The El Camino Real Charter High School was a successful public high school; in 2011, it converted to charter status, and it is now a successful charter school.
But it has a big problem. Its principal and other top employees charged many thousands of dollars to the school’s credit card for expensive dinners, luxury hotels, and first-class air travel while moonlighting as a scout for a professional basketball team.
The school has been warned repeatedly, and now the school board is giving it one month to clean up the mess.
The case is one more example of tensions between the nation’s second-largest school system and its charter schools, which manage their own public funding and are free from some rules that govern traditional campuses. El Camino Real Charter High School was run by the district until 2011.
At last week’s meeting, board member Scott Schmerelson said El Camino as a charter remains “an excellent school.”
But it “is not a private school,” said Schmerelson, who represents the west San Fernando Valley area where the school is located. “It is a public school. They have to go by the same rules we do.”
The El Camino case could test the limits of that assertion. El Camino, for example, has declined to tell the district whether it has taken disciplinary action against Executive Director Dave Fehte, who has come under internal and external scrutiny. Such action could be considered a confidential personnel matter, to be kept even from L.A. Unified.
A report from the district’s charter school division accuses El Camino of demonstrating “an inability to determine how public funds are being used,” adding that “fatal flaws in judgment … call into serious question the organization’s ability to successfully implement the charter in accordance with applicable law and district requirements.”
According to L.A. Unified, a sampling of 425 credit card expenses from five El Camino employees, including Fehte, revealed that “countless expenses were incurred without adherence to any uniform procedure, and without verification of the necessary details.”
Apparently the charter school board thought that the school’s autonomy extended to its financial affairs. We will watch what happens.
Is it a public school or a publicly funded private school?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Never mind “disciplinary action,” why haven’t the principal and the others been arrested for, oh, I don’t know, embezzlement? Fraud? It’s a type of theft, and should be dealt with under the law, I would think.
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Right on, Zorba. This kind of entitled behavior is so common in LA that perhaps it seems to the BoE as de riguer. Deasy was famous for as a big spender on taxpayer money, as was our former mayor and some legislators like former Speaker of the State House, Tony Nunes with his $1500 bottles of wine, who even got his murderer son off with a slap on the wrist couple of easy years in prison.
And Diane, this is one more publicly funded private Charter School. It, like Pali Charter HS in Pacific Palisades, is located in a upper middle to upper class socio economic neighborhood, which helps it to preserve a reputation for outstanding academics since most students are from privileged families.
Maybe their Principal with sticky fingers just gave himself a bonus (paid from Student Funds). It worked for Jamie Dimon and also for the female Prez of Mylan…why not for him?
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The is…Farbian Nunez, not Tony Nunes…typo.
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Apparently the charter school board thought that the school’s autonomy extended to its financial affairs.
And where do you suppose they get that idea? The charter authorizer?
Your recent post with pix of you and Hillary are turning up a 404 error for comments.
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Aren’t they considered public servant and have guidelines and rules of conduct and ethics?
Shouldn’t there be some kind of licensure to run a charter. Usually superintendents have to pass a certification. Why wouldn’t charters be required to do the same? That way at least they may be required to know something about educating kids and running a school? Seems like once you put in all the mechanisms to prevent charters from ripping us off you are almost back to the public system. Why not skip the folly and focus on fixing the public schools. Our democracy and defense depends on it!
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Here’s another charter school scandal. BELOW is a detailed story of a sex scandal at the Summit Tahoma Charter School in San Jose, CA,
First, here’s some TV news coverage of this that I just found:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/02/29/police-investigate-whether-sj-principal-broke-law-in-teacher-sex-case/
At this point when this was broadcast, there still existed the possibility that the principal at Summit Tahoma, Nicholas Kim, might face criminal charges, but as the story BELOW indicates, that never happened, or hasn’t yet happened.
