"Gulen Charter Schools USA",a factual look at a worldwide movement to dominate education. Read about the "Gulen Charter Schools" in the USA as well as worldwide. Share our ride exploring the Gulen Movement tactics.
These postings are based on news articles, government documents such as H1-b Visa info, IRS information.
http://www.gulencharterschools.weebly.com http://www.charterschoolwatchdog.com
http://www.charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com
http://www.gulenschoolsworldwide.blogspot.com
By Emily Bamforth, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A dozen Horizon Science Academies, part of a series of charter schools in Ohio, are suing over denied Ohio Department of Education grant money, claiming the rules for the grant were changed after the application process.
Three Horizon Science Academy Schools are in the Northeast Ohio area, including the Horizon Science Academy of Lorain and Horizon Science Academy Cleveland Middle and High schools.
Twelve schools throughout the state are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which names the Ohio Department of Education, Gov. Mike DeWine, the state school superintendent and the director of community schools as respondents.
Read the full lawsuit in the document viewer at the bottom of this post. Mobile viewers, click here.
The lawsuit, filed in the Ohio Supreme Court, refers to the “Quality Community Schools Support Grant” created through House Bill 166, a state budget bill. Community schools are commonly referred to as charter schools, which are operated as public schools but not controlled by a school district.
Horizon Science Academies are open admission. If applications exceed the number of spots, students are chosen through a lottery.
Under the grant, qualified charter schools are eligible to receive up to $1,750 each fiscal year for each pupil identified as economically disadvantaged and up to $1,000 each fiscal year for all other students, according to the Ohio Department of Education website.
Horizon Science Academies officials applied for the grant, believing the schools met criteria. But, according to the lawsuit, the application was denied because of an additional restriction allegedly not part of the state bill or the application form.
The independent school boards running Horizon Science Academies contract with Illinois-based Concept Schools NFP. The lawsuit claims funding was denied because Concept is not registered with the state of Ohio as a foreign corporation.
An attached letter in the lawsuit from Office of Community Schools Director Karl Koenig describing the denial reads:
“Specifically, Concept Schools NFP is not registered as a foreign corporation with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office and, therefore, is not in good standing in Ohio.”
Horizon officials claim that information was not stated as a requirement on the application form and when the schools followed up with the state on the application, that issue did not come up as a concern. Horizon also claims that Concept is registered with the state already.
The schools are asking that the state approve the grant applications.
Ohio Department of Education officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The Ohio Department of Education also rejected other schools, including the for-profit Accel Schools chain, because of issues with corporate registrations. In Accel’s case, some schools that failed to meet academic criteria may have qualified for money because other Accel-run schools received a federal grant, according to previous Plain Dealer reporting.
The state claimed that the company’s registration did not link operations in Ohio to other Accel-run schools. Some other Concept-run schools qualified for the money by meeting academic criteria.
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/06/dozen-ohio-horizon-science-academies-sue-ohio-department-of-education-over-denied-grant-funding.html
A dozen charter schools, Horizon Science Academies, including the Horizon Science Academy of Youngstown, are suing the Ohio Department of Education over denied grant money, claiming the rules for the grant were changed after the application process.
The funds were to be awarded as part of a two-year Quality Community Schools Support Grant (QSF) which recognizes schools that provide quality education to underserved populations.
According to the release from Horizon Science Academies, the lawsuit comes as a last-resort effort after the ODE refused to reconsider its improper decision.
The twelve schools are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which names the Ohio Department of Education, Gov. Mike DeWine, the state school superintendent and the director of community schools as respondents.
Horizon Science's press release said the lack of funding is negatively affecting nearly 4,500 students of the academy. On average, 83 percent of Horizon Science's students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Tim Clements, an attorney with Nicola, Gudbranson & Cooper, said that the Horizon schools met all the criteria of the grant as it was originally intentioned. "The new criterion retroactively used by the ODE, after the HSAs had already applied for the QSF, was not in HB 166 which the Ohio legislature passed when creating the funding," said Clements. "That's why we're claiming that the ODE exceeded its authority under Ohio law when it inappropriately used an undisclosed requirement for HSA's operator to be registered with Ohio's secretary of state to justify denying funding to these 12 schools." The schools’ lawsuit points out that the requirement was never intended by Ohio’s legislature and has nothing to do with the quality education that the HSAs provide to their students.
Ohio Department of Education officials has not publicly commented on the lawsuit.
https://www.wfmj.com/story/42255343/horizon-science-academy-of-youngstown-suing-ohio-department-of-education
Attorneys for the Alabama Education Association filed suit in Circuit Count in Washington County August 2 alleging that Soner Tarim, the Texan with the management agreement with Woodland Prep, has submitted false information to the state charter school commission on behalf of Woodland Prep in his efforts to establish this charter school.
At the same time Tarim has been working with Woodland Prep he was also trying to get approval to open charters in Houston and Austin. The AEA court document refers a number of times to the fact that Tarim made statements to the Texas state board of education about Woodland Prep that were untrue.
Some of this included false info about the performance of Washington County public schools, about the level of opposition to Woodland Prep from the local community, about why the application he says he wrote for Woodland Prep did not meet standards of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, about school enrollment numbers, etc.
As we have been documenting here for months, Soner Tarim is a fraud.
Granted, he could sell Eskimo pies to Eskimos, but he does it with smoke and mirrors and ignores facts. And the fact that the members of the present Alabama charter school commission allowed themselves to fall under his spell, rather than doing their homework, is also shameful and even more reason members of this group should be replaced as soon as possible.
One of the more incredible pieces of this whole sordid mess is what Tarim told the good folks in Texas about his role in getting state approval for Woodland Prep. He told, without hesitation, a Texas board member that he wrote the Woodland Prep charter application. When the board member then asked why this application was rejected by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers Tarim said this group does not what it is doing. (I contacted NACSA and learned they have reviewed 500 applications from across the country in the last 10 years. Yet, according to Tarim, they don’t know what they are doing.)
Then, incredibly, he said that the Alabama charter commission did not know what they were doing either until he showed them how to grade an application. Alabama had used NACSA to grade applications since the charter law was passed in 2015. We paid them more than $100,000 for their service. Of course, Tarim has a ready-made answer for everything and it is ALWAYS the other guy’s fault.
Tex
as has figured out who Tarim is. This is why on June 14 the Texas state school board denied Tarim’s request to open four charters in Austin. They have a long history with him because he opened his first charter in Houston in 2000.
As board member Georgina Perez told me in an interview after she voted against Tarim, all he deals in is “alternative facts.” The people in Washington County are well aware of this because time and time again he has cited “facts” about their public schools that are fiction–not facts.
Thankfully, AEA has stepped up to the plate.
But had the Alabama charter commission done their work, there would be no need for a law suit. They would have listened to the national reviewers in May, 2018 and rejected the Woodland Prep application. But they, and others, were mesmerized by Tarim and failed the people of Alabama and caused months of misery for Washington County.
It is one of the most shameful examples of failed government I have ever witnessed.
Soner Tarim staring down the people of Washington County at the last Alabama Educational state board meeting he ever attended Good Bye Soner - Alabama will not miss you.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted in 1938. FARA requires certain agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities or other activities specified under the statute to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities. Disclosure of the required information facilitates evaluation by the government and the American people of the activities of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents. The FARA Unit of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is responsible for the administration and enforcement of FARA. https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara
LAUSD Austin Beutner with Broad Academy residencies aka Public Education haters
posing with the infamous Gulen Education front man Turkish Terrorist Soner Tarim
Broad’s Academy and Residencies Fuel the Destroy Public Education Agenda by Thomas Ultican
In 2002, the billionaire, Eli Broad, established his own education leadership training program. Although he is the only person ever to create two Fortune 500 companies, Broad, who attended public school, has no other experience or training in education. However he is so rich, he can just institute his opinions such as his belief that education knowledge is not needed to run large urban school systems; consultants can be hired for that knowledge.
Peter Greene, the author of the popular blog Curmudgucation, framed this absurdity in his own snarky fashion:
“But Broad does not believe that schools have an education problem; he believes they have a management problem. School leadership does not need an infusion of educational leadership– they need business guys, leadership guys. And so Broad launched the Superintendent’s Academy by ignoring completely the usual requirements for Superintendent certification or program accreditation. The Board Superintendent Academy exists by its own force of will. It’s kind of awesome– there is no external governing or certifying board of any sort declaring that the Broad Superintendent’s Academy is a legitimate thing, and yet, it exists and thrives.
“I myself plan to soon open the Curmudgucation Academy of Brain Surgery, or maybe a School Of Fine Art Production. I have everything I need to make these highly successful, with the possible exception of enough power and money to get people to listen to me whether I know what the hell I’m talking about or not.”
In Pasi Sahlberg’s and William Doyle’s new book Let the Children Play, there are many anecdotes that demonstrate the fallacy of Broad’s education opinions. They describe the growing crisis developing especially in the lower grades and pre-school caused by a lack of play. School leaders frequently have no training in early childhood development leading one teacher to comment, “So often the people who have the most power to affect your teaching have no idea what appropriate, best practice looks like.” Another teacher reported sitting on the floor in a circle and singing “The Farmer in the Dell,” with a group of kindergarteners when the superintendent walked by and said, “You are going to stop singing and start teaching, right?”
School is a much more complex endeavor than running a business. A CEO at Honeywell can successfully transition to running House Hold Finance, but would find running Houston ISD beyond their scope. They wouldn’t even be aware of what they didn’t know.
Broad (rhymes with toad) is one of the billionaires driving a neoliberal agenda focused first and foremost on privatizing public education. Hastings, Arnold, Bloomberg, Walton, Rock, Fisher and Broad are all spending huge money for the cause. In the last LA School Board election, just this group spent more than $5,000,000 to capture the board. They all lavishly support both Teach for America and charter schools.
The Broad Fellowships for Education
The Fellowships for education were established in 2002 and has had 568 Fellows participate, including the 64 in the 2018-2020 cohort. The Broad Center states, “Broad Residents attend eight in-person sessions over two years, taught by practitioners who know firsthand about the issues faced by urban school systems.” Residents will study among other topics:
“Theories of action”
“Budget and finance”
“Accountability, transparency and data-driven decision making”
“Labor-management relations”
“Innovative school models”
The following table lists the present Broad Fellowship trainers.
