The Bay Area Technology School, a charter school in Oakland, California, was thrown into chaos and confusion when the principal suddenly resigned and left the country amid a financial investigation.
The school is believed to be part of the Gulen charter network associated with the reclusive imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania, because of the unusual number of Turkish board members.
Just before the end of the last school year, the principal of Oakland’s Bay Area Technology School, Hayri Hatipoglu, suddenly resigned. At least four other senior staff and two of the charter school’s five board members also abruptly quit. As a result, the organization was thrown into chaos. And then Hatipoglu disappeared. According to several sources, he left the country with his family for Australia, where he is a citizen.
Afterwards, the Oakland Unified School District, which is responsible for overseeing the BayTech charter school, opened an investigation. BayTech’s three remaining board members also hired an independent party to carry out their own internal review.
While OUSD and BayTech have both attempted to keep the mini-crisis under wraps, the Express has learned that BayTech’s three remaining board members are accusing Hatipoglu of defrauding the school. They allege that Hatipoglu surreptitiously changed his employment contract to provide himself with three years’ worth of severance pay totaling about $450,000, an unusually large sum for a small school with an annual budget of approximately $3 million. His previous contract provided for only six months of severance pay, a standard in the education sector.
“We believe he changed his contract,” said BayTech board member Fatih Dagdelen in a recent interview. “According to his contract, he’d get paid a six-months salary if he resigned, but all of a sudden his contract said he’d get paid two-and-a-half years further.”
Remaining board members suspect fraud.
In an unusual and unsolicited email to the Express sent on June 28, Hatipoglu wrote that the school’s Turkish board members conspired to punish him for his decision to break ties with a Southern California-based nonprofit. The nonprofit, Accord Institute, happens to be controlled by the followers of a powerful Turkish imam who leads a global Islamic political force called the Gülen movement.
Founded in the 1970s by the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, the Gülen movement is an Islamic-inspired social and political force that globalized as its followers immigrated to Europe, Australia, and the United States. The Turkish government considers the Gülen movement a terrorist organization because its members helped organize the 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Erdogan, and Erdogan has ordered thousands of Gülenists jailed. (The U.S. government, however, does not classify the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization.) Fethullah Gülen currently lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania, but he’s considered one of the most powerful men in Turkish politics. His followers also set up and operate one of the largest chains of charter schools in the U.S. BayTech is one of these schools.
Might I suggest that these events are evidence that public schools that are funded by taxpayers should be subject to public supervision and oversight–not by private and unaccountable boards– and should be staffed by certified teachers and other staff? Charter schools in California operate without any accountability or transparency, which is an open invitation to rob taxpayers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking from San Francisco, I certainly agree that charter schools in California operate without any accountability or transparency, but do charter schools in any state operate WITH accountability and/or transparency? It would take a LOT to convince me that they do. (In fact, pretty much nothing would — I would assume they just had more successful flimflammers doing their PR.)
LikeLike
Virginia has nine charters, all controlled by the district
LikeLike
That is because Virginia is one of the only states left in the USA to have strong Democratic Governors who are pro-public education. In the last primary, the pro-public education activists did an excellent job at distinguishing between the pro-public school and the pro-charter Democratic nominees. I believe that is why Northam won. Plenty of voters support public schools and strong transparency laws but too many pro-charter democrats masquerade as wanting “good schools” and fool them.
In other states, both Democrat and Republican Governors are strongly pro-charter — including Democrats like Gov. Jerry Brown in California. Without Jerry Brown on their side, these charters could not operate without accountability and transparency. He is complicit and instead of doing anything to stop it he used all of his power to make sure it continued.
I have become a one-issue voter – In the primary I support the candidate who is better on public education regardless of their stance on other issues. I don’t care if they take money from CAP if they stand up strongly for public education as Ralph Northam does. And I don’t care if they are better on every other issue if their actions are directly responsible for the terrible damage done to public schools in California as Jerry Brown was. I generally liked Jerry Brown. But his reign was a disaster for public schools in California. I hope more democrats who support public schools will become one-issue voters in the primary. It may already be too late but there needs to be a change.
LikeLike
Send thank you notes (sarcasm) to the people who spent the most to privatize public schools- American oligarchs, Bill Gates and the Walton family.
LikeLike
carolinesf,
Thank you for all the good reporting you do on public education and charters. You are correct because I can’t think of any state except Virginia where there is accountability. Certainly NY State is just as bad as California, which is what happens when the Democratic Governor is against transparency when it comes to the charters supported by those who underwrite his lavish campaign.
