A report from the Hartford Courant:
“HARTFORD — City and state educators said Monday that they had been served with subpoenas by a federal grand jury examining the expenditure of millions of dollars in public money by the troubled charter school management company FUSE.
“The subpoenas were issued Friday to the Hartford Public Schools and the state Department of Education, both of which have had extensive dealings with the state-subsidized FUSE, short for the Family Urban Schools of Excellence.
“FUSE was created in 2012 as a management company that used public and private money to take over failing, inner-city public schools and operate them as public charter schools. FUSE’s management agreements with public school systems gave it wide discretion over spending on salaries, rents, curriculum, equipment and other items.
“A series of embarrassing disclosures in the past month appears to have crippled FUSE, costing the organization all its management business, worth more than $1 million a year. The closely affiliated Jumoke Academy fired FUSE as manager of its three Hartford charter schools. Schools in Bridgeport and New Haven severed ties with FUSE, and educators in Louisiana, concerned about events in Connecticut, pulled FUSE from a charter school set to open in Baton Rouge next month.
“The subpoena to Hartford Public Schools demands all city records since 2012 related to FUSE founder and former CEO Michael M. Sharpe, FUSE, Jumoke Academy and Milner Elementary School. Hartford hired FUSE in 2012 to turn around Milner, but the relationship soured and ultimately ended when a fall 2013 assessment showed that, in spite of $1 million in additional spending by FUSE at Milner, students continued to read at rock-bottom levels.”
The State Department of Education did not release a copy of its subpoena.
Jumoke Academy charter schools had received $53 million in state funds since its founding in 1997.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can’t you see the politicians and bureaucrats scurrying around trying to decide who will “be nominated” to take the fall? I hope the guilty parties are far too high profile to avoid being held accountable. I hope it is getting harder to just pull up stakes and move to another state with reformy aspirations.
Drip, drip, drip…..one more nail in Dannel’s political coffin.
He won’t be boasting about charters, choice and the civil right$ i$$ue of our time for a while.
Any bets on how much longer Pryor will last?
Arne may need to create a job for Stefan so he can exit quietly.
This week, a Dayton Daily News reporter, in a summary paragraph, quoted Ohio’s auditor, “half of all of the misspent money, the office identifies, in audits, is linked to charter schools.”
Ohio is unlikely to be unique. I conclude, tax payers could avoid a lot of expense, by prohibiting charters e.g. state auditor expenses and legal fees for the state board on education.
You can read the search warrants for the Concept charter schools in Illinois now. These are the contractors covered by the warrant:
“Advanced Solutions for Education of Schaumburg and company founder Ozgur Balsoy, who used to be administrator of a Concept-run school in Columbus, Ohio. The company was the consultant to Concept on applications for E-Rate funding, according to the federal program’s records.
Arlington Heights-based Core Group Inc. and its president Ertugrul Gurbuz. Core is described in federal records as performing much of the work for Concept under the E-Rate program.
Signature Maker Inc. of Hoffman Estates and president Ergun Koyuncu.
Cambridge Technologies of Chesterland, Ohio and owner Stephen Draviam.”
The investigation is out of Cleveland, and I think it’s interesting how all of the Concept business spin-offs seem to originate out of Ohio.
http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/search-warrants-reveal-details-fbi-raid-concept-schools/mon-07212014-622pm
Between the “Dr.” Sharpe/Fuse/Jumoke charter schools debacle and proposed New London Superintendent, “Dr.” Carter, the deform movement in Connecticut has suffered serious blows. They have done significant damage to charter schools and the deform movement all by themselves. They have done to themselves what would have easily taken us years to do. You know what they say, what goes around comes around.
So here’s the application for one of the CT schools. Go to attachment 14 and you can see all the high-profile people who endorsed the school. Two current mayors, one former mayor and CONNCAN.
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1099724-booker-t-washington-aca
The banker, Jeff Klaus, pg. 286, is married to Dacia Toll the Achievement First charter chain CEO and co founder. Mr. Klaus Toll loves sharpe and FUSE. The Jumoke/FUSE. students would automatically be accepted into AF, so it was a feeder school to supply them with more students. Our commissioner was a co founder of AF.
Also, look again at the mayors’ letters. They are the same word for word.
Conncan takes care of that service for free. It’s a charter incestuous cesspool here in CT.
Exposing the endorsements and relationships greatly buttresses the legal arguments. Good job!
“Charreder Schools”
The FUSE is lit
The Jury’s in
The charter’s sit
On powder tin
Sorry, should have been “charters”
And so it begins…
and continues. . . and continues. . . and continues. . . .