Every “Broad Fellowship for Education Leader” is a member of an organization working to privatize public education. Joan Sullivan who served Antonio Villaraigosa as LA’s Deputy Mayor for Education is not a neutral voice. In 2007, after failing to gain control of LA’s schools, Mayor Villaraigosa was able to arrange for about a dozen schools to be moved from LAUSD into a newly created non-profit Partnership for LA. The elected school board no-longer had jurisdiction over Partnership schools. When Marshal Tuck resigned as leader of Partnership, Villaraigosa appointed Joan Sullivan to replace him. Joan is also credited with the 2003 founding of a Bronx charter school before she moved to LA.
One of the highest profile Broad Fellows is Neerav Kingsland from the Broad Residency Class of 2009-2011. Last year, Kingsland was named Managing Partner of The City Fund. This new fund was founded when Billionaires Jon Arnold and Reed Hastings each pledged $100 million to promote the portfolio model of public school privatization. Before going to work at the Arnold Foundation in 2015, Neerav and two other law students formed the Hurricane Katrina Legal Clinic, which assisted in the creation of the privatizing organization New Schools for New Orleans. Kingsland became its chief executive officer. He is joined at the City Fund by Chris Barbic, first failed Superintendent of the Tennessee Achievement School District, Founder of YES Prep charter schools and alumni of Broad Superintendents Academy 2011.
Not sure where the picture above originated. However, the people shown all do appear to be in the new 2019-2020 Broad Academy cohort with the exception of Austin Beutner. There is one correction. Caprice Young, the founder of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), is no longer a mouthpiece for Fethullah Gülen. In 2018, she became the National Superintendent for the Learn4Life, cyber school (home schooling) organization that is lucrative for operators but has terrible academic results. This summer a San Diego Judge closed three Learn4Life centers because they were not authorized to be where they were operating.
There was a shift in focus at the Broad academy around 2012. When the operation first started in 2002 an attempt was made to bring new leadership into education including recruiting retired military flag officers. From 2002-2010, 21 retired military members attended the academy. From 2011-2019 there was one. During this later period, people working in the charter industry became dominate in academy cohorts. There have now been 243 people in the Broad Superintendents academy. Recently pro-privatization leaders like Tom Torkelson founder of IDEA Charters (2015-2016 cohort), Diane Tavenner founder Summit Charters (2015-2016 cohort), and Cristina de Jesus President of Green Dot Charters (2016-2017 cohort) feel it is important to participate in the Broad Academy. This year Sonar Tarim, founder of Harmony Charters, and Caprice Young, founder of CCSA, have continued the trend.
In 2012, the Washington Post reported about a leaked Broad Center memo that outlined a new “invitation-only group that will collaborate to address some of the most pressing challenges facing the education sector, help shape policy agendas, influence public opinion, coalesce political forces, and advance bold reforms on the ground.” The group would meet twice a year in Washington DC and “would accelerate the pace of reform.” The memo stated the following list of deliverables:
“It will create a powerful group of the most transformational and proven leaders.”
“It will become the go-to group for reform leaders to engage and move the most cutting edge work forward.”
“It will help create a more supportive environment and change the national landscape to make it easier for superintendents to define policy agendas, influence public opinion, coalesce political forces, and advance bold reforms on the ground.”
“The participants’ personal reform agendas and peer pressure from their colleagues will solidify their commitment to do whatever it takes to drive their systems and the education reform movement forward.”
When it comes to placing academy graduates, sometimes Eli Broad gets directly involved. In January 2009, Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan turned to what was then a little-used state law, Public Act 72, to appoint an “emergency financial manager” charged with addressing Detroit Public School’s ongoing financial troubles. She chose Robert Bobb, a 2005 Broad Academy alumni. No doubt influencing the decision was the fact that Broad and the Kellogg Foundation agreed to pay $145,000 a year toward Bobb’s $425,000 a year salary.
Bobb’s history of failure in Detroit is well documented.
John Covington is a 2008 Broad Academy alumni. He became Superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) in 2009. During his first year, Covington claimed that diplomas from KCPS “aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.” His solution for this situation and a looming budget deficit was to close 29 schools and layoff 285 teachers. This was in exact accord with the new Broad Academy School Closure guide whose first line reads, “While school closures can be an important component of any right-sizing plan to address a budget shortfall, properly executed closures require time, leadership attention, and money.”
Covington suddenly and mysteriously resigned from Kansas City in August of 2011. Local elites were stunned and blamed a school board member for hounding him out of town. It was years later before people there learned what happened. A contact at the Broad Center told Covington to be on the alert for a call from Eli Broad who happened to be in Spain at the time. When the call came Broad said, “John, I need you to go to Detroit.” Two days later, on Aug. 26, 2011, Covington was introduced as the first superintendent of Michigan’s new Education Achievement Authority.
Covington’s reputation was so harmed by his time in Michigan that he never got hired again to lead a school system.
Broad trained Superintendents have a history of bloated staffs leading to financial problems like John Deasy in Los Angeles (Ipad fiasco) or Antwan Wilson in Oakland. They also are notorious for top down management that alienates teachers and parents. Jean-Claude Brizard was given a 98% no confidence vote in Rochester, New York before Rahm Emanuel brought him to Chicago where the teachers union ran him out of town. Maria Goodloe-Johnsonbecame Seattle’s superintendent in 2007. She was soon seen as a disruptive demon by teachers and parents. There was great glee when a financial mismanagement issue brought her down.
Conclusion
No school district trying to improve and provide high quality education should even consider hiring a candidate with Broad training on their resume. Neither the Residency nor the academy are legitimate institutions working to improve public education. Their primary agenda has always been privatizing schools and ending democratic control by local communities. That is why the founding billionaire, Eli Broad, is one of America’s most prolific financers of Charter Schools and organizations like Teach For America. He believes in markets and thinks schools should be privately run businesses.
Harmony Science Academy's original application is very revealing about Gulenists Educational lead Soner Tarim. First glaring interesting point about the Harmony School Application is the poor English grammar that Soner used to fill out an application. Its obvious Soner Tarim has no American teaching credentials or has spent any time in the trenches teaching American children.
His experience is from Gulen's private Imam school in his hometown of Ezerum. Which is NOW closed down by the Turkish government.
Why was Soner Tarim allowed to open over 55 schools in 17 yrs. in Texas and grab billions of Texas taxpayers money via unsecured bonds, and build an empire for Gulen community via fake h1b Visas?
He was removed from his post in October 2017 and has since ventured into Alabama and other areas to expand including trying to start a new bucket of charter schools called Royal Public Schools. In the day they were having lavish trips to Turkey for the students and competing in Turkish Olympiad. Turkish Language and Dance is still taught at these American Schools. What the Harmony Schools and Gulenists are great at is marketing, fake PR and over the top advertising. Usually roping in local leaders, politicians through their fake dialogue centers. http://www.pacificainstitutegulen.blogspot.com
SONER TARIM'S CHINA ADVENTURE
STARTEX EDUCATION
There is a startling connection to Gulenists operated 'provisional" college called VIU- Virginia International University. Lets just say its under the radar and hopefully will be closed soon with the millions the Gulen Movement is stealing from FAFSA and other US government money it's no wonder Dr. Soner Tarim and his NEW wife live in a $650,000 home.
Virginia's higher education regulators, very quietly, took another step this week in the ongoing process that may well lead to revoking the license of Virginia International University (VIU), of Fairfax, Va., the Gulen cult-linked institution that is all too tolerant of plagiarism, according to a State Council on Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) staff report discussed in a previous posting.
VIU is one of the marginal institutions that CIS has been following, places with very high percentages of foreign students, many of whom seem more interested in obtaining work permission in the subsidized OPT program than in securing a genuine education. These marginal entities represent only a small percentage of schools working with foreign students.
VIU is associated with Fethullah Gulen, the self-exiled Muslim cleric, now living in the Poconos. Most educational institutions affiliated with his movement are charter high schools. The Gulen movement, a largely Turkish entity, is now, as it did notused to be, at odds with Turkey's autocratic president, Recep Erdogan.
SCHEV has a three-phase process for handling such matters. The first phase, now concluded, consists of a staff investigation of the institution in question; the staff, as we reported earlier, recommending moving ahead with the revocation process.
On Tuesday, the Council voted unanimously to go into the second phase, which includes giving the institution a chance to rebut the staff findings and an informal hearing on the matter. Should that process result in a further recommendation to close the school, the full Council will vote on the termination of VIU's license. If this happens, it will take place some months from now.
While this is a slow procedure, SCHEV has voted twice in recent years to close down marginal entities. In late 2017, it shut down the American College of Commerce and Technology, in Falls Church, Va. And a few years earlier it did the same to the University of Northern Virginia. All three of these institutions have, or had, locations in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.
Since in recent years the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has done nothing about these marginal institutions, it has become the task of the states to make such judgments and this happens only rarely. If SCHEV does, in fact, shut down VIU the score in recent years will be:
Virginia: 3 closures
California: 1
The other 48 states: 0
DHS: 0
The one California action dealt with Silicon Valley University, where the departing president took a "loan" of $12.5 million in SVU funds as he retired.
It is possible that some other state, or states, closed some other marginal institution(s) in recent years but we have not heard about it, and there is no central registry of such actions. Most closings of marginal institutions have been more or less voluntary actions; some hastened by rejections by non-governmental accrediting entities as well as by market forces.
The SCHEV Process
The move toward the closure of VIU — a tentative decision that may be reversed later — is part of a slow, quiet procedure, with more gentleness and gentility than confrontation. Or at least that's what I found while attending, and playing a minor role in, the sessions of the SCHEV State Council meeting on the grounds of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., earlier this week.
The decision-making process seen at this SCHEV meeting, and presumably others as well, is in sharp contrast to the frequently conflict-laden pattern of congressional hearings, which are often as much theater as anything else.
This was shown, unwittingly I am sure, by the presence or absence of microphones. On Capital Hill, everyone on the committee, and at the table for the witnesses, has a mic. With the State Council, none of the members have mics, nor does the chairman, and some of the statements of the members are hard to hear. Only when there is a presentation by a staff member or a witness is a mic used. These arrangements, and the seeming lack of press coverage, discourage drama, as does the Council's membership, who appear more attuned to academic matters, rather than political ones.
SCHEV deals with a wide-variety of higher education issues and the licensing of non-public higher education institutions is only one of its concerns; that was clearly shown in this week's meeting.
VIU came up, briefly, three times during the two-day schedule. On Monday afternoon, the Academic Affairs Committee discussed briefly a staff recommendation to the full Council that it move ahead with the revocation process, as previously outlined. There was no discussion of the results of the staff investigation, which covered the lack of English proficiency by many graduate students being taught in English, the lack of qualifications of two VIU employees, and the extensive tolerance of plagiarism, mentioned in my earlier posting.