LikeLike
I actually don’t think it’s about money for Jerry Brown. He’s unique. He just has a deep emotional investment in charters because of the two he founded and managed to keep alive. When he has engaged in ethical shenanigans to bring in money, it was to bring the money in for his two charters. And as a weird parallel to his supporting charters, he has also been very vocal about public schools’ need for more funding, and put his policies where his mouth is. He didn’t teacher-bash (once he’d experienced running his own schools) or union-bash push testing or any of the crap Cuomo has done in NY. I’ll probably have to wait a few years to decide if I think he was net negative or net positive for education.
LikeLike
(Have never actually met Jerry Brown, though my sister-in-law sat next to him once on a one-hour Southwest Airlines flight from LAX to Sacramento, flying by himself, during his governorship.)
LikeLike
I spent two hours talking to Jerry Brown at his Sacramento Office, or should I say “listening” to him talk and share his ideas. About everything. He had recently dined with Rhee and her husband. He said he needed Eli Broad to support his tax increase for schools. What was not known until later was that Eli publicly supported the tax, but privately funded the fight against it.
LikeLike
That was 2010.
LikeLike
Jerry Brown needs to be pressed for some answers. In many ways, he is allowing his support for charters to damage his heritage, hard earned as it has been.
LikeLike
Absolutely true. Brown has repeatedly vetoed efforts to place California’s charter industry under even the most rudimentary levels of oversight. Charter fraud is rampant over the entire State and, unfortunately, that will be Brown’s legacy.
LikeLike
On most issues Gov. Brown seems reasonable and good.
So why did he spent his entire term protecting the most corrupt charter schools?
I can give Brown the benefit of the doubt that he – like many progressives – think charters aren’t so bad.
But I can’t give him the benefit of the doubt when he activity prevented transparency and accountability. That isn’t just support, that is enabling more of their wrongdoing. Does anyone know why he would be so rabidly oppose oversight?
LikeLike
Brown vetoed legislation to ban for-profit schools and conflicts of interest and to require open meetings and open records—all required of public, not charters
LikeLike
Diane,
I apologize in advance if this seems like I am asking the same question again. But I just don’t understand and I ask because I hope someone might have some reasonable explanation. Gov. Brown seems like a good man. He stands up for many good things.
So why this over the top support of charters? I can understand being neutral on the issue and thinking that charters might offer something good. But what I can’t understand is why Brown would so activity prevent transparency and oversight. That’s not just supporting charters, that’s enabling their worst practices and covering up for them.
I feel as if the answer to that might explain why support for public schools isn’t front and center in the progressive movement. Is it distrust of teachers’ unions?
LikeLike
NYC public school parent
The main reason Jerry Brown is pro-charter is because he has a personal stake at two Oakland charter schools: the Oakland School for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute.
They are pretty much failures like most charter schools in CA, but ego counts more than kids…
LikeLike
Isn’t that insider dealing? How does Gov. Brown get away with vetoing all oversight over the business that he has a stake in?
Not to mention, the reason for oversight is like the lemon laws for used cars. Honest dealers wanted the used car industry to have oversight so they could stay in business without being dishonest. The dealers who didn’t want to be honest opposed any laws regulating them. The same should hold true for charter operators. If his charter schools were honest he should welcome transparency. Does he really need the money?
LikeLike
Jerry Brown, then mayor of Oakland, started two charters in Oakland in the early ’00s. At the time he started them his attitude was (my interpretation, not his words) I’ll show those stooopid public school teachers how it’s done. I heard him speak at a charter school promotional event in late 2001 about the charter schools he then planned to found, and that was his attitude — I heard it as belligerent, though I’m sure the charter boosters at the event heard it as cheerleading.
I know from following them and from inside contacts that his two charter schools struggled badly and would have collapsed without Brown’s deep constant involvement — which included some intense, ethically sketchy fundraising while he was Oakland mayor and then California attorney general. Both schools have been showered with more money than g*d and still barely survived for years. Reportedly they’re both on their feet now. One, Oakland School for the Arts, openly selects students by audition (which I don’t oppose; my own kids attended a non-charter audition-admission urban public arts high school). The other, Oakland Military Institute, isn’t supposed to handpick students but doesn’t bother to hide the fact that it does so aggressively.
