This message came from an educator who studies racial equity:
From: Being Blackatkipp <beingbipocatkipp@gmail.com>
Subject:Being Black at KIPP
To whom it may concern,
BeingblackatKIPP is an Instagram account that was created in the wake of the George Floyd social reckoning. During this time, I was empowered to also seek change in the KIPP network of public charter schools. I had witnessed first hands for many years how white supremacy culture and politics were deeply engrained in this network. I knew from my own experience how policies that aimed to police black and brown bodies and create distrust among the community re-traumatized the very groups of people KIPP claimed to serve.
Once the Instagram page launched the accounts of abuse, racism, and discrimination began to pour in from all corners of the country.
Most recently we have been covering a situation that took place in KIPP NYC. KIPP NYC has a long history of abuse against children that is well known in the alumni community but has received little to no media coverage. Most recently Jesus Concepcion was arrested by the FBI for sexual assault of minors while he was the orchestra teacher under David Levin in the KIPP Academy school in the Bronx. Many previous students alleged that and other leaders knew of Mr. Conceptions’ behavior as he was allowed to have a private bedroom attached to the music room where girls would often be taken to. It has taken 20 years for justice to reach those kids.
Today, in 2021 history is repeating itself in KIPP NYC. This month Cesar Sanchez a decorated science teacher at the KIPP Washington Heights campus was arrested for sexual misconduct towards a minor. What’s most alarming is that Cesar had previously been suspended for misconduct with a student. The principal at his school Danny Swersky had also been suspended for failing to report the misconduct. Both men were allowed to come back to the school where Cesar allegedly continued to groom and abuse middle school girls. On the Instagram page, we have posted voice recordings as well as first-hand written accounts of things Cesar would do to his middle school students. He would notice a child without a bra in a tank top and have the class do jumping jacks as students notice him become visibly “excited”. He would follow students on snap chat, a social platform famous for disappearing messages to further manipulate students in secrecy. He would touch himself in front of students. One student even alleged he asked her if she had her nipples pierced and also showed his nipple tattoo to students. All this was going on, despite other staff allegedly alerting the principal of his behavior. Their concerns fell to deaf ears.
KIPP has a strong clique/mob mentality. Once you are in with leadership you can do no wrong. Cesar was married to another KIPP principal who used to work with his current principal Danny Swersky. The conflict of interest influenced the situation and kept Cesar employed until the police were involved.
Please take time to review the evidence on the beingblackatkipp page on Instagram. This story deserved to be investigated, This community deserves justice and children should not have to be anxious for their return to school. While Cesar has been arrested, the principal who allegedly failed to report him is still set to lead in that school. Our communities deserve better.
I thank you for your time and consideration.
Happy New Year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Interesting that ed reformers are only outraged at misconduct in public schools.
Wasn’t unreported sexual incidents re: students what launched their political campaign in Virginia?
That was national news.This isn’t even covered.
Charters are special – the darlings of politicians and people in power- and therefore deserve and receive special treatment.
If this was a public school every ed reformer with a national following would be promoting it as an indictment of all public schools. Because it’s a charter they won’t mention it at all.
I don’t mind that this “movement” exists to promote charters and vouchers and bash public schools- I just think there should be SOME consistency and coherence.
If they are outraged that a public school in Virginia mishandled an abuse incident they should be also be outraged when a charter does- but they’re not.
They’ll bury this like they bury all negative news on charters. It’s forbidden to discuss.
It was never about “great schools”. It was always about an ideological vision of eradicating public schools.
Campbell Brown, former CNN newscaster, made her reputation by lambasting sexual abuse in the NYC public schools. She blamed the union for defending them. She rolled a bowling ball and struck public schools, teachers, and the union. Then she created an organization to fight tenure in several states. Betsy DeVos was on her board and a good friend. Then she created The 74. Then she was hired by Facebook to be in charge of its media relations.
Ed reform echo chamber promoting yet another voucher:
“The bill, House Bill 607, would create an opt-in, local version of the “education freedom accounts” program passed this summer. Under the proposed law, parents in participating towns could access thousands of dollars of a town’s portion of public school tuition and use it for private school or homeschooling expenses.”
As you can see, they are hard at work “improving public schools”. They don’t actually do any work that improves public schools, but maybe their promotion and funding of private schools will somehow “trickle down”.
In ten years “ed reform” is going to consist of handing everyone a low value voucher to purchase whatever can be somehow deemed “educational”. They’re mostly there already. It will be hard to justify continuing to employ the tens of thousands of adults in the “movement” who can all be replaced with a bookkeeper.
Just hand out 5k vouchers and call it a day. Gates, Walton, Koch, the ed reform university departments, they can all close up shop. Mission accomplished.
https://www.the74million.org/article/new-hampshire-bill-would-allow-local-tax-revenue-to-private-education/
Typical ed reform “news” story:
https://www.the74million.org/article/new-hampshire-bill-would-allow-local-tax-revenue-to-private-education/
Three quarters of the article is quotes from ed reformers promoting vouchers, and making big promises with absolutely nothing to back them up. That is “balanced” by printing one sentence from a dissenter.