One Council member stating his concern about the "integrity of the program", was the single substantive comment by the panel. Virginia State Senator J. Chapman Petersen, the attorney for VIU, spoke in defense of the institution; though his Senate membership was not mentioned that day, it was the following day.
Chapman noted that two unqualified VIU staffers had been fired, and he offered to close down the online program that the staff had criticized, noting that it had only 30 students out of the some 400 enrollment. He said that he and VIU President Ira Sarac (who said nothing at the proceedings) were present in person "because we take these things seriously."
No one mentioned that the "400 students" Chapman spoke about was a fraction of the school's claimed enrollment of 1,876 in 2015-2016.
The members of the Academic Affairs Committee then voted, unanimously, to recommend to the full Council that the revocation-consideration process proceed. It was all over in a few minutes.
On the next day, Tuesday, March 19, VIU was discussed, briefly, twice. There were three people speaking in the public comment period; I was the first, followed by Senator Petersen; the third person dealt with a totally different subject.
My point was the integrity (or lack of it) in the school's finances. I noted that perhaps uniquely among non-profit universities in the state, VIU was paying local property taxes, because it had given the campus to a 70 percent university-owned for-profit subsidiary, Malvi Consulting, and then had started paying rent (reaching over a million dollars in 2017) to Malvi, which, because it was a for-profit entity, had to pay local property taxes.
"What possible legitimate reason can there be for such a maneuver?" I asked, and then noted that other Gulen-affiliated schools, such as the Dove Schools of Oklahoma, had used such arrangements to siphon public schools money to other, non-educational entities in the Gulen organization, all as recorded by the Oklahoma state auditor.
Petersen followed with another brief defense of the school. The Council had no questions for either of us.
An hour or so later, the full Council, again with scant conversation, approved the recommendation of the Academic Affairs committee to move ahead with the revocation process.
It will be a matter of months before the second phase of this process ends, and the Council makes a final decision.
cision.
2 years ago Gulen Imam school in (Ezerum), (Ezurum), Erzurum Turkey was closed down. 43 people arrested cache of guns found and secret passage ways, this is where Soner Tarim taught according to his application for Harmony Schools.
Within the scope of the investigation, the Provincial Police Department Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Branch teams, in accordance with the instructions of the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office within the framework of the State of Emergency (Decree Law) Decree (KHK) and transferred to the Ministry of National Education made examination in the educational institutions.
After the coup attempt on July 15 by the Erzurum Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, the investigation initiated in order to expose the activities and organizational structure of FETÖ and to take legal action against the perpetrators.
he police controlled the building on the north side of the college and identified a special section, which was entered through the door locked with a private key and formed by combining the 5th and 6th floors.
The hall, which has a small stage with seats and the "himmet" meetings of the organization, has an octagonal shape with a map of the world in it.
The second floor of the special section of the police, met with a much larger surprise. In the controls made here, it was determined that there were two and three bedrooms and kitchen, small meeting rooms and restaurants prepared for the people.
Erzurum National Education Directorate, which was transferred to the Ministry of Education with a large area, this college, then turned into 4 separate schools.As a result of the organization of the buildings in this area, called "Millet Okulları", Şehit Murat Ellik Primary School, Şehit Yakup Driver Anatolian High School, Şehit Hasan Yılmaz Girls Anatolian Imam Hatip High School and 15th of July Martyrs Imam Hatip Secondary School were opened..
Soner Tarim the high priest of Gulen's Educational scam in the USA, is not only trying to open LEAD Academy but is attempting to open a second school in rural Washington County, via his Unity Educational Services a new format the Gulenists are attempting is hiding behind gavurs (non Gulenists) and more women. Thus far this school has a 26.2% enrollment they need 80% of their projected enrollment (250) by June 2019. BLOCK THIS ENROLLMENT
Note SONER TARIMS original application for Harmony Schools in Texas and how he was educated in the hometown of Gulen (Ezereum, Turkey) in a Madrassa - Dershane Gulen Lighthouse Boarding school. Soner is one of the Gulen Movement's earliest disciples groomed, molded and brainwashed for IMAM ORDUSU
Woodland Prep is a charter school horror story — and it hasn’t even been built yet.
Located in rural Washington County, Woodland Prep, which will open as a K-7 school this fall and add a grade level each year, is everything state leaders assured us could never happen under Alabama’s charter school laws.
Its land is owned by a shady Utah holding company. Its building is owned by a for-profit Arizona company. It will be managed by a for-profit Texas company that doesn’t employ a single Alabamian. It will pay the head of that management company around $300,000 per year — up front. Its application was rejected by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which Alabama pays a hefty sum to review and approve charter applications. Woodland’s management plan failed to meet basic standards for approval in any of the three plan areas reviewed by NACSA.
Some of the complex structures of Gulen Movement Soner Tarims Harmony Science Academy in Texas
Soner's Brother Mustafa Tarim
Some of the many Gulenists that operate other charter schools connected to Soner Tarim on social media. Do not deny the undenialable they are the Gulen Movement
Woodland also is not welcome in Washington County, where residents turned up at a 10-1 ratio to speak out against it last year during community meetings. And maybe most importantly, the school is not needed in the poverty-stricken county, where not a single school is failing, most exceed state averages and students are free to attend any school in the county they wish.
“We never thought this school would be approved,” said Betty Brackin, an employee of the Washington County school system and an outspoken opponent of Woodland. “Before we knew any of the things about who was running it or all of that, we knew that only a small number of people in this county — people who were upset for personal reasons … with the public school system — they’re the only ones who wanted it. The rest of this county is not for this, and we’ve let everyone know it.”
But Woodland was approved by the Alabama Charter School Commission, which appeared to violate at least three of its responsibilities in doing so.
The Commission ignored the community outcry against Woodland and failed to even discuss the need — or lack thereof — for a charter school in the county. Both of those are specific requirements within Alabama’s charter school law for the Commission to consider during its public meetings.
Additionally, charter schools approved in Alabama are, according to Alabama’s law, required to meet “national standards.” To assure those standards are met, Alabama lawmakers assured a concerned public that a “top-notch” national body — to quote two state representatives — would be contracted to review every application before those applications would be considered by the Commission. NACSA is that group, and Alabama pays it nearly $100,000 per year to review applications, and then the Commission ignores its advice.
Woodland Prep’s was at least the third charter application that NACSA rejected for very specific, very detailed reasons. For example, in questioning Woodland’s operational plan, the NACSA reviewers had concerns about its hiring of Unity School Services to perform management and education services. It was unclear why USS was selected, if the company — which had just eight total employees, none of which were in Alabama — could even do the job, and what expertise it had in such areas.
NACSA also noted that Woodland’s education plan included very few details, especially for a school scheduled to open the next school year, and had failed to identify key partnerships or assign key roles.
Commission Failings
None of that mattered to the Commission, though. It approved Woodland’s application, and from what I can tell, the application was never reviewed by any other outside entity. (Other charter applications rejected by NACSA and later approved by the Commission were at least approved by a different entity.)
I asked the Alabama State Department of Education, which has oversight responsibilities of the Charter School Commission, to explain why the application was approved after being rejected by NACSA and/or to provide me with an approval of an amended application by NACSA or another group. There was no response.
ALSDE did, however, respond to several other questions I submitted concerning the troubling details of Woodland Prep’s ownership and management, the lack of community support for the school and about specific details — such as lease rates and interest rates — contained in agreements between Woodland’s board and the private companies it had contracted with.
ALSDE is supposed to maintain records, such as building plans and lease agreements, that charter schools enter into. That is because, as the authorizer of the charter school in Washington County, the Commission is responsible under Alabama law for the oversight of that school.
But in response to my questions, ALSDE decided to be flippant. It directed questions about community opposition to “commissioners who attended the meetings,” despite the fact that ALSDE video recorded each meeting. It disputed that the Commission has a responsibility to monitor and oversee the charter schools it approves, stating that “the Commission may monitor …” the schools. And finally, when asked about the out-of-state ownership and management of Woodland, ALSDE said those questions should be directed to one of those out-of-state groups.
Which seems to indicate that there is no oversight whatsoever of charter schools — or the process to approve charter schools — in Alabama.
The Gulen Connection
A month ago, I had never heard of Woodland Prep, or of the uproar that has taken place in Washington County over its approval. But the day after I wrote a story about Montgomery’s LEAD Academy — which the Commission also approved despite a rejected application, questionable ownership and a shady management company — six different emails landed in my email inbox from Washington County residents.
All of the emails, including two from teachers, one from a dentist, another from a doctor and one from Brackin, the school system employee I mentioned earlier, had the same general theme: “Please help expose what’s happening in Washington County.” That was the actual subject line of one of the emails.
It seems that one name in my story about LEAD had caught their attention: Soner Tarim. Tarim is the CEO of Unity School Services and was the founder of Harmony Schools, a mostly-successful charter school group in Texas. Tarim and Harmony also have their very serious problems, not least of which is their ties to a Muslim cleric and controversial preacher from Turkey, Fetullah Gulen, and his Gulen Movement.
Numerous reports from the New York Times to Reuters and other local news outlets linked Harmony and Tarim to Gulen, and some labeled Harmony a financial front for Gulen’s movement. While Gulen espouses a more moderate brand of Islam, his movement has been labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey, which has accused Gulen and his followers of attempting to overthrow the Turkish government. Others dispute those claims, and believe the terrorist label is unfairly applied to Gulen, who has shown no proclivity for violence.
Regardless, other legal questions have been raised about Harmony and Tarim’s use of the schools to exploit a visa program and to skirt hiring laws in order to give contract jobs to Turkish workers and teachers.
There have also been other, education-related problems, such as a massive grade-change scandal at Harmony in Texas and financial fraud allegations related to grants at other Gulen schools.
But in Washington County, while there was concern about Tarim’s past and his connections to Gulen, the much bigger question was a simple one: Why is he here?
“No one could figure out why someone from Texas would come to little ol’ Washington County for a charter school,” said Brackin, who is the federal programs coordinator for the system.
April 29, 2019 the county of Washington in Alabama will screen the documentary called
KILLING ED, which is about the Gulen Movement charter schools in the USA and specificially about Soner Tarim's schools in Texas HARMONY SCIENCE ACADEMY
Anyone involved with researching the Gulen Movement knows they worship POWER and MONEY . They previously wrapped themselves around many members of Congress and had lobbying groups based out of Washington DC. Cash strapped and re evaluating their political agenda especially after the Kemal Oksuz arrest they have now focused on more local and regional members of legislature. Thereby making Charlotte Meadows bid for Senate particularly troubling if not a CONFLICT OF INTEREST when it comes to making legislature on education she will vote to fund more charter schools. Charlotte Meadows has slept with the Gulen Movement you lie with the dogs you catch fleas
MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - The co-founder of Mongomery’s LEAD Academy charter school Charlotte Meadows announced she will run for the District 74 House seat.