When Brown ran for governor (his second stretch as governor), after the experience keeping those charters alive, he expressed strong support for more funding for public schools and said he’d been humbled by the experience. He no longer thought he could show those stooopid public school teachers how it’s done. He knows full well that the only reason his charters have survived is that they were showered with sometimes dirty money. And he HAS supported and brought more funding to California public schools, but has also supported charters and, as noted, vetoed laws that would bring more accountability to charters.
I’m convinced that Brown is not financially profiting from the charter schools he runs; greed and graft and high living have never been his thing. And he really sweated to keep them alive. So that kind of answers the conflict question — money for Brown isn’t involved.
Brown’s predecessor as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had packed the state Board of Education with charter-school insiders. When Brown took over, he created a more balanced SBOE, but it still has a pro-charter majority and would unquestioningly approve a charter proposal from Attila the Hun. (At the end of Schwarzenegger’s term, he had appointed an over-the-top charter insider, Ben Austin, to the SBOE, but Austin hadn’t been confirmed yet when Brown took office, and Brown un-appointed him.)
So it’s a little complicated, but that’s the story of Jerry Brown and charters. He has some other areas where a few actions startlingly belie his principles and his other achievements, so this is apparently characteristic.
LikeLike
“resigns and leaves the country”
Public schools have their share of scandals but you can usually at least find the wrongdoers 🙂
California doesn’t usually go on the list of states with unregulated charter schools- Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada.
Better add them to the list. The unregulated list may now be longer than the list of states that actually bother to regulate these private contractors.
LikeLike
Schools were regulated at the local level for a reason- because it’s impossible to properly regulate all these outlets at the state level.
Ed reformers should revisit the governance schemes they drafted. They’re bad. They don’t work. Maybe next time they should consult with some actual lawmakers before designing public systems.
LikeLike
Why consult with lawmakers when it’s so easy to buy them?
LikeLike
BINGO.
LikeLike
Gulen is establishing a good policy: failed and humiliated former charter operators are best sent back to where they came from, instead of parachuting into a cushy Foundation job.
LikeLike
Somehow I see a real conspiracy behind the Gulen Chrters. What keeps this chain from scrutiny? What foreign policy game is in the works here?
LikeLike
There have been newspaper exposes of the Gülenist charter network, and they just simply don’t stick. My view is that the charter sector overall has been so thickly slathered with Teflon — including by some of those same newspapers, both editorial policy and gushy puff pieces on charter miracle after charter miracle — that it’s just impossible to make an expose hit home.
LikeLike
According to the story, last spring, the OUSB just gave the school’s finances a clean bill of health, claiming that the OUSB and the Gulen Board had sufficient financial controls in place to prevent corruption or financial theft.
FAST-FORWARD 3 months: the same school’s principal was able to circumvent both the OUSB and the Gulen board overseeing the charter by doing the following:
1) easily extend his severance period from six months to three years;
2) easily withdraw the new severance figure of $ 0.45 million ($450,000) from the charter’s back account;
3) easily flee the country with his stolen cash, where now has no fears of being prosecuted or extradited.
Yeah, real good “financial controls,” guys!!!!
You guys at the OUSB are real charter school oversight geniuses, I gotta tell ya!
And on top of that, whenever anyone tried to challenge to the OUSB board’s (mis)handling of the Gulen School, they were accused of being anti-Turkish “racists.”
Here’s the guy who stole the cash, the one who previously called anyone challenging him a “racist”:
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/baytech-charter-school-under-investigation-for-financial-mismanagement/Content?oid=18890699
As I write this — and as you read this — he’s now luxuriating on the beaches of Australian with his filthy lucre.
LikeLike
Seems to me the only thing these charter schools are doing is stealing taxpayer money and NO accountability and they’re all getting away with it. Great administration
we have in this country.
LikeLike
The administration succeeds in part because of intellectual prostitutes at think tanks, in the media and in universities.
LikeLike
“Think tanks” are propaganda operations and the term “think tank” itself is a propaganda term designed to disguise advocacy as impartial scholarly research.
LikeLike
Sometimes they’re called stink tanks, which is my word choice for Fordham.
LikeLike
“The nonprofit, Accord Institute, happens to be controlled by the followers of a powerful Turkish imam who leads a global Islamic political force called the Gülen movement.”
Yes, but there is more than meets the eye at first glance. I poked around to get more information on the Accord Institute. This led me by a fortuitous path to the Rossier School of Education at the University of California, a big pusher of charter schools, and more recently with a faculty initiative intended to gut FERPA the student privacy law. Ah, today’s adventures on the internet.