And here is that more detailed story:
Here’s a story — relevant to the issue of deregulation of charters — that I’ve been sitting on for a couple months. (long post, but worth reading, trust me)
This sordid tale was going around at the California delegation at the NEA-RA convention held in D.C. in early July of this year. (and yeah, I freely concede tht there’s a possibility of the story being embellished in the re-telling, as in the “telephone game” effect. However, I was able to find some corroboration of the main facts in media reports available on the internet. SEE BELOW)
It’s about how a principal at a Summit Tahoma Charter School in San Jose:
1) heard a report that one of his teachers was having sex with a female student;
2) he conducts “an internal investigation,” where he, on his own, concluded that nothing happened, and thus, never goes to the authorities;
(This action is a total violation of California law, and a major dereliction of duty, as he is not allowed to make that call NOT to tell the police. Like all adults working in a school setting — administrators, teachers, counselors, nurses, etc. — he is a mandatory reporter. Under penalty of jail and a steep fine for failing to do so, he MUST IMMEDIATELY contact the police. In LAUSD, we have to watch a video and take a test to this effect twice a year.
This situation is similar to when the officials at St. Hope charter school failed to report what Kevin Johnson was doing.)
2) it’s rumored by some (again, I heard this from some people at the NEA-RA in early July) that during the charter principal’s so-called “internal investigation,” he found out the story was true; it’s further alleged that, instead of reporting this to authorities as he was legally required, he pressured both the student and the teacher to deny the affair if and when any police or any other oversight authority questions them as in “Do this, and it will all go away;
“You don’t want ruin Mr. So-and-so’s life and send him to prison. Do you?” … or words to that effect.
(UPSHOT: the best interests and reputation of the Summit Charter Schools are more important than the well-being of the schools students, or following the law, or removing a teacher whom the principal knows full well likes to get it on with underage girls.)
3) even though the principal allegedly tried to bury the story, the word got out anyway, and — THANK JESUS!!!! — a non-involved parent did what the principal had a mandatory legal requirement to do, but did not — she called the police;
4) the police, responding to the parent’s reporting, show up at the school site while the principal is off-campus, and the assistant principal allows the police to question the girl in question in a private room;
5) the questioning starts just as the principal arrives back at the school;
6) the principal discovers what’s going on, and frantically calls the Summit charter chain’s main headquarters, and talks his superior and the charter chain’s lawyer, who tells them the principal has a legal right (???!!!) to barge in to the room, stop the police questioning, and order the police to leave. Incredibly he attempts to do just that, invoking the legal advice he was just given over the phone to the police present;
7) the police tells the principal that their Summit Charter School chain’s lawyers or management to whom he just spoke are in error, and furthermore, the police allegedly tell the principal that if he doesn’t back off, he will be charged with obstruction of justice, and handcuffed; suitably chagrined, he backs the-hell off, and shuts the-hell up;
8) the police questioning continues, but the girl sticks to her story — the story the principal allegedly pressured her to tell — nothing happened with the teacher;
(Whew! That was a close one! … ehhh … Not so fast, Principal Kim!)
9) later, the girl is questioned again by police at her family’s house, and away from the allegedly obstructing principal, she spills the beans;
10) the teacher is arrested and is currently being prosecuted;
(He’s a goa-teed loser, from the mug shot in the media coverage BELOW… “Seriously Dude, does affecting that ‘Robin Hood look’ help you score with the girls whom you teach?” Sweet Jesus! God save us all! )
11) the principal and Summit Charter School put out a very carefully and legally vetted statement, saying that the school’s administration is happy that the evil pedophile teacher has been removed, that’s what they wanted all along if the story was true, and that, contrary to the gossip that been going around, he and the Summit Tahoma Charter school administration cooperated with authorities at all times, and they view the well-being of the victim and of all their students as paramount blah-blah-blah…
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Quite a yarn? Ayy?
Here’s the actual media coverage I was able to find corroborating the this rumor/story floating around the NEA-RA convention in D.C. this July:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_29568103/san-jose-house-probe-teacher-student-tryst-elicits
The police and other authorities were furious at principal’s outrageous claim that he could simply conduct his own investigation, and then conclude on his own whether or not this matter did warranted contacting the police.
William Grimm, senior attorney for the National Center for Youth Law based in Oakland was quoted in the above article link, and did not mince words:
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS:
” ‘The fact that he decided to take some of his time to investigate it automatically means it crosses the threshold of ‘reasonable suspicion,’ he (Grimm) said. ‘And what expertise does the principal have in identifying potential teacher-student sexual relationships?