In a news release, Meadows said she will focus on being an advocate for public school education and helping students better prepare for today’s workforce.
“Improving the public schools in Montgomery is the key to recruiting new industries and opportunities for our citizens, preserving jobs at Maxwell and Gunter, and making sure that District 74 remains growing and vibrant,” Meadows said. “We must attract more businesses to fill the empty storefronts that dot our legislative district, we must work to stop the crime that occurs in our neighborhoods, and we must preserve a quality of life that keeps our friends, neighbors, children, and grandchildren from moving elsewhere. I know we can make Montgomery the same vibrant city that I remember from childhood.”
Meadows was a member of the Montgomery School Board for six years where she served as board president from 2010 to 2012. She is also the former director of Alabama Outreach of StudentsFirst, a non-profit organization that works to improve public education.
Gov. Kay Ivey set a special election for the District 74 seat after the death of State Rep. Dimitri Polizos.
Montgomery’s first public charter school was given the go-ahead by the Alabama Supreme Court in a ruling on Friday, though it’s unclear when the school, LEAD Academy, plans to open.
Today’s ruling reverses a lower court ruling that a vote to approve the charter school’s application by five of the nine Alabama Public Charter School Commission members did not constitute a majority vote.
“We are thrilled,” LEAD board president Charlotte Meadows told AL.com, “and ready to make this happen---if at all possible---but will focus on quality and success before speed.”
The Court, in a 6-to-2 decision, ruled that because state law defines a quorum of the Commission as six members, a majority of the quorum constitutes a majority vote and the approval of LEAD Academy’s application stands.
The Court also ruled that state law only requires the Commission to add a local school district representative, referred to as “the 11th member," to the Commission when considering an appeal of a denial of a charter school applicant by that local charter school authorizer.
In an official statement, LEAD Academy wrote, “We continue to believe that this lawsuit was nothing more than an attempt to protect the status quo that for far too long has failed to put the needs of students first.”
"Hopefully we can all move past the petty arguments of adults," the statement continued, "and focus our attention on what our education system should be focused on - ensuring every child in Montgomery has an opportunity to receive a high-quality education."
A spokesperson for Montgomery schools said the Board had not yet seen the ruling and would review the Court’s decision.
The Alabama Education Association did not return a request for comment prior to the publication of this article.
Charter schools are public schools but have much more autonomy on issues such as hiring, curriculum and scheduling than traditional public schools. The flexibility is intended to encourage innovative programs that serve some students better than traditional schools.
In exchange for the autonomy, public charter schools are expected to meet certain benchmarks such as academic improvements. The charter school can be closed if it fails to meet those benchmarks.
Montgomery County has 10 schools that were declared “failing” under the Alabama Accountability Act dropping from 11 in 2018.
The Alabama Department of Education intervened in the Montgomery school system in 2017, pointing to low student achievement and financial difficulties the district was experiencing.
In a strange bizarre case of "hide a Turk" Muhammed Erdogan aka Frank Erdogan first came under our spotlight in 2009 in Utah as principal of the troubled Gulen charter school Beehive Science and Technology School. It was due to close in 2010, after much controversy over Holocaust teaching remarks from Frank /Muhammed. There was other controversy surrounding substandard teaching and the Gulen Movement involvement.
Then the same age old issues of the Gulenists with sticky fingers using US taxpayers educational money pay over $300,000 for H1 B visas of their wayward brethren (aka More Turks) Their teacher was below average, English skills horrific. With the threat of the school being closed down after horrible test scores and community complaints especially by ex board members, the state had a meeting with the new interim principal who brought in an attorney that intimidated the state educational board. They were given 1 year probation which turned into 7 more years.
But what happened to Frank / Muhammed Erdogan? Well he ended up surfacing in Australia using the name "Fethullah Erdoghan"
Some Mutual Gulen Friends: Just a bunch of cult buddies right?
The Gulen Mystery, RTD’s in-depth documentary series about Fethullah Gulen, investigates the man accused of ordering the military coup of July 2016 in Turkey. Recep Erdogan, the Turkish President, insists the US must extradite the cleric behind what he calls FETO, the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation. American authorities demand evidence that the cleric, who has lived in Pennsylvania since 1999, is indeed implicated in the military uprising. For how could the self-taught educator have had anything to do with an attempt to seize control of the Turkish State?+
Fethullah Gulen, a home-schooled Turkish preacher, became famous for promoting a tolerant, science-friendly Islam and encouraging education. His followers built up an international network of 'Gulen schools', including in Kyrgyzstan, where they rank among the best in the country.
Jessica Avery had been looking to transfer her fourth-grade daughter to a new school when the flyer from Sonoran Science Academy arrived in the mail.
At the time around two years ago, Avery was unhappy with her daughter’s Tucson charter school. She found the administration to be standoffish and unhelpful. The advertisement promoting Sonoran Science Academy, a publicly funded Arizona K-12 charter network with a focus on science and technology, seemed like the perfect fit for her kids. Their family has always tried to give the kids an extra push academically, Avery said.
The warm welcome they received while visiting the Sonoran Science Academy campus on the east side of Tucson, north of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, helped seal the decision. “Touring the school, when they talked about community, and how the teachers interacted with the parents, we were just like, ‘This is it. This is our new home,’” Avery said.
She transferred their daughter immediately, midway through her fourth-grade year. Their son joined the school later, once the school had an opening. Never have we in 10+ years heard of any student being on a so-called waiting list longer than a few months.
But when they joined the charter school, some things struck Avery as odd: There were lots of Turkish teachers and staff. Also puzzling was the school’s offering of a Turkish-language class. Her daughter wanted to learn Spanish, but the class was full, so she was placed in the Turkish course.
“My daughter thought, okay, this is weird — completely different, you know?” Avery said. “But I think it’s just a great opportunity to learn that.” Why is it an opportunity to learn that- Because they told you so? Do you know what a Janissary is?
The Turkish-ness of Sonoran Science Academy might seem like a peculiar coincidence. Yet when Avery walked into Sonoran Science Academy two years ago, experts say, she had unwittingly stumbled into a conflict in Turkey that can be mystifying to the average American.
Observers and critics link this charter network to the Gulen movement, a secretive Islamic socio-religious network founded in Turkey by the aged cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. The Turkish government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blame Gulen and his followers for the failed coup of July 15, 2016. Gulen denied any involvement in the attempted coup, and condemned the plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of Turkey.Contradicting experts, the Sonoran Schools charter network in Arizona denies any institutional affiliation with the Gulen movement. 100% provable - they themselves admit it as "Sympathizers of Gulen" or "We are inspired by Gulen" plus these teachers interchange with each other mostly on the west coast teaching between: Magnolia Science Academy, Bay Area Technology School, Lotus School of Excellence, Sonoran Science Academy, Coral Academy of Science. The principal that opened Sonoran Science Academy on Davis - Monthan AFB also opened the school at Nellis AFB Ercan Aydogdu. Click for more on Ercan Aydogdu
Sonoran Science Academy - Tucson. The first Sonoran Schools charter school opened in Tucson in 2001.
Joseph Flaherty
Sonoran Schools operates six charter school campuses: three in Tucson and three in Phoenix, Peoria, and Chandler. The first charter school opened in 2001 in Tucson as the Daisy Science Academy, and since then, the network has acquired a reputation for a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math, and a diverse student population. Today, 2,560 students in Arizona attend one of the academies. The charter network also operates a Tucson preschool. Daisy Early Education Click here Daisy Early Education
Additionally these Gulen operated schools on the West Coast have the same connections to Accord Insitute (Accord Education) except for the California Magnolia Schools which where ordered by the judge to sever ties with them. Their non profit Dialogue and "political group" which Oskur Yildez is ahead of called West Turkic American Council he is also the point person contract person for Daisy Education. Here is Oskur teaching a class IN CALIFORNIA to Magnolia Students on Turkish Culture and Oskur Yildez has also LOBBIED with Gulen Pacifica Insitute to gain a school in Hawaii on Mokapu Air Force base after he withdrew the application with Daisy Education on it first.
Gulen is the Honorary Chair person of their many non profits layered around the schools
Additional links of Oskur Yildez to Gulen Movement and Gulen Lobbying are all over the Internet
Sonoran Schools and its parent nonprofit organization, the Daisy Education Corporation (DEC), declined interview requests for administrators, and responded only to written questions. “DEC has no links to any non-educational entities. DEC is a non-profit corporation founded solely to meet a need for Arizona students,” the charter network said in a statement. “It was established in accordance with all applicable local, state, and federal guidelines, regulations, and laws.”
There are thought to be more than 150 schools affiliated with Gulen in the U.S., and thousands across the globe. The movement is under increased pressure since the turbulent days after the attempted coup in Turkey. The Turkish government has carried out a sweeping purge of academics, journalists, judges, and military officers thought to be members of the Gulen movement — no matter how tenuous the evidence — in a roundup that continues even now.
Secrecy and obfuscation seem to be a survival strategy for schools founded by members of the Gulen movement. “They have always been kind of vague about the organic, institutional link with the Gulen movement,” said Omer Taspinar, a Turkey expert at the Brookings Institution. “It’s not good for business if your school is linked to a religious leader.”
Robert Amsterdam, a bulldog international lawyer retained by the Turkish government to investigate the Gulen movement-links of U.S. charter schools, said that exhaustive research by his firm has defined the ties between the schools and the Gulen network. Repeating the Turkish government’s line, Amsterdam argues that the Gulen movement was clearly behind the failed coup.
“This is a very coordinated, organized threat to the United States,” Amsterdam said. “They’re taking a massive amount of taxpayer money. Many of the people operating in the schools have no idea how the organization really is operating.”
In glass cases at the entrance to Sonoran Science Academy – Tucson is a mountain of trophies, plaques, and citations in nearly every category imaginable: an award of meritorious achievement in the 2010 Arizona Academic Decathlon; a certificate of appreciation from the 2008 Tucson Rodeo Parade; a faded page from a 2003 edition of the Tucson Citizen that featured the school’s robotics program with the headline “Wired for Success.”
On one wall is a photo commemorating the governor’s visit to the school last year. The school’s mission statement is underneath: “To foster critical thinking, engaging all students in a rigorous STEM-focused, college-prep curriculum, delivered by a dedicated educational community that celebrates diversity, where students aspire to be tomorrow’s leaders.”