It turns out Accord Institute operates as a non-profit but provides management and other services for the charter industry. Services are advertised on a marketing website for non-profits, with several promos that look like customer reviews and also offering a youtube promo for the services: https://greatnonprofits.org/org/accord-education
The marketing website for non-profits says this: “As a nonprofit partner, Accord Education serves K-12 public charter schools to build academic and operational excellence. Target demographics: school administrators, educators, and students. Geographic areas served: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Programs: Academic support services such as STEAM education, college & career guidance, and character education; Executive support such as fiscal & facility services, data analytics, and professional development events.
The 2016 IRS 990 form indicates that the Accord Institute was established in 2007. It “provides charter schools with consulting, camping (? !), seminars, curriculum development and other services.” The Institute has only two full-time compensated employees, a CEO at $150,066 and CFO at $120,9292, but each receives some additional compensation for unexplained services at $150,066 and $120,929 respectively. I also find $826,176 in “total compensation.” The numbers did make sense to me, but someone more skilled in Form 990 forensics might figure it out. The non-profit had income of about $1.2 million with most of that in “agreement fees.”
The President of the Accord Institute (once called Accord Education) is Dr. Guilbert C. Hentschke, Professor of Education, Richard T. Cooper and Mary Catherine Cooper Chair in Public School Administration, and former Dean of University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education. He is on the Board of Directors for WestEd; Director of Aspen Education Group, Inc; and Trustee of the National Center on Education and the Economy.
The USC website describes Hentschke as an “Education reform expert specializing in charter schools, corporate involvement in public schools and integrated services for youth.” He is also an ex-Magnolia board member (Gulen charter schools) and senior advisor to the National Resource Center for Charter School Finance and Governance. He has participated in events at the Pacifica Institute. See, for example, an abstract of his 2010 session along with others at the ”Forum on the Hizmet (Gulen) Movement” titled “Comparing secular schooling arguments with the educational philosophies of Fethullah Gulen.” http://pacificainstitute.org/bay-area/2010/12/24/forum-2/
Rossier School of Education pushes charters in and beyond California. The School has a K-12 policy option focused on charter schools. In some prior gambits across the internet I discovered that three doctoral students at Rossier currently hold senior positions at Relay Graduate School of Education. When they graduate, they will be the first Relay faculty with Ph.Ds. and from graduate school designed to serve the charter industry.
Last year, I also learned that Dr. Morgan Polikoff, Associate Professor of Education at Rossier organized a trip and formal letter to lobby Congress for major changes to Student Privacy Protection Act (H.R. 3157 – 114th Congress). Among the others were representatives from charter research operations and the Gates-funded Data Quality campaign. The bill appears to be dead but Polikoff and others want changes to “Enable states and districts to procure the research they need.” It is the researchers who want the data, and easy to get.
In fact, the dormant bill (and likely forever dead) had really comprehensive prohibitions against psychological testing (including mindsets), against the use of “affective computing,” against measures of interpersonal skills and intrapersonal skills, against predictive modeling including facial recognition software, against video surveillance and more. The bill that Pollikoff and friends wanted to gut is really worth reading. https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/3157/text
Polikoff and others who signed this letter (below) are fans of charters and promoters of personalized delivery of data-driven instruction with adaptive testing. They do not want to be bothered by an enforceable FERPA policy. https://morganpolikoff.com/2017/10/20/researcher-recommendations-on-ferpa-legislation/
Over and out.
LikeLike
Factual point: Rossier School of Education is at the University of Southern California, a private (scandal-ridden) college, not UC.
LikeLike
Utah’s one Gulen school was nearly shut down by the state about five years ago, amid allegations of favoritism of employment of Turkish nationals who were often not qualified, and terribly low enrollment (it was something like 26 at the time). The school was not shut down, and nothing has been heard in the media since. I doubt it’s doing much better now than it did then, but no one will look into it, or the other problematic charter management organizations here, particularly Academica (a couple of state legislators have children employed by Academica).
LikeLike
Academica is a Florida for-profit chain that works by buying polical influence.