” ‘He (the principal himself) posed a danger to the school by doing this and not having the qualifications necessary.’ ”
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When the principal of Summit Tahoma Charter, Nicholas Kim, entered the room where police were questioning the alleged victim of a teacher’s molestation, this transpired:
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS:
“And in the early stages of the police investigation at Summit Tahoma Public School, the same principal, Nicholas Kim, burst into a room to demand police stop interviewing the alleged victim, only to be rebuffed by a sex-crimes detective. This came a short time after the detective reminded the principal about his duty to report any potential child abuse allegation; the principal asserted he was following the direction of his management and legal team.”
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Here’s some of Summit’s legally vetted statement about this affair:
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS: (with my editorial NOTE’s in parentheses)
“In a statement to this newspaper, Kim (and the Summit Charter chain) wrote that …
” ‘At no point was there any intent by the school to conceal or hide any information. We acted in good faith. Under the circumstances and evidence available to us, we acted immediately and with speed to find all information. When we received information we followed up according to legal requirement.’
(NOTE: “followed up according to legal requirement” = chose not to go to the police when he heard a report alleging sexual abuse of a minor, so that, had the parent not gone on his or her own and reported it to the police himself or herself, no one would have ever been the wiser, and that goa-teed Robin-Hood-looking perv would still be on the loose preying on minors at San Jose’s Summit Tahoma Charter School.)
” ‘Once law enforcement became involved and interrogated the student, new evidence came to light that we acted on immediately.’
(NOTE: while that “new evidence did eventually “come to light” in the context of a police interview, it was no thanks to either Principal Kim, or to the Summit Management or to its legal team who gave Principal Kim the ridiculous and unlawful direction to barge in the room where police were questioning a witness, and attempt to stop this information from “coming to light”. Therefore, it’s DESPITE Principal Kim and his Summit Charter superiors, that the truth DID, in fact, “come to light,’ NOT BECAUSE of them.)
“The District Attorney’s Office said Friday that Kim’s decision not to notify police or Child Protective Services was not a violation of the mandated reporter law because the rumor alone did not create a level of ‘reasonable suspicion’ abuse had occurred, as the state penal code requires.
(NOTE: Now, this bit gets me really steamed.
I don’t know if the Summit charter folks are plugged in with, or have clout with the police in San Jose, so much so that they able to elicit such a statement and treatment from the local police, but I can say with absolute certainty:
THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN ACCEPTABLE WITH EITHER LAPD, or WITH LAUSD management. (especially in the wake of the Miramonte fiasco a few years back.)
ALL HELL WOULD HAVE RAINED DOWN ON ANY LAUSD PRINCIPAL — or teacher or administrator or other mandated reporter working in an LAUSD school — WHO ACTED THUSLY — both from the police, and from LAUSD administration. He or she would have been canned, banned from education for life, and probably prosecuted and fined, if not imprisoned.
What’s wrong you guys up in San Jose?
Once again, you see the difference between what goes on in a traditional public school setting, and in a deregulated charter setting.)
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS:
“The code reads, in part:
” ‘Reasonable suspicion’ does not require certainty that child abuse or neglect has occurred nor does it require a specific medical indication of child abuse or neglect; any ‘reasonable suspicion’ is sufficient.”
” ‘Where we see administrators making mistakes is when they have a victim telling them that some abuse occurred and then the administrator does their own investigation to see if it’s accurate, to see if it’s true,’ Assistant District Attorney Terry Harman said.
” ‘If you have a situation where what you’re hearing is a rumor and you’re not hearing from someone who saw something or someone who experienced something, then can you have a reasonable suspicion from what appears to be a rumor?’ ”
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Here’s more coverage of this:
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Jose-teacher-arrested-for-allegedly-having-6855398.php
As I reflect on this charter school abomination, I wonder how Campbell Brown — that simultaneous privately-managed-deregulated-charter-lover, and crusader against teacher-child-abusers — and her crack team of reporters at The 74 would handle this story, had it happened …
… at a traditional public school
VS.
… at a charter school … as it most certainly did in this case.
The former would have rated a sizzling expose article on Campbell’s The74 website, proving once again how horrible traditional public schools are … “Unionized teachers are pedophiles!!! And their administrators protect them!!! We need to close ’em all down, and convert them to privately-managed charters, where these horrible things NEVER happen.”
