NEWS
- More than 1,600 D.C. charter students may become school-less [Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS mentioned]
- Lots Of Confusion Over Teacher Firings At Howard University Middle School [Howard University PCS mentioned]
- D.C. special-ed student information inadvertently posted online since 2010
More than 1,600 D.C. charter students may become school-less [Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS mentioned]
Watchdog.org
By Moriah Costa
February 3, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 1,600 D.C. charter students at Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School may have to find a new school amid allegations that its founder funneled $13 million of public money into a private company for personal gain.
A Superior Court judge ordered the school to stop paying the management company that school founder Kent Amos established in 2002. According to a complaint filed by former D.C. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan, the company was paid millions of dollars for “work that could have been performed, and in many cases was actually performed, by direct employees of the school.”
At its Dec. 15 public meeting, the D.C. Public Charter School Board voted to begin the process of revoking the school’s charter, citing fiscal mismanagement by the school.
Under the School Reform Act of 1995, the board is required to revoke a charter if a school “has engaged in non-adherence to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, has engaged in a pattern of fiscal mismanagement or is no longer economically viable.” The charter board contends that by making the agreement with the management company, the school’s board failed to protect public funds.
A. Scott Bolden, an attorney for the school, said the academy’s board was as surprised as the charter board.
“The public charter school board does not regulate the for-profit management company, so if you’re upset with the management company, the for-profit one, if you’re offended by that, it’s not right to blame the school, its leadership, its board. It’s not right to blame the families who are here tonight or the kids who are trying to get an education,” he told the D.C. board.
If the school’s charter is revoked, parents will have to find a new school for their students to attend. With more than 20,000 students on the wait list for D.C. charter schools, that could prove difficult.
Amos founded the school in 1998 and four years later created a for-profit management company, Community Action Partners and Charter School Management LLC, along with two colleagues. Over the next 11 years, the school’s management fees steadily rose while costs and staff declined. By 2013, the management company’s staff fell from 12 to four, including Amos.
In 2012, Amos received about $1.15 million in income from the company, according to federal tax returns made public through the trial. In 2013, he earned about $1.28 million. That same year, Amos’ wife and stepson received $103,000 and $167,000, respectively.
The management company also paid $1,148 a month for a 2010 Lexus CX 460 sport-utility vehicle that was registered to Amos, according to the complaint.
In 2013, the academy’s charter was renewed for 15 years, after school leaders agreed to close one of its underperforming campuses. It had closed another school in 2012 for poor academic performance.
For-profit management companies are common among charter schools, but it’s against district law to distribute charter school money for the benefit of private individuals.
In 2012, the board had given the academy a clean bill of financial health. According to the Washington Post, the board started to have concerns a year later about the finances of the management company but was denied a request to review the company’s budget. Under current federal law, a private management company for a school that receives public money does not have to disclose how it spends that money.
Last year, the board asked the D.C. Council to pass legislation that would allow access to the financial records of charter management companies, but so far nothing has been done.
Today the charter serves grades preschool through eight and manages three schools: Amos 1, Amos 2 and Amos 5, and an online program. Two of the schools are in the second-highest charter ranking; the other is ranked last.
At a Jan. 27 public hearing requested by the school, Amos declared he was “not a criminal.” He said he only made 2 percent of the 6 percent flat fee his management company received from the school.
“I left twice as much money on the table as I took off,” he said. He is currently employed by the school as its founder.
At the hearing, Bolden, school staff and members of the community praised Amos’ leadership and devotion to helping D.C. youth. More than 68 people signed up to testify in support of keeping the school open.
Bolden denied the accusations that the school paid the management company for duties performed by school staff and said the for-profit was hired to “provide oversight, monitoring and management of the operations, which they did.”
Parental concerns
Keona Oxendine, mother of a student and representative of the parent-teacher organization at Amos 1, said she was worried about the message the board was sending to students.
“I’m listening to the arguments and the accusations and I feel like there’s something fundamentally lost and it’s the children,” she said.
A number of parents asked the board to consider other options besides closing the school.
Lisa Shields, who lives on Bolling Air Force Base in Anacostia, said CAPCS online program helps children of military families transition to a new area and catch up with their peers. She noted that in the past year, police have gotten involved in three incidents at the neighborhood elementary school for the base.
“Our children have to make a lot of sacrifices and consistency in schooling is often one of them,” she said.
Jeremy Phillis, a student at CAPCS online, said he was often bullied in school by his peers and staff and that the online program not only let him escape that, but helped him maintain his 3.6 grade point average.
“I work hard and learn a lot,” he told the board. “Don’t rob me of the opportunity. Life isn’t fair but education should be.”
His mother, Tamara Phillis, said they had repeatedly been failed by schools until they found CAPCS’ online program. She asked the board not to close the school without having an equivalent alternative in place.