LikeLike
Dear Threatened Out West that school in Utah is called “Beehive Science Technology School” back in 2010 they were scheduled to close down. The then principal hired an attorney at the state hearing which decided to give them 1 year probation which turned into 8 years. The entire staff has flipped since the shameless behavior of Principal Frank Erdogan, who even denied the Jewish Holocaust to a World History teacher, saying in effect he was sure “The Jews had caused their own death”
Then the Gulen shuffle happened all the Turks are scattered like cockroaches – the Gulenists frequently re- shuffle the card deck when they are caught cheating. Fast forward to 2016, Frank Erdogan now goes by Fethullah Erdogan and lmoved to Australia where he over saw the Australian interfaith dialogue group for Gulen – roping in local politiicans and other people who further advance the Gulen Movement ‘s agenda. Fethullah “Frank” Erdogan even appeared in the Australian newspaper proudly declaring his support for Gulen …then in late 2017 “Frank” who is actually from Azerbaijan ends up in San Francisco via his facebook page. Claiming prejudice if he ever returns back to his “native” Turkey yet we have the newspaper articles from 2009/2010 where he clearly states he is Azerbaijani. If you want to blame anyone for the Gulen Movement advancing it’s the do gooders that hung onto their fake image of “tolerance” “peace” and “dialogue” these so called “christian, jewish groups have helped to advance the Gulen Movement in the USA. Each one of us is to blame for allowing this and not speaking up at school board meetings. The school districts where citizens have spoke out against them the schools are denied but Americans have been lazy and complacent. You cannot expect anyone on the school board, your politicians etc., to do a dam thing unless you are willing to do something besides just talk. The Gulenists are skilled at lobbying and charming enough to talk their way or pay their way into committees, businesses, community lunches and dinners. They have an agenda and it’s all about power and money nothing more. I have to laugh at this article where the principal gets away with deflecting the Gulen questions with “these are racist remarks” ….first of all Gulen is not a “race” or a religion it’s a cult. Turkey has 36 ethnicities and over 12 sects. Gulen is a contrived group under the Operation Gladio program started by CIA Graham Fuller in the late 80s and during the fall of the soviet union to grab the former soviet states much of which have true Turkic roots and lots of oil and other resources. learn more about their 200 non profits in the USA http://www.pacificainstitutegulen.blogspot.com
LikeLike
I think most people have no idea what they are; it’s not that they’re lazy and complacent. Most people believe the propaganda that charter schools are miracles run by saints. (I did speak years ago at a San Francisco school board meeting against a Gülen school, an offshoot of the Oakland BayTech school that’s the point of this post that was proposed for S.F. I had never heard of Gülen and had no idea, though. I was just in a phase of speaking against all charter proposals. The school board voted it down — probably not because of my speech — and the Gülenists didn’t push it to the next level.)
LikeLike
I have come to the conclusion that sometime during their school years Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo each had a terrible teacher and was scarred for life. That is the only logical explanation I can think of to explain the irrational acts of otherwise reasonable and compassionate men.
LikeLike
That’s quite an insult directed toward Jerry Brown — saying he is just as compassionate as Andrew Cuomo! Did you have to be so mean?
But I have also suspected that Jerry Brown and some otherwise seemingly good democratic politicians had some bad experience that has tainted their views. Maybe with teachers’ union they believed were too intransigent or corrupted.
With Andrew Cuomo, the answer is much more clear. The hedge fund billionaires are pro-charter and so is he. If the hedge fund billionaires decided that they were done with charters and wanted to ban them, so would Cuomo. Cuomo has always done what is best for Cuomo, period.
LikeLike
I worked for an agency Cuomo ran in the 90’s. At that time there was someone in there who really did care. I’d like to think that a nubbin of that remains.
LikeLike
No, it does not. Cuomo is owned by billionaire donors
He has raised $36 million for his race against Cynthia Nixon. 99% from the 1%. His top aides have been convicted.
LikeLike
Jerry Brown attended San Francisco’s elite Catholic schools (in the past there were openly working-class Catholic schools and intellectual Catholic schools, and as the governor’s kid he attended the latter). I think his private-school education meant he just didn’t get it about public schools. He believed the BS that charter schools worked some miracle and public schools were run by idiots. He no longer believes that BS, but he’s still wedded to keeping his own charter schools going even though his eyes have been opened.
LikeLike
This is pure speculation on my part; the challenge of reading what’s going on in Jerry’s mind. When his two schools were founded nearly 20 years ago, the charter/district school landscape was completely different. Nobody really had any sense of where all this would lead, or if they did, they were keeping it a secret. Both schools offered what I would describe as a niche environment/curriculum. Oakland School for the Arts was an attractive choice for those committed to the arts, and at the time funding for arts’ programs in Oakland had dried up. At this time, Jerry was also pushing for his 10,000 new residents in downtown Oakland to revitalize the area. It worked. The downtown, anchored by this new arts school, along with the refurbished Fox Theater has flourished. Unfortunately, I believe the consequences of this development is the rampant homelessness and housing shortages/gentrification that we are now experiencing here.