Around noon on a recent Tuesday, kids milled around a courtyard as a secretary commanded all middle-schoolers to gather for an assembly over the P.A. system. With such an ordinary school atmosphere, Sonoran Schools poses a question for parents and education experts: Does it matterif a charter school might be affiliated with a Turkish religious movement if students are receiving a high-quality STEM education?
Parents and alumni seem to be happy. Avery’s daughter, Bella, is now in sixth grade at Sonoran Science Academy – East, and her son, Logan, is in second grade. There has been no sign of Turkish influence or religious messages in the curriculum, aside from the language course, she said.
As of this fall, Avery is the vice president of the Parent Teacher Organization for SSA – East. The Gulen movement was totally unknown to her, Avery said.
“I don’t care where they’re from or what they believe or what they do,” Avery said of the Turkish staff. “I care about how they present themselves, how they treat others, and what they do for the students and the community.”
Turkish language is taught at four of the Sonoran Schools campuses, according to the administration. It’s the only other language offered widely in addition to Spanish, which is taught at all schools. One school offers American Sign Language. “Turkish was identified in the National Security Language Initiative program as one of several ‘critical need’ foreign languages for U.S. students,” Sonoran Schools said in a statement.click here for more on NSLI"one of several "critical need" foreign languages" The program will not be offered the 2018-2019 academic year, we can only guess because the Gulen Movement is not allowed to step foot into Turkey.
Even so, apart from the Turkish language class, the schools have introduced students to a group of dedicated Turkish educators and administrators.
Michelle Marquez, 22, is a 2014 graduate of SSA – Tucson, where she now works as a long-term substitute kindergarten teacher. She’s currently pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Arizona.Before Marquez started attending Sonoran Schools, she couldn’t remember meeting someone from Turkey. One of the reasons the Gulen Movement likes to focus on low income, high Hispanic & Black neighborhoods, they know nothing of the History of Turkey and its persecution of Minority Christians, Kurds etc., Or their political make up which the Gulen Movement formed the last 20 years including putting AKP party and Erdogan into office. The other advantage of ignorance is the Gulenists know they get extra title I-V money for ESL, low income and can start businesses that get contracts from their schools.
“I’ve learned to appreciate the culture that they bring to the school,” she said. “It’s not like they enforce anything on us or teach us about anything foreign. But when you have foreign teachers, you learn things from them. Just like you learn things from any teacher that you have — what they celebrate, what they like to do, how they live their life.” Did they pay her college tuition at University of Arizona? Ms. Marquez you need to know what it is to be an American, this school is funded by American tax dollars.
Asked about the Gulen movement, with its mysterious Muslim preacher in exile and the alleged ties to her alma mater, Marquez started laughing as if in disbelief. “I have never heard of this ever,” she said. Just they way they want them clueless and not asking ANY QUESTIONS.
We have had parents of past students tell us that there are no names on these "Trophies"
furthermore most are awared at Gulen Charter School sponsored events: I Sweep, Math Matters, Science Olympaid, Turkish Olympiad, STEM EXPO, and it's the same presentations used at all the schools.
The political intrigue surrounding the Gulen movement is a story dating back to the creation of the Turkish republic nearly 100 years ago.
Modern Turkey was born from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed in defeat to the Allies during World War I, and a war for Turkish independence led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. As the nation’s founder and first president, Ataturk sought to bury the imperialist sultanate that preceded him, curtail the Islamic religious sphere through Western-style secularist reforms, and reshape government and public life. The Arabic-style alphabet was officially abandoned. Imams became state employees, part of a newly created bureaucracy, the Directorate of Religious Affairs.
When the secular republic in Turkey was less than two decades old, Gulen was born in a village in rural eastern Turkey. Among the many mysteries surrounding the cleric is his age. His official birthdate is 1941, but he was probably born a few years before that, making Gulen roughly 80 years old. Confusion over Gulen’s birthday was supposedly due to a dispute between the registration official and Gulen’s father, which left the future religious leader unregistered with the state.
In most images, Gulen seems weary. The corners of his mouth are often downturned. He has liver spots and a white mustache, and usually wears a dark blazer with no tie. In some photos, he can be seen in the traditional knit cap worn by devout Muslim men. If you encountered Gulen amid daily life, he could be any elderly man sipping tea or waiting for the bus — hardly the inspiring figure admired by a legion of followers, or the villain regarded by the Turkish government as a megalomaniac.
A source of inspiration for Gulen was the influential 20th-century Islamic scholar Said Nursi, who believed that Islamic tenets and a modern scientific education could coexist and support each another. After taking the position of imam in the bustling city of Izmir on the Aegean Sea in 1966, Gulen gained a devoted following as he urged the pious to improve society through education. Inspired by his message, during the subsequent decades, Gulen’s followers established schools, test-prep centers, and universities in Turkey and abroad. They also built media organizations, charitable organizations, banks, and other business ventures.
All of this served to create a network of like-minded people while enhancing the reputation of Gulen, the charismatic leader who inspired such efforts. Eventually, Gulen’s following would grow to include millions worldwide.
“He’s viewed as tremendously wise, as the examples or legitimacy of his wisdom is exemplified in the success of the organizations,” said Joshua Hendrick, an associate professor of sociology and global studies at Loyola University Maryland and the author of Gulen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World.
Gulen preaches an innocuous message of interfaith dialogue, tolerance, and education. For those who view Gulen favorably, the movement he leads is known as Hizmet, or service. Yes in fact, The Gulen Movement has 100 of these non-profit so called dialogue centers that are layered around the publicly funded schools which serve as a money laundering conduit to suck the money out of the schools then it's wired overseas, or to another area of the USA or to help another school in America. In the day they were wiring it to their bank Asya in Turkey but it's been closed. Here is some info on the Gulen Non-profits CLICK HERE
But experts on Turkish politics say that Gulen’s world network is actually concerned with acquiring power through loyal followers and a secretive organizational structure that resembles a cult. Power and Money are key for the movement.
“It’s long been suspected that the movement is interested in having a sole focus on making the Republic of Turkey more devout and culturally sort of religious,” said Sinan Ciddi, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Turkish Studies, “and thereby help raise a generation of pious individuals who are also raised in professional backgrounds that can serve in a modern economy.”
The Gulen movement has unique Turkish and Islamic roots, but it can be compared to the Moral Majority, Hendrick said, with its social-change agenda and a special focus on education and media. He likened its organizational discipline to that of the Mormon church. Hendrick was immersed in ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey for more than a year, where he examined the institutions of the movement, sometimes taking many months to gain access to Gulen sympathizers inside banks, media outlets, and companies.
Despite claims that the movement is apart from party politics, a central goal of the movement is “social power, very broadly defined,” Hendrick said, “Not just political power, not just economic power, but power defined as the ability to both cultivate and wield influence.” Sugar coating it Hendricks it's called "Ultimate Power" of Soft power and hard power : Education, Politics, Religion, Businesses, Banking, etc., Wherever they go they try to tap into local real estate deals, and corning the worlds resources Gold in Ghana, Heroin in Afghanistan, Textiles in Ethiopia, Oil in Azerbaijan, in California they have tried to wrap themselves within Silcon Valley Tech Industry, In Idaho and in Pittsburg they are in the Dairy Yogurt business Chobani Yogurt, Amish Naturlich Yogurt.
Gulen’s critics believe that the movement wants to wield this influence to transform Turkey’s secular order established by Ataturk into a more openly religious society. Ciddi said, “I believe it to be harboring sort of what I would call clandestine intentions to achieve a religious and political ambition.”
Gulen moved to the U.S. in 1999, purportedly for medical treatment — he suffers from diabetes and heart problems. Fleeing Turkey also allowed him to escape the possibility of arrest by authorities who suspected the cleric held ambitions for an Islamist takeover. Shortly after he left, a video emerged that appeared to show Gulen plainly describing a subversive strategy to his followers.You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the centers of power,” Gulen said, instructing them to wait until they acquire “all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey.”
The year after he arrived in the U.S., a Turkish prosecutor charged Gulen in absentia with conspiracy to overthrow the government. He was later acquitted.
The same year that Gulen arrived in the U.S., the Daisy Education Corporation registered as a nonprofit. The first iteration of Sonoran Science Academy opened its doors in Tucson two years later.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, Erdogan’s conservative, Islamist-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP) swept into power with a landmark victory in the 2002 elections. Erdogan and his political acolytes in the AKP had shared interests with members of the Gulen movement — namely, dismantling the influence of the secular military leaders over Turkish politics. The two groups were aligned for the first decade that the AKP was in power.
The Turkish military periodically carried out coups in defense of the nation’s secularist principles established by Ataturk. During his political ascent, the military was wary of Erdogan, the former mayor of Istanbul who was previously jailed for several months for reciting an Islamic-tinged poem at a 1997 rally. But Erdogan had a powerful ally in the Gulen movement. By this time, most observers concluded that many striving Gulenists, taking inspiration from Gulen’s sermons, had climbed to a variety of powerful positions within the state.Beginning in 2007, Gulenists in the judiciary and police pursued members of the military in a series of byzantine investigations, which left the generals and the military severely weakened, the New Yorker reported. Some were given life sentences, accused of membership in a “deep state” organization seeking to destabilize the government.
But around 2013, then-Prime Minister Erdogan and the Gulen movement turned on each other. Exactly why the alliance broke down is unclear — the impending closure of Gulen’s test-prep schools likely contributed to the feud, not to mention the defeat of a common enemy in the secularist generals.
The power struggle exploded into public view during a corruption investigation in which family members of government ministers and businessmen tied to Erdogan were arrested. Erdogan blamed the investigation on Gulen, referring to “a state within a state.”
The Turkish government in 2016 branded the Gulen movement a terrorist organization with the acronym FETO, which translates to the “Gulenist terror organization.”
On the evening of July 15, 2016, the first sign of the chaos to come was when the military blocked the Bosphorus Bridge. Soldiers and trucks unexpectedly stopped traffic on the enormous suspension bridge, one of several routes across the churning waters of the Bosphorus, the waterway that separates Europe from Asia and connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It was a Friday evening in Istanbul, and the city of some 15 million people pulsed with energy. Tanks and gunfire were about to shatter their night out.During the hours that followed, Turkey plunged into terror as a faction of the military attempted to wrest control of the government in a coup d’etat. The Parliament building in the capital city of Ankara was bombed. Sonic booms from low-flying jets rattled windows. President Erdogan narrowly escaped capture by rebels in Marmaris, a coastal vacation town to the south.
