fourth time the school has been investigated by the DCSAA in the past year.
New claims surface in Options charter case [Options PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 3, 2014
A senior official at the D.C. Public Charter School Board allegedly received $150,000 to help the former managers of Options Public Charter School evade oversight and take millions of taxpayer dollars for themselves, according to a new court document.
Jeremy L. Williams was the chief financial officer at the D.C. Public Charter School Board, responsible for monitoring the business practices of the city’s fast-growing charter schools. But at the same time he was entrusted with rooting out financial wrongdoing, he also allegedly joined in, according to the document.
The document, an amended complaint that D.C. government lawyers filed as part of a lawsuit that began in October, expands on allegations that Options leaders diverted more than $3 million from the Northeast Washington school for at-risk teens to companies they founded. In the court papers, D.C. authorities describe a contracting scheme more elaborate than previously believed, including the alleged payments to Williams, extensive markups of services to generate personal profit, and bringing additional taxpayer dollars to Options to enrich themselves, money meant to help the city’s neediest students.
The court papers also levy new allegations against WUSA (Channel 9) news personality J.C. Hayward, who authorities allege had an ownership stake in one of the companies and was paid $8,500 to attend company board meetings.
Williams and his attorney declined to comment, as did attorneys for two of the Options managers, former chief executive Donna Montgomery and Paul Dalton, the former provost. Hayward’s attorney said she knew nothing of any alleged scheme.
An attorney for the third manager, former clinical director David Cranford, said that nothing about the business arrangements between Options and the two companies was illegal or inappropriate — or even all that unusual.
“These related-party transactions between for-profit management companies and the nonprofit public charter schools are not only appropriate and lawful, but the same arrangements exist with several other public charter schools,” A. Scott Bolden said. “It seems to me that the government has quite a burden on its hands in proving these claims against my client.”
Bolden declined to name other D.C. charter schools with comparable arrangements. Nonprofit charter schools may enter into contracts with for-profit management companies, but any related-party transactions must be accurately disclosed to the charter board. The D.C Public Charter School Board is currently seeking to strengthen rules about the disclosure of conflicts of interest in business transactions.
A spokeswoman for the charter board said it has sought to clarify its internal staff rules.
“Since we learned about the issues at Options, PCSB staff policies have changed to be more clear about the prohibition on outside employment — but the policies have always had a clear conflict-of-interest provision,” Theola Labbé-DeBose said. She declined to comment on Bolden’s claims that several charter schools have arrangements with private companies similar to Options’.
District lawyers initially named Hayward as a defendant because she signed key contracts in her role as the board chairwoman of Options, contracts that sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Exceptional Education Services, one of two for-profit companies controlled by the managers of Options.
The new document alleges that Hayward received at least $8,500 to attend company board meetings and was recognized as a part owner of EES, receiving 10 percent of the company’s shares during a meeting at her home.
Hayward’s attorney said the new allegations do not change the fact that his client was unaware of and did not profit from any alleged scheme. The amended complaint contains inaccuracies, he said, including the length of Hayward’s ownership stake in EES.
“There’s no reason to believe that she’s still an owner or that she profited by any ownership,” Jeffrey Jacobovitz said. “Nobody is saying that she received an extraordinary amount of money.”
Lawyers for the D.C. Office of the Attorney General filed the new allegations after the defendants sought to be dismissed from the case. The defendants argued that the original complaint failed to specify wrongdoing and state legitimate claims.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Craig Iscoe could decide to rule on those requests for dismissal, or he could accept the amended complaint and its new allegations. In a hearing Friday, attorneys for the defendants said they will continue to seek dismissal in any event but oppose the new complaint.
“At the 11th hour, these new allegations are brought to light — it’s just too prejudicial,” said Troy Poole, an attorney for Williams.
According to the amended complaint, EES was a shell company that the Options managers used to funnel money from the school into their own pockets.
Hayward originally incorporated EES in 2009 as a for-profit subsidiary of Options, which meant that Options owned all 100 shares of EES stock and profits were supposed to go to the school.
But in 2012, the court document alleges, Hayward and the three Options managers transferred ownership to themselves. The idea was discussed on May 22, 2012, at the Thunder Grill at Union Station, according to EES board meeting minutes cited in the court documents. Hayward did not attend that meeting — she was undergoing breast cancer treatment at the time, according to her attorney — but several months later, she hosted a meeting at her home, according to the complaint.
At that Aug. 9, 2012 meeting, Montgomery — who was both the chief executive of Options and chairman of EES — allegedly gave herself 53 percent of the company. The complaint says she split 18 percent of the shares between two Options managers, Cranford and Dalton, and gave 10 percent to Hayward. Two other people who had leadership roles at Options but are not named defendants also received shares.
After the Options managers gained ownership of EES, the company began providing the school’s bus transportation for the 2012-13 school year. But instead of running buses itself, EES hired a subcontractor — Deadwyler Transportation, the same company that had bused Options students the year before.
Deadwyler charged about $31,000 per month. But EES charged Options a 77 percent markup, court papers allege — $45,000 per month plus a $100,000 “ridership bonus” in the middle of the year.