Fast forward. So, now, OSA has become a repository to donors for Jerry to curry favor. It is now the second wealthiest school in Oakland, and has become the school of choice for arts programs for the rich and famous. Students who have not had private lessons need not apply. You have to audition before you even enter the lottery, which in my mind is discrimination. It is no longer serving all Oakland students. My sense from all this is that, well, Jerry doesn’t have kids. It’s as though these schools are his babies; his legacy. Like kids, he has nurtured them and watched them grow and prosper. He doesn’t want to mess with that. Maybe he still sees that same possibility for another charter school, but those days are over.
LikeLike
Thanks for the input; it all sounds very likely.
Also, the California Charter Schools Association has become the most organized political entity on the entire state. Weasels, one and all, but highly organized and exceedingly well funded weasels (republicans masquerading around as democrats):
“I frankly can’t remember a prominent loss that they’ve had,” education policy expert and University of California, Los Angeles, professor John Rogers said of the charter movement’s legislative wins. “The California Charter Schools Association has had the power to ensure that legislation that would be against their interest can’t be passed.”
They are rapidly becoming the State’s kingmakers.
LikeLike
So true, and so unfortunate for our kids…
LikeLike
If the legislation passed and Gov. Brown vetoed it, it means the CCSA only needed to own one politician — Gov. Brown. I hope it comes up as an issue in the upcoming Gov. election. And I hope that each candidate is forced to state his or her position on whether they would veto any oversight of charters or not. They should be put on the spot.
LikeLike
Thank you, Oakland_mom.
I didn’t realize that Oakland had a LaGuardia type of school that was charter and not public! There are issues with LaGuardia in NYC (more affluent students) but it remains part of the public system, not separate from it. In NYC, its popularity led to a 2nd school of the arts — Frank Sinatra HS in Queens — which is also part of the public system. It’s a shame that the OSA would be a charter because there is no need for it to be.
LikeLike
I agree that Brown is deeply committed to those schools and views them as his legacy. See my description above of how OSA and OMI have struggled and what it took for him to get them to survive. A friend had a kid at OSA in its struggling days; Brown attended parent meetings and was deeply, deeply involved in running the school (as my friend was always on the verge of transferring her son from the shaky school). I can see how he has an emotional committment after all that.
I don’t know that a high-poverty district like Oakland could have pulled off starting a school like that as a public school today, frankly. My kids attended Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, a non-charter audition San Francisco public high school that started in 1982, and I’m absolutely sure it couldn’t have been started today.
LikeLike
Gulen Charter Schools are BAD, BAD, BAD.
LikeLike
More info on BayTech from someone who taught there. This was on a public comments section from the East Bay Express:
“I am a former employee of BayTech. I worked four years with Mr. Hatipoglu. First of all I would like to say that I am an experienced credential educator that grew up in Oakland. The staff ratio of Turkish teachers to American was about 1:1. Yes we had crappy teachers that could hardly speak English nor relate with our black and brown population. However the American staff tried their best to provide the best education possible. Many of these teachers like myself, were involved in the students lives beyond the normal school hours. Did the students suffer and receive an education that was inadequate? I would say not from the credentialed American staff teachers who went above and beyond to help Baytech students. I just want people to understand that there were and still are some amazing teachers at Baytech. It was these teachers that might have helped mask the Glen Movement because some teachers were making excellent progress with the students.
Was BayTech a Gulen charter school? Absolutely, yes! I was ready to quit when I found out that all the Turkish teachers were paid extremely high salaries to those compared with veteran teachers. I was the most experienced credential teacher at BayTech with one of the lowest salaries. I also found out that Mr. Hatipoglus wife was on payroll for $70,000 and he claimed she was a volunteer. We were always in need of a teacher and Mr. Hatipoglu sometimes hired teachers he knew would fail and quit in the middle of the year so that he could bring another Turkish teacher to the school.
I am afraid to comment any further because for some fishy reason the Gulen movement is backed by our government and especially by the C.I.A.”
LikeLike
According to the film “Killing Ed,” about the Gülenist schools, the Turkish teachers are required to give a significant portion of their pay to the Gülen operation. So that’s public money flowing to Gülen, and the Turkish teachers aren’t actually getting so much money.
The observation that the students are doing well is tempered by the fact that of course the schools are handpicking students.
LikeLike