The board of Alabama’s first charter school, LEAD Academy, fired its principal, Nicole Ivey, and she is retaliating with a lawsuit that airs the school’s dirty laundry.
Those named in the suit include Charlotte Meadows, the school’s founder and board president who is also running for the Alabama Legislature; Soner Tarim; owner of Unity School Services, an education service provider; Unity School Services; and each of the school’s board members: Ryan Cantrell, William Green and Lori White….
The suit claims LEAD’s objective is to “maximize school revenue and academic achievement by minimizing the presence of students with special needs.”
To Ivey’s knowledge at the time of her separation with the school, “none of the remaining $100,000 was expended to support the education programs at LEAD Academy,” the suit claims.
And then she gets to the nepotism and cronyism.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unity School Services’ Soner Tarim, one and the same as the Gates-funded Pahara Institute fellow?
When profit is the motive in the provision of public goods and services, such egregious behavior will be an expected feature, not an exception or aberration.
From the linked Montgomery Advertiser’s article -a description of claims made, “…lake house where Confederate flags were displayed”.
and so much lately feels like “who’s going to stop me” behavior
Sadly, true.
But, at least, there’s reason to think Bill and Melinda Gates’ reputations will more closely reflect the truth- they are part of the Koch ruling class.
I have seen this happen first hand at a charter school. I’ve seen a teacher abuse preK students, use racial slurs, abuse preK students of color and non affluent backgrounds. Then I’ve seen the board cover up the abuse due to nepotism and funding. I wish I could say more, but I had to sign a gag order.
Reminds me of:
Germany
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/indoctrinating-youth
and China
http://www.markedbyteachers.com/international-baccalaureate/history/mao-zedong-and-the-education.html
Just finished reading Da Chen’s memoir “Girl Under a Red Moon” … a book about growing up and going to school when Mao Zedong was in power. OMG. This is a great book for middle school and high school students to read.
“…….minimizing the presence of students with special needs.” That’s standard operating procedure for charter schools.
Soner Tarim’s wife, Nancy J. Li, has an interesting bio, connections to China, Jewish Holocaust memorials,… She’s on the board of the Royal School System (Texas charter schools) and, Tarim is the CEO of the school system. Li heads the Easton Educational Group/Easton Resource Development.
Tarim’s twitter has a comment from Juliet Squire, a Bellwether partner, author of “How Rural Charter Schools Can Succeed”, (9-10-2019). Squire’s bio states she oversaw Race to the Top in N.J., launched new charter schools in Louisiana (fyi- N.O. recently closed its last remaining public school), began her career at AEI, and her clients included Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
This year, a Bellwether report advised ed reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals in the south.
Bellwether was founded/co-founded by the same person responsible for Gates-funded organizations, TFA, Pahara, and New Schools Venture Fund. The charter goal according to NSVF (Kim Smith), “….brands on a large scale.”
Why doesn’t msm tell the public that Zuck and Gates are investors in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box, Bridge International Academies?
What’s responsible for the public’s erroneous impression that Gates (Zuck) aren’t right wing …other than their affinity for the education policy (charter schools) of the Center for American Progress (Hillary’s team) and well placed PR?
Tarim’s company is being paid $30,000 per month! I wish I could figure out how to make that much per month. Instead I’m a teacher, and so is my husband. He is in his 13th year with a M.Edu, sits on the state board for Art Education, and goes several times per year to help write the AP Art education as well as regular art education curriculum. Even with the teacher pay raises his take home for the year is barely above $30,000
Of course charters do this. They get REWARDED for doing this! Just look at Success Academy! The more a charter cherry picks students that are strong academically and gets rid of the students who are weak academically, the more money flows into their coffers.
But what really brings in the big bucks is if you are led by someone without an ounce of integrity or any moral compass (similar to Trump) who is willing to lie and tell the country that charters select a random number of the most difficult to teach students that are exactly like the kids in failing schools, and turns them into scholars. The big bucks come to those willing to push the lie that they WANT to teach the most difficult to teach kids stuck in failing public schools because they have a secret recipe that turns them all into high performing scholars and it costs a lot less money than those wasteful public schools.
The corruption runs very deep. There are corrupt and greedy researchers who claim to be able to do accurate comparisons between schools that kick out any kid who struggles to learn, and public schools that take those kids and must teach them. These corrupt researchers get lots of money to do non peer reviewed studies that ignore attrition because they insist that attrition and the kids who leave are irrelevant to doing a study and always need to be ignored.
Thankfully, those corrupt researchers don’t work in science or they would have already been responsible for severe harm – and probably death – to many children with their corrupt studies that claim a new vaccine works perfectly because they insist that it is absolutely irrelevant that the group that used this new vaccine – and had 99% success rates! — only enrolled the healthiest children, and any child who got sick was mysteriously “disappeared”. Can you imagine these corrupt researchers insisting that this vaccine was the solution to keeping the most vulnerable and sickest kids healthy because they insisted it didn’t matter that the group that used it excluded many of the most vulnerable and sick kids? Those people would be drummed out of science and would be welcome and highly compensated to work in the “school reform research” industry.
Charters want to be government funded private schools for the kids who meet their criteria to teach. That’s why they are underwritten by very same people who want to abolish public education and give parents a voucher to find a school willing to teach their kid.
Even with all that’s going on with Epic Charter in Oklahoma; our governor is all about pushing school choice/vochers. There is a group called Oklahoma Tax Payers Unite on Facebook payers and unite are one word. It’s sickening the lies and deceit about public education, the lies and smears about Ok Pub School teachers being spread on there. Group is spearheaded by a retired senator. The group turns so far right the members are like dogs chasing their tales(yes I meant to spell it that way because all they’re chasing are tall tales of what they’ve cooked up, that they believe are really happening. They still think Oklahomas Education Standards are common core and they blame everything on CC, when we haven’t been/used common core for many years (since Obama took office). Over 7k members on the page, all hell bent on doing away with public schools. If you want to fuel your rage or let off some steam over the downfall of public education and rise of charter schools, go on the page and let them have it. I go on the page sometimes just to fact check them and prove they’re lying.
Thanks for the info. about Oklahoma,
Gates-funded SETDA which has public employees, including those from Oklahoma, promoting digital learning and public-private partnerships should be on citizens’ radar.