It could have been written by a voucher lobbyist. Since they’re all funded by the same billionaires maybe it was.
It’s all sunshine and flowers in voucherland. No possible downside at all. The magic of markets will miraculously improve public schools, simply by their proximity to private schools. Anything at all for public school students in this bill? Nope. No one bothered with them. Too busy “reinventing education” (privatizing) to perform any actual work.
If this type of behavior is happening in New York where the state maintains some degree of oversight, I have to wonder what is happening in a state like Texas which has 59 Kipp Schools. Southern states are generally less interested in public oversight where private capital is involved. Even though the majority of money may come from taxpayers, when funds are turned over to private companies, the public money then becomes private capital.
New York has some degree of oversight of charters? The Big Lie.
The SUNY Charter Institute — a group of white lawyers and businessmen — oversee charters like KIPP and Success Academy. I haven’t seen any real oversight. As long as the students who are allowed to remain in the charter give the charter bragging rights, they don’t seem to care about anything else.
Nice race-baiting. “White lawyers.” I hope they’re not also Jewish!
Andrew Cuomo, a white lawyer, appointed those members. For a good laugh at what “oversight” means, watch ex-Governor Cuomo’s white appointees “grilling” the folks at Success Academy about the difficulties in having their Hudson Yard school located near the Lincoln Tunnel as those white trustees rubber stamped yet another renewal with fawning admiration not long ago.
So enlightening. As Joseph Belluck said after his strong “grilling” of SA administrators about how fabulous the Hudson Yard facilities are, “you can’t argue with success”. Given that Success Academy high school started with 191 9th graders – every one of whom were certified excellent by their Success Academy elementary and middle school education — and only graduated 98 of them 4 years later (in 2020), Joseph Belluck clearly has a definition of “success” that means the students who disappear don’t matter at all to he and and his fellow white SUNY Charter Institute board members. No doubt the white race of the trustees had nothing to do with the fact that they are so impressed with the 98 students who graduate that they forgot to be at all concerned about the other 93 students who started 9th grade with them and didn’t graduate. I’m sure flerp can come up with a really good reason for those white trustees suspicious lack of either curiosity or concern for the MIA students. But I think flerp is making racist innuendoes himself when he implies that African American trustees would be just as uncaring as those white trustees are about what happened to the missing 93 students.
Sorry, snowflake, if your sensitivities were hurt if I accurately describe the white folks who charter school favorite Andrew Cuomo appointed to oversee charters.
Some of us — even us white folks – actually are suspicious when a white CEO justifies outrageously high suspension rates of 5 and 6 year old children in charter schools with virtually no white students as being absolutely necessary because those 5 and 6 year olds who Success Academy suspended were so violent due entirely to their own violent natures and not because of anything that the school did wrong. Some of us — even white folks – actually don’t believe that those very young children were such a danger to their classmates and teachers that only suspending those 5 and 6 year olds over and over again would protect others in the school. Some of us – even white folks – actually believe that if a charter school suspends 5 and 6 year olds regularly, it should have been an immediately red flag for that charter to be closely investigated, not lauded and rewarded and fawned over. I acknowledge that the SUNY Charter Institute and flerp see nothing wrong with suspending 5 and 6 year olds if a white charter CEO tells them it is the right thing to do. But I know it is wrong. And I know that the white board members at the SUNY Charter Institute continued to give their tacit approval. Sorry, snowflake flerp, but we will have to agree to disagree on that point.
NYC PSP,
SUCCESS Academy must be having trouble recruiting new students. It made a deal with The New School (university), and “Inside Schools” (once an independent publication) to reach out to parents. On Twitter: Leonie Haimson:
. @InsideSchools established to inform parents about public schools, acquired by @TheNewschool, now “partnering” @Successcharters to help them recruit students, likely for a fee – tho they also get funding from pro-privatization @WaltonFamilyFdn cc @DianeRavitch @carolburris
Diane,
Maybe the question to ask is about which students Success Academy wants to recruit.
Severely at-risk kids are not likely to have parents perusing Inside Schools — but middle class and affluent kids with college educated parents might be.
There is a reason that Success Academy chose to spend huge amounts of money on creating a fancy school in an expensive neighborhood in Manhattan instead of in a poverty stricken neighborhood in the Bronx where real estate is a fraction of the price.
A charter that prioritizes serving the most at-risk students in high poverty neighborhoods could find a lot less expensive real estate in the Bronx.
A charter that supposedly had thousands of kids on their wait list would try to serve more at risk kids before spending their money marketing to advantaged students.