In a surreal moment, Erdogan called into the Turkish CNN station through the FaceTime app on an iPhone, which the anchor held up to the cameras. The president exhorted Turkish citizens to take to the streets to protest the coup. Although some 250 people were killed, the plotters faltered. Their plans appeared to be hastily laid and were marred by critical errors, and soon, the coup was unraveling, hampered by civilian protest. By sunrise, the military coup had failed, and thousands of rebel soldiers were taken into custody.
When he arrived at Istanbul’s airport during the early hours of the morning, Erdogan left no doubt about the forces behind the coup. The soldiers were being directed from Pennsylvania, Erdogan said, implying that Gulen’s followers were responsible.
The populist strongman who had been in power for more than a decade at that point vowed to punish the Gulenist plotters. Erdogan called the attempted coup “a gift from God.”
Now a permanent resident of the U.S., Gulen has never returned to Turkey, despite the Erdogan government’s escalating calls for his extradition. “If he is sent there, very clearly, he will not get a fair trial,” said Y. Alp Aslandogan, the executive director of the Alliance for Shared Values, the most prominent Gulen-affiliated organization in the U.S. “It is like sending him to his death.”
Gulen lives at an isolated compound in rural Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. Known as the Golden Generation Worship and Retreat Center, the 25-acre property includes several plain, unadorned houses, a community center, a mosque, and a security gate, all surrounded by woods. Gulen, who is unmarried, gives sermons to visitors typically twice a week when they visit the center for prayer or meditation, but he seldom grants interviews.
Aslandogan, who came to the U.S. in 1991 as a graduate student, is a conduit to the reclusive preacher. As the head of the Alliance for Shared Values, an umbrella nonprofit, Aslandogan said that the organization serves as “an authentic voice for the Hizmet participants in the United States.” Alp was a founder of the Harmony Science Academies in Texas, his name is all over their paperwork, Before moving to the east coast
He said that he was not personally familiar with the people working for Sonoran Schools. “It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything. I just don’t know the people involved,” he said. At the same time, Aslandogan argued that if people working for the charter network are Gulen sympathizers, they probably believe in serving their community through education. “In that sense, at the personal, spiritual level, or philosophical level, you might say they have a personal link,” Aslandogan said. “I don’t see any problem with that.” you don't see any problem with lying?
He suggested that the fault is with people probing ties to the Gulen movement who ask vague questions.
“‘Is your school linked to the movement?’ That is an ambiguous statement. If they ask, ‘Are you personally inspired by the movement or Mr. Gulen?’ That’s easier, this person can say, ‘Yes, I am personally inspired,’ or not,” Aslandogan said. “I think people are trying to avoid ambiguity,” he added. Side stepping is what you do, just answer the question yes or no, you are either part of the Gulen Movement or you are not. Why so ashamed to admit what is obvious. This is why Americans are not comfortable with Gulen Movement teaching their children, it's your lying and hiding the obvious.
If schools cover up some affiliation with the Gulen movement, Aslandogan argued they face opponents like Amsterdam who are trying “to depict these schools, or any institution where Gulen sympathizers are active, as a threat to American way of life or abuse of American taxpayer money, or something like that.”
Members of the Gulen movement who have gravitated toward establishing public charter schools, Aslandogan suggested, have done so to serve disadvantaged kids who might not be able to afford a high-quality private school education. Here Alp weakly admits the schools are part of the Gulen Movement.
Parents who might be concerned to hear that a socio-religious movement is behind an Arizona charter network would do well to study the Gulen movement, Aslandogan argued. He reeled off several of the group’s purported tenets: love of science, interfaith dialogue, increased opportunities for women. Gulen, he said, has been a proponent of democracy and secularism. Once Again, another weak admission of links to the movement. This is a group that I think they should find immensely valuable if they find any participants, any sympathizers involved in education,” Aslandogan said. “They have an asset for this country.” Says the man that is trying to deny connections of the schools to Gulen. Alp Aslandogan is also on record at CBS "60"minutes saying that American Credentialed teachers are not good in Math and Science (in other words only Turkish Male teachers from abroad would be hired) many of these so called teachers were brought to the USA to be lobbyists for Gulen's agenda in the USA and overseas CLICK HERE
The entrance to Sonoran Science Academy - Phoenix.
Joseph Flaherty
Shortly after the one-year anniversary of the failed coup in Turkey, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey paid a visit to Sonoran Schools.
When he arrived at the campus of Sonoran Science Academy – Tucson on August 21, 2017, two Turkish administrators greeted him. Fatih Karatas, the charter network’s chief executive, wore a colorful tie covered with molecules and a twisting helix. Karatas was joined by Adnan Doyuran, the Sonoran Schools associate superintendent and principal of the middle and high school. Balding with glasses, Doyuran has a Ph.D in physics from Stony Brook University and happens to be an expert on particle acceleration and free-electron lasers. He shook hands with Ducey.
Ducey is a school-choice advocate, making Sonoran Science Academy a natural pick for a visit from the governor during a back-to-school tour. In a promotional video produced by Sonoran Schools, the governor praised the school’s award-winning robotics program, and marveled at a demonstration of a championship robot. Like any visit from an elected official, the tour was a clear badge of approval.
“This is something that’s working,” Ducey tells Karatas and Doyuran in the video, standing in a school entryway. “We need to do it more often, in more places, for more of our kids. It doesn’t work without leaders and teachers like you have here, though.”
Karatas and Doyuran are part of the unusual number of Turkish staffers who work for the charter network and serve on the governing board of the charter holder, Daisy Education Corporation.
Out of a dozen top administrators of Sonoran Schools, four of them are apparently Turkish: CEO Fatih Karatas, associate superintendent Adnan Doyuran, CFO Tuncay Celik, and curriculum director Tolga Ozel. (Like other Sonoran Schools staffers, at least Doyuran and Ozel were educated in Turkey.) And like other alleged Gulen-affiliated schools in the U.S., Sonoran Schools appears to rely heavily on specialty-worker visas to recruit employees from overseas.
The Daisy Education Corporation has received certification for at least 149 H-1B visas since 2009, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. Of these labor condition applications submitted for nonimmigrant workers, 68 have been for new employment, as opposed to a change in employer or the continuation of previously approved employment. Not every certification for an H-1B visa by the federal government means that a foreign worker was hired, but the number of H-1B applications by the chain may be even higher because of variations on the name of the charter school listed as the visa sponsor.
Other traditional and charter schools don’t approach Sonoran Schools’ use of H-1B visas.
Another recognizable and rigorous charter network based in Arizona, Great Hearts Academies, has received certification for H-1B visas on just three occasions during the same time period. Even the Phoenix Union High School District, with a student population over 10 times the size of Sonoran Schools, has received only 46 H-1B visa certifications over the last decade, less than a third of Sonoran Schools’ total.
In addition to the H-1B visas sought by the network, Sonoran Schools has applied for permanent labor certification on at least 14 occasions over the last decade. According to federal data, the Daisy Education Corporation has sought to certify for green card status mostly employees from Turkey, except for two people from Turkmenistan and one from Kyrgyzstan.
The charter network said that only three staff members out of 254 are on H-1B visas, and added that multiple labor condition applications (LCAs) are filed for the same position, or are filed when an employee changes jobs. “The gross number of approved LCAs is always higher, sometimes by a significant factor, than the actual number of workers who work at an employer in H-1B work status, based on an approved LCA,” Sonoran Schools said.At the same time, paradoxically, Sonoran Schools argued that a drought in qualified educators has forced them to use the H-1B program.
“It is irrefutable that beyond a general teacher shortage, there is also a critical shortage of effective STEM educators,” Sonoran Schools said. “Across the nation, schools and districts report difficulties recruiting and retaining knowledgeable STEM teachers and many have turned to international recruitment to address this shortage.”
The charter network did not address its practice of applying for permanent residence for employees from Turkey and Central Asia, only saying that the schools have a “vested interest to retain all highly effective staff.”
Experts on the Gulen movement say affiliated charter schools seem to have another vested interest: recruiting fellow members of the movement from Turkey.
“Most of the Turkish teachers are graduates of the Gulen movement schools in Turkey,” said Taspinar, the Brookings Institution fellow. “And they have sympathy for the Gulen movement. They’re conservative people. They’re pious people. And there is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with that except that there is this culture of secrecy.”
Phoenix New Times reviewed the publicly available resumes on file at all six Sonoran Schools academies for the 2018-19 school year. Among those employees, 31 staffers hail from Turkey, three from Kyrgyzstan, and one from Turkmenistan. With the exception of SSA – Davis-Monthan, at every Sonoran Schools academy, either the principal or vice principal is Turkish. At the Chandler academy, at least 10 employees are of Turkish origin based on their names and educational history in the country. (Sonoran Schools could not say how many staffers hold Turkish citizenship.) Kyrgyzstan is a Turkic country, where the Gulen Movement has schools which have not been shuttered "yet", Turkmenistan is also a Turkic country and their Gulen Schools have been shuttered.
Several of the Turkish teachers and administrators have connections to other alleged Gulen schools and institutions. Doyuran, who serves as the principal of SSA – Tucson’s middle and high school, previously worked at the Lotus School for Excellence in Colorado from 2008 to 2013, according to his resume. Before that, he served as dean of academics and physics teacher at Magnolia Science Academy in California. Researchers suggest both charter organizations are linked to the Gulen movement. The dean of academics at SSA – Tucson, Recai Yilmaz, worked for the Magnolia charter network and the Coral Academy of Science in Las Vegas.
Their trajectories are almost identical to Erdal Kocak’s, the principal of SSA – East, who was the principal of Magnolia Science Academy from 2009 to 2012. Prior to joining Sonoran Schools, Kocak traveled widely, working in K-12 schools from Australia to China to Albania. MORE INFO ON Gulen Schools worldwide CLICK HERE
Many current Sonoran Schools employees worked at Magnolia Science Academy schools before moving to Arizona. Recently, the California charter network of 10 science-and-technology-focused schools was rattled by audits that questioned financial practices and the hiring of Turkish staff from abroad, and two years ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District voted to close three Magnolia schools. However, the decision was overturned on appeal by the board of the L.A. County Office of Education.
In 2010, then-Sonoran Schools superintendent Ozkur Yildiz denied any institutional affiliation with the Gulen movement in response to questions from the Tucson Daily Star, but he acknowledged that he was personally familiar with Gulen. Some Turkish teachers may be “inspired” by the religious leader, he said, given the preacher’s notoriety in Turkey. More on Ozkur Yildiz CLICK HERELike other public charter schools in Arizona, Sonoran Schools is free to attend; the network receives funding from the state on a per-student basis. In 2018, the six Sonoran Schools academies received a total of $16,171,980 in funding from Arizona and $2,397,948 from the federal government.