Options and EES also signed a supplemental agreement that raised the payments to EES because of the school’s arrangement for increased Medicaid reimbursements for bus transportation. Those reimbursements are now the subject of a federal investigation, according to people familiar with the investigation.
In all, EES received $974,850 from Options for bus transportation, according to court documents. The company paid Deadwyler $309,200 to run the buses, and it paid Montgomery, Dalton and Cranford hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of the full-time salaries and bonuses they were already receiving for working at the charter school.
Montgomery allegedly received $235,000 from EES in addition to the $425,000 from Options during the 2012-13 school year; Cranford allegedly received $82,893 from EES; and Dalton allegedly received $162,522.
The three allegedly funneled additional tax dollars to themselves through Exceptional Education Management Corp., the other company they controlled, according to court documents.
In the middle of the 2012-13 school year, Options projected that its revenue would increase by $2.8 million because of an increase in the number of special education students with the most intensive needs, who also bring with them far more city money.
Soon after that projection, the school signed a management contract with EEMC estimated at the time to be worth $2.8 million. The “true purpose” of the contract was to funnel Options money to the managers through EEMC, the amended complaint alleges.
Options made a $500,000 prepayment under that contract in February 2013 and a second prepayment in August worth $954,000. It’s not clear what Options received in exchange for the money; the payments were allegedly made before the school received any documentation of services provided.
The large payments allegedly allowed EEMC to pay Montgomery $212,000 (on top of the $660,000 she received from EES and Options), while Cranford received an additional $131,706 and Dalton $94,884.
Some of the EES and EEMC money allegedly went to Williams, a longtime charter board official. Williams allegedly joined the finance committee of the Options board in February 2013 and in March began serving as a business adviser to EEMC.
He “regularly forwarded confidential, internal” e-mails to the three managers, including e-mails alerting them to an inspection of Options that was meant to be a surprise, according to court documents. He also allegedly ensured that EEMC’s largest contract with Options would not be reviewed by the board’s staff.
Williams left the charter board in August and became EEMC’s chief financial officer, according to court documents. The new allegations say that he and a Virginia corporation he owns, Gemini Financial Strategists, received $148,243 from EES and EEMC over seven months in 2013.
Sounds of silence on Options PCS from the Charter Board [FOCUS and Options PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
January 6, 2014
Extremely unfortunately, we begin 2014 exactly the way we ended last year: with another news story revealing more sordid information about the financial irregularities regarding public funds and Options PCS. This time the Washington Post's Emma Brown tells us, among other things, that while Jeremy Williams was the D.C. Public Charter School Board's chief financial officer it is alleged he was paid $150,000 to hide the shenanigans that resulted in the school's executives diverting three million dollars to their own pockets. New court papers claim that television anchor J.C. Hayward owned shares in one of the for-profit companies established by the school's senior team as a tool to transfer money to them from the charter, and was paid $8,500 a shot to attend the firm's board meetings. The Post reporter adds this finding about the team members:
"In all, EES received $974,850 from Options for bus transportation, according to court documents. The company paid Deadwyler $309,200 to run the buses, and it paid Montgomery, Dalton and Cranford hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of the full-time salaries and bonuses they were already receiving for working at the charter school."
In fact, since early last October when the problems with Option were first uncovered, Ms. Brown has supplied us with a constant loud trickle of new evidence about corruption involving Exceptional Education Services (EES) and Exceptional Education Management Corporation (EEMC). Yet, the last time the PCSB sent out any information regarding this tragedy for our local movement was when the first article appeared. The Board did vote in December to begin the charter revocation process.
I'm afraid this whole mess is turning into a perfect example of how not to get ahead of negative publicity. Financial issues at charters scares the daylight out of the community since there is a longstanding suspicion that these schools can do what they want with no oversight. While this could not be further from the truth, silence from the PCSB on the problems surrounding Options is not building confidence out there.
In a recent editorial the executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools Robert Cane states that the "Options affair should be seen for what it is: an aberration." We all pray that this is the case. However, in Ms. Brown's piece an attorney for one of Option's former managers says that similar financial arrangements exist between for-profit companies and charter schools.
The specific schools were not identified. Is this something with which the PCSB can provide assistance?
Before creating plan to improve D.C. middle schools, chancellor wants community input
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 5, 2014
The District’s school system cannot articulate how it will turn around its long-struggling middle schools until it gathers more input from the community, Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said recently in response to pressure from the D.C. Council to outline an improvement plan.
In a letter to Education Committee Chairman David A. Catania (I-At Large), Henderson said she is seeking input and will offer a “thoughtful plan” this spring as part of her budget proposal for the 2014-15 school year.
“Community and school-based expectations for middle grades vary greatly,” she wrote. “Releasing a plan for middle grades developed by DCPS’ central office without significant input from schools and parents would represent a lost opportunity.”
Catania said he thinks such a plan is overdue.
“Seven years into school reform, I don’t think it’s unfair to ask for a comprehensive plan that includes how we’re going to improve middle schools,” he said. “Much of this appears as if it’s being made up as it goes along.”