Not that the white SUNY Trustees would care. Their fawning over Success Academy administrators at their recent board meeting was truly an embarrassing — but clearly accurate — display of how SUNY does “oversight” of charters who have the support of billionaires.
Charter school in New York are purportedly under the direction of the Board of Regents. The degree to which this actually happens remains to be seen. However bad accountability may be in New York I can guarantee that it is even worse in most red states.
“This month Cesar Sanchez a decorated science teacher at the KIPP Washington Heights campus was arrested for sexual misconduct towards a minor.”
The SUNY Charter Institute just renewed this school’s charter at their December meeting.
The College-founder of KIPP lived in Houston, where he oversaw the KIPP empire. After several complaints of a sexual nature, he was removed by the organization.
It just struck me that kipp is the German word for tilt, umkippen means to turn over, topple, and could be translated as disrupt. Probably a coincidence, but makes sense if it is not.
Agree with Retired Teacher. We shudder to imagine the headlines years on and too many years late, detailing the silenced abuses that took place in the southern school locations. Money objectifies the kids. They are not human. They are revenue sources.
Staff who go along with this dehumanization are kept around because they are accomplished at the cohesive coverup. If some prove to be “indiscreet” at times, well all is forgiven until it is Found Out. The lurid revelations are bad for business and the bottom line. So, the guilty are swept up and tossed out as isolated incidents but the culture carries on undisturbed. In the end, there is no such thing as “child abuse” because these are not children.
And here is a VERY Positive Publicity KIPP PSA.
We are Free.
We are a Public School.
We are taking Good Covid Care Precautions with your profit-producing children.
Choose us.
“While thousands returned to Houston ISD schools Monday after the holidays, KIPP Texas Public Schools is giving its students some extra time due to the region’s spike in COVID-19 cases.
The public, tuition-free charter school announced Monday evening that it will push the return date back one day for students to Thursday, Jan. 6 to allow for the completion of staff and student PCR testing due to the omicron variant and the rise of COVID cases, according to a release.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com
This sort of thing keeps happening only because it is allowed to happen.
That Jeffrey Epstein essentially got away with sex trafficking of children as young as 12 years old for decades tells you all you need to know about the current state of affairs in the US.
To be sure, he was eventually charged and his coconspirator (Maxwell) convicted, but only after the courageous reporting by journalist Julie Brown and testimony of many courageous victims made it virtually impossible for anyone to continue to ignore what was going on.
And Epstein and Maxwell were undoubtedly just the tip of the iceberg. “Sex trafficking” by it’s very name implies that were other powerful men taking advantage of Epstein’s “services”. Who are they and why haven’t they been charged?
In my opinion I think crimes against women, children and minorities are often not taken as seriously as those against some other groups by some in law enforcement. That’s about as diplomatically I can mention what seems to be a “justice disparity.” Don’t even get me started on the number of rape kits that still sit in evidence rooms years after the crimes, although some cities have made some efforts to clear them. If processed, they could have prevented many more of these crimes against women and girls.
There’s a saying about incest that IMHO applies to sexual abuse and domestic violence too: the only thing taboo about it is talking about it.
Even more titillating in the Epstein case are the names of his friends, who took a ride with him on his private jet. The Lolita Express. Trump, Clinton, Etc.
Racism in throughout the private charter school industry is so widespread that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.”
What is sad is that racism in the charter sector goes largely unnoticed, even by the federal government that continues to fund the charter school slush fund to the tune of $400 million dollars a year.
I interviewed at one of these schools in Harlem about 13 years ago. In the process of talking to a group of teachers and the principal of the school, I caught a whiff of something I didn’t like; I passed on the second interview. Later, while reading one of Alfie Kohn’s books, he made some remark that indicated he took a dim view of this chain. I guess I lucked out.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
This is what happens when publicly funded private sector charter schools such as the KIPP chain of charters are allowed to operate in secret with little or no accountability: racism, sexual abuse, et al. Real public schools are held to higher standards and accountability, but private sector charter schools are not no matter what they claim.
“KIPP has a strong clique/mob mentality.” Yeah, that’s putting it mildly. I remember leaving the subway one day walking up the stairs behind a woman with a pin on her backpack that read “KIPP votes”. It reminded me of the “NRA votes” pins. It had that same kind of threatening tone. I’ve met people who work at KIPP who I’ve found either slimy and crazy. I know another woman who works there whose mother is deceased and outside of her husband has no other family in this country. She has continued to work for KIPP even though she probably could have left for the DOE or a suburban school years ago. She seems to have drunk the KIPP kool-aid.
During Jesus Concepcion’s tenure another teacher by the name of Mr. Cohen was there. He took pictures of students in sexually suggestive positions. This was another incident Dave Levin swept under the rug, in addition to his ignoring Feinberg’s gross misconduct over the years which has been well documented. How he is still employed by that organization is baffling to me. Barth is a failure of a leader as well because all these incidents happened under his watch. He’s gone now but the stain to his career remains.