“The whole purpose of having school choice is to allow parents and students to evaluate their needs and decide which school would be the best match for them,” she said.
The board is scheduled to vote on the school’s fate on Feb. 12. The trial against Amos, the management company and the school is ongoing.
Lots Of Confusion Over Teacher Firings At Howard University Middle School [Howard University PCS mentioned]
NPR
By Gene Demby
February 3, 2015
A D.C. charter school founded by and located at Howard University has been embroiled for days in an increasingly public fight over the firing of three teachers. Parents and students claim the teachers were dismissed for teaching Black History Month lessons. These parents and students have mobilized in protest, and social media are abuzz.
But there's a whole lot about this story that's unclear. Here's what we know — and what we don't.
According to WJLA, the teachers were given pink slips in late January. Several parents have claimed that this happened in front of students, and that the teachers were escorted out of the building by police officers.
The head of a parents group told The Washington Post that the teachers were already planning to step down when they were terminated:
"Adilah Bilal, president of Parents in Action, a parent group at the school, said the social studies teachers came to the group on Jan. 22 and said they were planning to resign. Bilal said the reason the teachers gave was that they wanted to introduce more African history into a curriculum that focuses heavily on Greek and Roman history, but they claimed the administration did not support them. One teacher said that she had been written up for a lesson she gave about former mayor Marion Barry near the time of his death, Bilal said.
"She said the teachers had planned to resign [that] Friday, so they could stay long enough to help students meet the Feb. 2 deadline to apply to high school through the citywide enrollment lottery. In the meantime, the parents resolved to hire a mediator to help the teachers and administrators work out the dispute. But early last week, administrators asked the teachers to leave immediately, she said."
On Monday, at least two dozen students at the middle school (which has about 300 students) walked out in protest, waving pan-African flags and holding signs. Some shared a list of demands, including "new social studies teachers ... who will be treated with respect" and that the school "stop tracking students for school to prison pipeline."
It would be surprising if the parents' allegations turned out to be true — for one thing, the school is at Howard University, one of the country's most well-known historically black universities, where the marching band famously plays the "Black National Anthem" before its football games. (The university's president, Wayne Frederick, sits on the charter school's board of directors.) And the middle school has observed Black History Month before — here's a picture from a 2008 school assembly celebrating it.
In the meantime, the local chapter of the NAACP has been conducting its own investigation. Chapter head Akosua Ali told The Washington Post on Monday that the organization doesn't believe the teachers were dismissed for teaching black history, but the Post doesn't put forward another reason for the firings.
The school hasn't publicly responded to the allegations but told me a statement will be released in the next few days.
The city's public charter school board posted a statement on its website saying the city's charter schools "are allowed the sole discretion on specific academic decisions including the hiring and termination of their staff and teachers." Notably, teachers at charter schools are typically not unionized the way traditional public school teachers are, which means they are easier to terminate.
We've reached out to the NAACP and will update this post if we hear back.
D.C. special-ed student information inadvertently posted online since 2010
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
February 3, 2015
Personal information for special-education students in the District has been publicly available online since 2010 through a security breach that D.C. public school officials reported on Tuesday.
The personal data was included in training documents for special-education providers in 2010 and 2011. The documents, including one that was more than 300 pages long, were inadvertently posted to an internal Web site that was not secure, officials said.
The training materials contained some charts with individual student names as well as passwords for online mailboxes where documents, such as parent complaints and attorneys’ letters, can be filed and stored.
Education officials are still trying to determine what was accessible and how many students and families had information exposed, said Fred Lewis, a spokesman for D.C. public schools.
Nathaniel Beers, chief of specialized instruction for D.C. schools, said in a statement Tuesday that there is “no evidence that data was compromised.” He said accessing the information with explicit permission is illegal.
The school system was made aware of the breach by BuzzFeed News on Monday. The site was shut down, and log-in information for the database has been changed.
One password included in the training materials provided entrance to the “Blackman-Jones database,” referring to an 18-year-old special-education lawsuit that prompted judicial oversight of how school administrators respond to requests for special education services.
Because of that oversight, the District has been under close scrutiny to meet specific goals for providing due process hearings and services in a timely way. The process has required close monitoring of every request for services and how it’s handled. In December, a U.S. district judge dismissed the suit.
Lewis said that the password included in the training documents accessed an old version of the database.
The school system plans to send letters to families explaining what happened, he said. Families who have questions about the breach or want to know whether their information was exposed can call 202-442-5451.
Beers apologized to D.C. students and families on Tuesday.
“We understand how important it is to safeguard student information and will conduct a top-to-bottom review of our security practices to ensure this does not happen again,” he said in the statement.
__________
FROM FOCUS
 |
Upcoming events
Click Here > |
__________