But the presence of Gulen-affiliated charter schools in the U.S. charter sector has contributed to swirling allegations, some conveyed through whistleblowers discovered by Amsterdam, regarding a kind of tithing that takes place using publicly funded salaries.
According to Hendrick, members of the Gulen movement, including teachers at Gulen-affiliated charter schools, give a portion of their income, known as himmet, back to the Gulen movement, usually cultivated via a regional arm of the network such as an interfaith dialogue nonprofit or an educational consulting firm.
Like much of the Turkey-Gulen conflict, the allegations resemble a plot device in a pulp thriller: Turkish teachers at U.S. charter schools contributing a portion of their taxpayer-funded salaries to a transnational religious movement with murky goals. These alleged kickbacks are supposedly donated from employees personally, and not from the charter organization, so they wouldn’t surface in the school’s financial records. Its called Tuzuk why try to hide the the Turkish teachers are being extorted for their pay? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON TUZUK CONTRACT
“Because it’s under the table, because it’s somebody’s personal choice or framed as such, it’s very difficult to pin down anything nefarious,” Hendrick said. “But again, I will say this: If you’re a member of the Gulen movement, you give himmet. That is in fact an identifying characteristic of being a member of the Gulen movement.”Sonoran Schools denied that any employees are asked to or required to give money to the Gulen movement. “DEC does not inquire about or track and has no interest in an employee’s personal beliefs or views,” the charter school said. “It does not ask, encourage or require its employees to provide monetary or other support to any entity, nor has it ever done so.” if "DEC does not inquire about or track and has no interest in an employee's personal believes or views" WHY would you only hire Gulenists from abroad? You cannot even lie good. You have been taught to lie at an early age in the Gulen boarding houses, you cheat to get ahead, and were giving all the Gulen students the entrance exams for the police academy so you could infiltrate the police system.
Left: Fatih Karatas, the CEO of Sonoran Schools, at a December 6 governing board meeting for the charter network. To the right is Tuncay Celik, the charter network's CFO.
Joseph Flaherty
The article can be found at
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/the-secretive-turkish-religious-movement-tied-to-arizona-charter-schools-11074828 Past articles on Sonoran Science Academy here https://m.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/hidden-agenda/Content?oid=169476 https://tucson.com/news/blogs/senor-reporter/sr-reporter-more-on-sonoran-science-on-g-len/article_16fae326-5153-11df-b406-001cc4c03286.html https://tucson.com/news/local/education/precollegiate/foreigners-fill-ranks-of-local-charter--school-chain/article_dec199db-be3f-5519-be3d-f6ad970db1f8.html https://tucson.com/news/local/education/precollegiate/where-sonoran-science-academy-staff-comes-from/article_f579af80-5025-11df-9f94-001cc4c002e0.html
ARTICLES ON BAY TECH CHARTER SCHOOL OR BAY AREA TECHNOLOGY SCHOOL
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BayTechSchool.org
OUSD officials are trying to stabilize the tottering organization.
Amid a management crisis and allegations of fraud at Oakland's BayTech charter school, the Oakland Unified School District is exploring the possibility of appointing an independent director to the school's board. State law allows public school districts to make board appointments to charter schools under their supervision. BayTech has also hired Kathleen Daugherty, a retired superintendent from Sacramento who runs an education consulting firm, to assist with the school's recovery. Classes began on Monday at BayTech, even though the school's principal and several other senior administrators all abruptly quit at the end of the last school year.
Meanwhile, OUSD is continuing to investigate allegations that the school's former principal, Hayri Hatipoglu, defrauded BayTech by modifying his employment contract to obtain a lucrative three-year payout, instead of a standard six-month severance package. BayTech's three current board members, Fatih Dagdelen, Kairat Sabyrov, and Volkan Ulukoylu, allege that Hatipoglu made the contract modification without their knowledge.
But Hatipoglu wrote in an email to the Express that the allegations are untrue and have unfairly damaged his reputation.
"This allegation is such a big lie that even OUSD, CSMC (BayTech back office) would be able to refute that immediately as they can view/have access to school finances," Hatipoglu wrote.
OUSD hasn't commented about the school's situation or the allegations against Hatipoglu except to confirm several weeks ago that the district is conducting an investigation. School district records show that OUSD has obtained detailed financial information from BayTech.
READ END OF ARTICLE HERE https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/oakland-unified-moves-to-save-gulen-movement-charter-school/Content?oid=19153824
More Allegations of Embezzlement at Oakland's BayTech Charter School
The school district is investigating "questionable credit card charges" for expensive meals, cruises, and Disney tickets.
OUSD officials are investigating numerous questionable purchases made using the Bay Area Technology School's credit card, according to a notice of concern sent by the district to the charter school.
The newly revealed allegations are part of a broader investigation by OUSD into financial mismanagement at the school and include accusations by BayTech's three current board members against the school's former principal that he fraudulently altered his employment contract. The former principal, Hayri Hatipoglu, has accused the school's board of defaming him.
The review of the school's credit card spending was revealed in a July 12 notice of concern sent by OUSD's charter schools oversight office to BayTech's leaders. The district also wrote that BayTech has a system of "inadequate financial checks and balances."
OUSD flagged purchases from Netflix, Amazon, and numerous expensive restaurant bills as cause for concern. It's unclear if the purchases had any legitimate educational purpose.
The district also found $6,800 in payments to Commodore Cruises and Events, an Alameda-based cruise ship operator. BayTech's credit card was also used to purchase $2,919 in Disneyland tickets. The school paid for hotels and plane tickets for staff to travel to Southern California, Arizona, Utah, and Texas.
Copies of BayTech's credit card statements from 2016 and 2017 obtained by the Express through a California Public Records Act request show that the school paid $2,655 to an upscale Oakland pizzeria over a two-year period. The school's Wells Fargo credit card was also used to pay for six separate meals at Scott's Seafood in Oakland costing a total of $4,453.
Last year, the school's credit card was used to buy $32,698 in Apple electronics. According to former school staff who spoke with the Express on the condition of anonymity, some Apple products were given to staff as thank-you gifts and not used for official school purposes.
The district is currently investigating the school for financial mismanagement, and BayTech's board has also hired an independent firm, Oracle Investigations, to review allegations of embezzlement and fraud.
Former Principal Alleges Oakland's BayTech School Was Source of Funding for Gülen Movement
In recent weeks, Oakland's Bay Area Technology School has become the center of a management crisis and accusations of fraud. Now, the school's former principal, Hayri Hatipoglu, alleges that the embattled charter school was used to bankroll a religious and political movement that was accused by Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of participating in an attempted 2016 coup.
In an interview with the Express last week, Hatipoglu said employees of the school — many of them Turkish immigrants — handed over thousands of dollars from their own salaries for the cause in exchange for the H-1B visas allowing them to work in the United States.
Hatipoglu said he resigned and left for Australia, where he is a citizen. He said he no longer wanted to allow the Gülen movement to exploit the school. And he said the allegations of fraud against him by BayTech's board of directors are false.
The Oakland Unified School District is currently investigating Hatipoglu for possibly embezzling thousands of dollars from the school by using its credit card to make unauthorized purchases, and for allegedly altering his employment contract without the board's knowledge. Hatipoglu's employment contract provided him with a fixed three-year term of employment. The contract stipulated that if he was terminated, or quit, without cause, the school would owe him the remaining pay for the rest of the three-year term. Fatih Dagdelen, a BayTech school board member who is accusing Hatipoglu of fraud, claimed in a recent email to OUSD officials that the true term of the contract was six months, not three years.
Hatipoglu denies that he stole from BayTech or altered his contract. But the former principal said all the allegations about BayTech's links to the Gülen movement are true.
Public records support some of Hatipoglu's claims.
"The school gave Turkish teachers employment because the school applies for their visas, and when they give donations, they get to work," said Hatipoglu. "I told [BayTech's board] I'd no longer do this because there have been so many allegations, and the Turkish government is looking into it."
Hatipoglu is one of the first high-level administrators of a Gülen school to describe the ways the movement allegedly extracts money from the many charter schools its followers operate.
The Gülen movement is led by an elderly Turkish imam named Fethullah Gülen who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. Gülen and his thousands of followers around the world have been labeled terrorists by the Turkish government. In recent years, Turkish intelligence agents have fanned out across at least 18 nations to spy on, and sometimes seize, Gülenists and take them back to Turkey where they are jailed and tortured, according to recent reports in The New York Times and other media.
Gülenists claim to be moderate Islamists concerned about the erosion of democracy and secularism under Prime Minister Erdogan's conservative government. They are pro-science and pro-capitalism, and the movement is as much a business network as it is a religious sect. Its followers wielded considerable political power in Turkey until the crackdown that followed the 2016 coup.
Erdogan has accused the United States of harboring Gülen and allowing his movement to operate a network of over 100 charter schools in California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, and other states. Altogether, Gülen-linked schools receive hundreds of millions in public funds.
There have long been concerns in Oakland that BayTech is a Gülenist school, but the Oakland Unified School District never seriously investigated. Meanwhile, BayTech's administration and board members have repeatedly denied the accusations. In fact, Hatipoglu even said the school had no links to the movement at an OUSD board meeting last November. And BayTech board members have called anyone who raises questions about ties to the Gülen movement "racist."
But since the end of the last school year, when several senior staff and two school board members resigned, and the district began investigating, questions have emerged about whether BayTech is being used as a source of support for the Gülenists in their conflict with Erdogan's government.
Hatipoglu came to BayTech in 2011 from Australia on a work visa. When asked by followers of Fethullah Gulen who are linked to the school to make a contribution to a Gülen-linked organization, he said he initially agreed.
"They said Gülen was doing educational services, helping the poor and needy in Africa, dialogue, and world peace," said Hatipoglu. "Does that sound good to you? I willingly gave donations because I believe in this and didn't know it was compulsory.
"When I said 'no,' I saw the ugly face," said Hatipoglu. "Before that, it was all a beautiful mask."
Hatipoglu said he helped prepare visa applications for teachers, most of them from Turkey, to come work at BayTech. He said teachers were expected to make monetary contributions to Fethullah Gülen in exchange for their visa.
"Turkish teachers have to donate this money to stay and work in America," said Hatipoglu.
According to federal Department of Labor records, BayTech obtained at least 29 H1-B visas since 2009 to employ foreign educators, mostly from Turkey. The number of foreign teachers was unusual for a single small school.