Catania requested an improvement plan in November after Henderson acknowledged publicly that the city’s middle-grade options — including traditional middle schools and K-8 “education campuses” — have largely failed to attract the city’s families. She suggested that the city could perhaps funnel students to charter schools in the middle grades, saying that “they know how to do middle school really well.”
That suggestion prompted outcry from some parents and pushback from Catania and other council members. A few weeks later, Henderson announced that improving middle schools — and ensuring consistent offerings at middle schools across the city — would be one of three priorities for the fiscal 2015 budget.
She described a staged approach to improve city schools: In 2013-14, the focus is on elementary schools; next year, officials will turn to middle schools; and in 2015-16, they’ll home in on high schools.The school system developed an online survey to gather parents’ input on what they would like to see in middle schools and has said it also will schedule community focus-group discussions.
While some parents have welcomed the chance to weigh in, others have expressed frustration with what they say is a slow pace of change and the school system’s failure to follow through with plans made long ago. In Capitol Hill, for example, parents developed a middle school improvement plan that the school system adopted in 2010 but has yet to fully implement.
Maury Elementary parent Joe Weedon, who has been active in efforts to improve Eliot-Hine Middle School, said it is “appalling” that Henderson’s response to Catania “was to ask parents to fill out a survey that lacks substance and depth and, in fact, was developed for budget planning purposes and in no way is related to developing a long-term middle school plan for the District.”
Three linchpins of education reform
The Washington Post
By Natalie Wexler
January 3, 2014
What’s the one thing we need to do to make the District’s public schools great?
There is no one thing. We need to do many things, all important and many interconnected. But there are three things on which we should focus, starting now.
I’ve spent the past five years learning everything I could about education in the District, first as a funder of education-reform efforts, then as a volunteer tutor in a D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) high school and, recently, as a blogger and journalist. I’ve listened to everyone from high-level policy-makers to teachers and students — two groups that generally don’t get consulted enough.
There’s no doubt that the District has made great strides in education over the past decade. Many of our charter schools are getting terrific results. And many DCPS schools have made tremendous progress.
But there’s still a lot of room for improvement, particularly at the high school level. Proficiency rates in most DCPS high schools are abysmal, and the D.C. graduation rate is an anemic 64 percent . It’s still unclear whether recent gains made at the elementary and middle school levels will persist through high school or vanish into the ether.
I’ve come across some extremely promising ideas to get us where we need to go. The District’s Flamboyan Foundation has pioneered strategies to get parents more involved in education. The CityBridge Foundation is focusing on combining technology with traditional classroom methods to gear instruction to students’ needs and abilities. Nonprofit organizations in this town are doing amazing work.
But three areas are crucial to improving our schools:
Better teacher preparation: Education experts agree that putting an excellent teacher in the classroom is the best method — at least, within the confines of the school itself — of improving a student’s chances of success. So far, the emphasis has been on evaluating teachers on the job. That’s led to a lot of understandable dissatisfaction among teachers.
We need to evaluate teachers, of course, but the best method of getting great teachers is to make sure we’re bringing the best, and best-trained, people we can into the system in the first place. One way to do that is to hire more teachers from “residency” programs, which require aspiring teachers to spend a year in a classroom with a more experienced teacher, gradually assuming more responsibility.
A residency year doesn’t guarantee that a first-year teacher can hit the ground running, and all new teachers need mentoring. But a residency year would increase the chances that new teachers can plan lessons well and maintain control of their classrooms, two things that generally pose the greatest challenges for novices. And it should help reduce the teacher turnover rate in the District, which deprives many students of the benefits of an experienced teacher.
Discipline that allows all students to learn: Learning can’t take place if there’s disruption in the classroom. Usually, a charismatic minority of students is responsible for initiating that disruption, which then has a tendency to metastasize.
Even teachers using the best methods of classroom management will encounter a few students who don’t respond. And, in a large system such as DCPS, it’s difficult to institute an approach that’s consistent across classrooms and schools. DCPS has alternative schools for students with behavioral difficulties, but they don’t seem to be solving the problem.
One solution is to suspend disruptive students, which at least creates an environment that allows the others to learn. But it doesn’t do much for the troublemakers, many of whom get suspended repeatedly. We must reach and educate those kids, too.
Another solution is to put disruptive students into a separate classroom, with fewer kids and more behavioral controls, until they’re ready to rejoin their peers. But some kids need mental health or other social services before they can function well in a regular environment, and we should ensure they get them.
Making sure students absorb and analyze information: I’ve encountered high school students in the District who haven’t learned some basic things, including a 10th-grader who was stumped when I asked her what 60 percent of 100 was. These kids must have been exposed to this material, and they’re not stupid. They just haven’t taken in what they’ve read or been told.
We need to make sure students are writing about what they’re learning, not just in English classes but also across the curriculum. And that should start in elementary school. That approach has been shown to improve comprehension and helps to develop the skills students need to grapple with high-school-level material.
Using writing as a teaching tool probably will get students more engaged, which should reduce behavior problems and make it easier for teachers to teach (thus also addressing items one and two).
My three-part agenda for reform won’t solve every problem, but if we don’t figure out how to do these three things, it’s not clear anything else will work.