The latter? … Ehhh … not so much… as in … “Oh no. We need to bury this one folks. We can’t make charters look bad.”
On that score, here’s a piece about how reporters at The 74 are allegedly barred from reporting anything negative on charter schools. (NOTE: since last fall, the Success Academy charter chain has faced on public relations disaster after another, and not a word from The 74 about any of them. Campbell Brown, naturally, serves of the Board of Directors of Success Academy charter schools)
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DIANE RAVITCH:
“Jennifer Berkshire, aka EduShyster, got a tip about a journalist who applied for a job with The 74. She was told that the 74 news service needed investigative journalists but they would not cover subject of charter school scandals. She shared her story with EduShyster but insisted on anonymity as revealing her name would be “career suicide.” EduShyster repeatedly reached out to a high-level official at The 74. Eventually he responded and insisted that he could not comment based on a report from an anonymous source.
“And of course, the site will be ‘fair and balanced.’ Where have we heard THAT before?”
Here’s the Edushyster story to which Dr. Ravitch refers:
http://edushyster.com/will-the-74-investigate-charter-scandals/
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Indeed, this whole Summit Tahoma Charter School story goes to the heart of why it’s such a danger to allow charter school operators to be so free of regulation — as they so often demand in order to … in their words … “be free to innovate” or whatever.
I’ll say it again: regarding this situation at Summit Tahoma Charter School, these same events would NEVER have played out this way in a traditional public school, at least not without serious consequences for the administrators or any adults who acted the way Principal Kim and the Summit Charter School management did.
Here’s how it works in California, in a traditional public school:
Both teachers and administrators in traditional public schools are “mandated reporters.” They have to attend “mandated reporter” training twice every school year (I’ve taken it over 20 times), in which it is made loud and clear that once you have knowledge or suspicion that abuse has taken place, a 36-hour clock starts from that very moment. If you don’t report it immediately, or within 36 hours at the latest,
1) the teacher or administrator will be fired;
2) the teacher or administrator will lose his/her credentials, and be banned from education for life;
and possibly …
3) be prosecuted as an accessory, if you collude with the perpetrator in covering up or destroying evidence.
In contrast to the way it works in LAUSD, with the adult administrators and teachers at a California charter … they apparently can get away with a lot … even if it puts children at risk of sexual predators.
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If this happened in a public school system the Principal would be fired. Period. End of report. In the world of deregulation, though, this kind of thing is OK as long as it gets
“cleaned up” in a month.
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Another wrinkle to this story.
The inexperienced principal, Nicholas Kim, was the same age as the alleged pedophile teacher, Zachary Drew, whom he hired to work at Summit, and whom he supervised during Drew’s predations.
Here’s Nicholas Kim’s LinkedIn page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-kim-14638b90
He graduated college the same year, 2009, as as Zachary Drew, the alleged pedophile teacher, which makes them both around 29-30.
For a visual, here’s the goa-tee-less Zachary Drew:
http://calpoly.classfaqs.com/listings/view/Zachary-Drew#.V8weQIUVP-U
It’s from page identifying Drew as a professor at California Polytechnic (did Cal Poly hire him after being arrested for sex with a minor? What’s up with THAT?!)
In short, both Principal Kim and Drew are contemporaries, or buddies. While the motive of the charter chain’s brass and legal team was in suppressing this information was to protect the school’s and the Summit charter chain’s reputation, Kim’s motives may have been different or more personal. As a contemporary of Drew’s, as well as a fellow graduate of the California university system, Kim may have identified with Drew to the point where he put Drew’s best interest — avoiding jail time for jail bait — against the well-being of the “jail bait” whom Drew was victimizing.
This points out one of the dangers of promoting teachers so young, so untrained, and so inexperienced in a position of high authority at a school site, and not mandating any kind Child Abuse Awareness Training.(CAAT, as it’s abbreviated in LAUSD.)
If Kim had been properly trained on child abuse protocols — as he would have been had he worked in a regulated traditional public school under the oversight of a district… and not in an unregulated charter school, Kim never would have barged into a police interview of an alleged victim, then ridiculously ordered the police to cease questioning and leave the building.
Once more, had he obstructed justice like that in LAUSD, he would have been immediately put on leave, then fired soon after.
In late May of this year, there was a protest of African-American students against the racist school disicpline policies, and the lack of African-American teachers at their privately-managed charter school — Achievement First Amistad (a better-named school there never was… look up Amistad) in Connecticut.
I noticed the same thing about the principal in the Amistad situation. Her name is Claire Polcrack. From the newspaper accounts, Polcrack was bungling the whole situation, and seemed to be way in over her head. Like Nicholas Kim, she was just 28. I called this the Doogie-Howser-ization of school administration (That’s for you Gen-X-ers out there. For the Boomers, you can call it the Bugsy-Malone-ization of school administration).
The charter chains are so desperate to expand as quickly as possible that they put people in charge who have neither the experience, training, nor the innate ability to pull off performing on the job.
Dr. Ravitch covered this here:
In the article, the school’s principal in the picture is Claire Polcrack, who has a Linked-in page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-polcrack-37340411b
According to this, Principal Polcrack’s career trajectory was the following:
Age 22, TFA teacher for two years, (right out of college in 2009 same year as Kim and Drew … hmmm … coincidence?)
Age 24, TFA aluma and staff teacher (2011)
Age 26, Academic Dean (2013)
Age 28, Principal (June 2015)
Age 29 (today), 1st-year Principal facing a public relations disaster
Wow, that was fast!
Actually, this is nothing. In Los Angeles, I’ve heard of charter school principals as young as 24 (!!!). WTF?!
Chew on that for a while.
Mark my words, if and when Eli Broad commences his program of adding 260 more corporate ed. reform charter schools to the LAUSD landscape, this “Doogie-Howser-ization” of school site management will become a routine and a widespread practice. The charter folks will be forced to do so, as there simply isn’t enough seasoned, trained talent with years of experience to fill those administrative positions.
Nobody will ever be able to tell me that this will be good for the kids being educated in those schools, or for the teachers working under the amateur principals — as is evidenced in the cases of Summit-San Jose’s Nicholas Kim, and Achievement First Amistad’s Claire Polcrack.
Indeed, this is very common in corporate Charter World. That mega-bitch Charlotte Dial, the Success Academy teacher from the infamous “rip-and-redo” video …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfjKYOj7GQ
… is only in her 20’s and instead of being fired for the above abomination, has been put charge of training Success Academy teachers system-wide. Again, WTF?
Contrast this with LAUSD, where the process of becoming a principal is not so rushed. There’s more of a dues paying process, with greater requirements and demands for who aspiring to achieve the role of principal. A future principal usually teaches at least 10 years, before moving up to the position of Coordinator, a sort of hybrid administrator/teacher position, where he or she remains part of UTLA, A Coordinator has one foot in management’s camp, and one foot in labor’s.
After a few years — at least two — as a coordinator, they may move up to serve as Assistant Principal for a few more years. They attend a district training program while serving as coordinator to prep for the move to A.P. Only the most select move up to be an A.P. After several years as an A.P. — sometimes more than a decade — they finally achieve the role of principal.
In short, one attains a principalship, at the very earliest, in your late 30’s at the absolute earliest. Throughout the entire decade-and-a-half-plus process, one is mentored by principals, seasoned pros with decades of experience. Prospective prinicals are followed and monitored closely to see if they can cut it, or have what it takes. I’ve seen many Assistant Principals — wanna-be principals — who get moved permanently back to a teaching position, after being deemed not up to snuff.
Anyway, by the time one survives this and becomes a principal, they know what they’re doing. (with the rarest exceptions… another story.)
This is not a slight on Ms. Polcrack, who appears to have been a top-notch Math teacher (TFA ain’t all bad😉 ). It’s just that she may be in over her head as principal, at least moreso than she would have in a program run like LAUSD’s.
For a little late Baby Boomer nostalgia, here’s Bugsy Malone (which first put Scott “Chachi-from-HAPPY-DAYS” Baio on the map):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwMzhJW7IB4
For the Doogie Howser reference, here’s a trailer or commercial for that show which makes my point — the front office of so many charter schools are staffed by far too many Doogie Howser’s running the show:
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