Multiple calls and emails to BayTech board members Dagdelen, Sabyrov, and Ulukoylu seeking comment about Hatipoglu's allegations regarding the school went unreturned. The three currently oversee BayTech's $4 million budget of state and federal funds.
Asked at BayTech's most recent school board meeting on Aug. 6 whether they are followers of Fethullah Gülen or if the school has any links to the Gülen movement, both Dagdelen and Ulukoylu declined to comment.
Hatipoglu claims that he pushed for BayTech to distance itself from the Gülen movement first by having BayTech cut ties with the Accord Institute, a nonprofit that was founded by Gülenists and sells education services to Gülen-linked charter schools. BayTech was also founded by Gülen movement members, including the current CEO of the Accord Institute, and multiple sources said BayTech paid the Accord Institute about $70,000 a year for several years for various education training services.
Hatipoglu said he wanted BayTech to free itself from Accord due to bad publicity. Accord was the subject of investigations by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the California State Auditor, which established that there were conflicts of interest and weak financial controls. Accord, and a chain of Los Angeles charter schools founded by followers of Gülen, were also the subject of a story in LA Weekly that uncovered evidence that the schools were used to raise money for Fethullah Gülen.
BayTech did, in fact, cut ties with Accord last year. But Hatipoglu claims that he also wanted to put an end to the practice of bringing Turkish teachers over on H1-B visas and having them contribute money to the Gülen movement. Also, he wanted to recruit directors to BayTech's board who are not followers of Fethullah Gülen.
"This is where we all broke apart," said Hatipoglu.
School board emails obtained by the Express reveal that BayTech director Volkan Ulukoylu was attempting to resign earlier this year and replace himself with a man name Volkan "Adam" Kaya. Ulukoylu shared a brief bio and photo of Kaya with Sabyrov, Dagdelen, Hatipoglu, and Alretta Tolbert, one of the board members who resigned after Hatipoglu left the school.
Hatipoglu said that he was opposed to Kaya joining the board because Kaya has links to the Gülen movement.
According to tax records, Kaya is a director of Bay Area Cultural Connections, a Sunnyvale nonprofit affiliated with the Pacifica Institute — which describes itself as an organization inspired by Fethullah Gülen. The Express was unable to reach Kaya for comment.
Hatipoglu, now residing in Australia, said he's fearful because he has been identified as a Gülenist in reports in the Turkish media about BayTech's unraveling. He insisted he's innocent of defrauding the school and that the board, in fact, approved his three-year fixed-term contract on March 8 of last year.
Minutes from BayTech's March 8, 2017 board meeting are missing from the school's website, a violation of the Brown Act. OUSD had warned the school about violating the state's open-meetings law.
But a copy of BayTech's board minutes obtained from OUSD indicate that the board did, in fact, approve a fixed three-year term employment contract for Hatipoglu.
Sabyrov, in a June 27 email to OUSD officials, wrote that the board was tricked into approving the contract and that his audio tape of the meeting shows the board thought they were voting on a six-month term, not three years.
OUSD has yet to finish its investigation.
READ THE CONNECTION THIS SCHOOL HAS TO THE GULEN SCHOOL ON NELLIS AIRFORCE BASE UPDATED 10/26 former principal Ercan Aydogdu
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."
As to why Hatipoglu resigned, Dagdelen declined to say, but he added, "we have a lot of evidence and believe there's a fraud."
Hatipoglu has countered that he did nothing wrong. Instead, he alleges that Dagdelen and two other BayTech board members are part of a "shady network" trying to "take over" the school.
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.
Former BayTech staff told the Express that for years there have been questionable financial practices at the school. They also confirmed that leading up to Hatipoglu's departure, there appeared to be a split between the school's Turkish directors and the former principal, but the cause of the falling out wasn't apparent. Non-Turkish staff and board members at the school said they have mostly avoided inquiring into the school's links to the Gülen movement.
But over the past decade, OUSD received multiple complaints asking that BayTech's rumored ties to the Gülen movement be closely examined. BayTech's leaders condemned these critics, however, calling any attempts to question the school's ties to Fethalluh Gülen's followers a form of discrimination.
At the OUSD board meeting last November, when BayTech was seeking to renew its charter, several members of the public questioned why the school district hasn't investigated. Hatipoglu responded angrily at the meeting by denying any link to the Gülen movement.
"It's worrisome for me that politics and education are in the mix here because whatever BayTech does, it goes through district oversight, state oversight," Hatipoglu said. "Is there one concrete example? Show me. It's all about slander."
According to Joshua Hendrick, a professor of sociology at Loyola University Maryland, many followers of Fethullah Gülen actually deny being part of the movement. This is especially true of Gülenists who have organized charter schools in the U.S.
OUSD officials have largely ignored BayTech's links to the Gülen movement, and the district had declined to investigate the school. But now, following the departure of the principal and other staff and allegations of fraud, OUSD confirmed that they've opened an investigation.
"OUSD takes seriously any allegations of financial mismanagement in our schools," district spokesperson John Sasaki wrote in an email. "As the charter authorizer, we have been informed of allegations of financial impropriety at BayTech."
According to BayTech's board meeting minutes from July 20, OUSD sent the charter school a Notice of Concern that outlines potential fiscal and managerial problems at the school.
Just eight months prior, OUSD's charter schools oversight office concluded that BayTech was fully in compliance with all fiscal controls. In a memo to OUSD's board, Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammel and Silke Bradford, who led OUSD's office of charter schools until February, wrote that allegations made against the school regarding fiscal mismanagement were "completely unfounded."
Johnson-Trammel and Bradford also wrote that claims that BayTech is linked to the Gülen movement — which the FBI has investigated for misusing public funds — are false. They concluded that critics of the Gülen movement who pointed out the school's ties were "racist." Following this assessment, OUSD's board renewed BayTech's charter to operate.
But BayTech's direct links to the Gülen movement are readily apparent.
BayTech, which is run by the nonprofit Willow Education foundation, was founded with a $450,000 state Department of Education grant in 2003 by Suleyman Bahceci, a prominent member of the Gülen movement who has set up other charter schools in Texas, Utah, and Southern California.
Bahceci didn't respond to an email seeking comment for this report.
Robert Amsterdam, an attorney working on behalf of the Turkish government, has identified Bahceci as one of the Gülen movement's key organizers in the U.S. charter school industry.
"Charter schools are free money for them," said Sharon Higgins, an Oakland resident who has closely followed the Gülen movement's expansion into the U.S. education sector. "If they get a school opened, they can bring their members to the U.S. They have a lot of H-1B visas to get their members here, so it's a way to increase their membership in the U.S. and tap into public funds."
Willow Education has obtained numerous H-1B visas to hire teachers from Turkey and other countries where the Gülen movement is strong. According to U.S. Department of Labor records, since 2009, Willow Education used 29 separate visas to hire math, science, English, and Turkish language instructors.
One of these visas was assigned to Hatipoglu. He immigrated to the U.S. from Australia, although he is of Turkish origin. Former BayTech staff told the Express that Hatipoglu took over BayTech at a time when the school was struggling financially and that he was able to turn it around. Parents and teachers at the school told the Express that the school has excelled academically, even if BayTech has run into management and financial problems.
In addition to Bahceci, other past BayTech staff and board members have obvious ties to the Gülen movement, according to records and interviews.
One key link is through the Accord Institute, a nonprofit charter school management company that was established by Bahceci and other Gülen movement members.
In Los Angeles, the Gülen movement set up several charter schools called the Magnolia Science Academy. These schools were audited in 2014 and 2015 by the Los Angeles Unified School District's Inspector General and the California State Auditor. Both series of audits found numerous problems including weak financial controls, bad record keeping, and mismanagement. The Magnolia schools were found to be paying Accord hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for services, but it's unclear what Accord did with the money. In addition, Bahceci ran Magnolia schools when the lucrative contracts with Accord were signed, and then he later moved back to Accord. Auditors ultimately found nothing illegal in the dealings, however.
Baris Cagdaser helped found Willow Education and BayTech alongside Bahceci and served on BayTech's board until 2012. Cagdaser was also on the Accord board of directors with Bahceci. And Accord's current CEO, Matt Avsaroglu, was a cofounder of BayTech and worked there until 2009.
Like the Magnolia schools in Los Angeles, BayTech also had a relationship with Accord, although it's unclear how much BayTech was paying them. BayTech hasn't posted financial information about its dealings with Accord on the school's website. Additionally, BayTech is missing copies of its board meeting agendas and minutes from years prior to 2009, and hasn't posted minutes for any other board meetings held prior to August of last year.
Hatipoglu alleges that he's a victim of retaliation by BayTech's three Turkish board members because he tried to cut ties with Accord. In his email to the Express, Hatipoglu wrote that last year he moved to have Accord's contract terminated due to the controversy around its dealings with the Los Angeles Magnolia schools. But according to Hatipoglu, Accord's CEO responded by retaliating. "He indicated to me that I made a huge mistake and that I would pay."
Several calls to Accord went unreturned.
At BayTech's board meeting on Monday, two of the school's three remaining directors, Dagdelen and Volkan Ulukoylu, declined to say whether the school is linked in any way to the Gülen movement. In response to Hatipoglu's allegations about a "shady network" trying to control the school, Ulukoylu said he had "no idea" what the former principal was talking about.
Dagdelen said he couldn't comment further about Hatipoglu's alleged fraud, but he added that just three days after BayTech opened its investigation, Hatipoglu appeared to have left the country.
The Bay Area Technology School violated state education laws when it required students and their families to purchase uniforms, graduation tickets, and caps and gowns, according to the Oakland Unified School District. All students were made to purchase uniforms from the Oakland charter school only, a violation of the education code.
Graduating 8th and 12th graders were made to purchase caps and gowns from the school, and their family members were required to buy $10 tickets to attend the ceremony.
These practices went on for several years, according to school staff who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. BayTech even warned parents on its website that students would only be allowed to wear BayTech branded jackets, sweaters, and shirts, and that students could face discipline if they didn't don the clothing.
The proceeds BayTech collected from these illegal activities amounted to thousands of dollars, said several sources. It's unclear what the school's administration did with the money.
OUSD authorities ordered BayTech to put a stop to these practices on June 8, according to a notice of concern sent to the charter school's board and interim co-principals by Leslie Jimenez, OUSD's charter school coordinator.
In a separate notice of concern sent a week earlier, OUSD officials warned BayTech leaders that they repeatedly violated California's Brown Act, which requires that charter schools provide public access to meetings because they receive public funding.
According to OUSD, BayTech's board convened meetings in February that were essentially secret because no notices or agendas were posted to inform the public.
The school board also convened meetings via email without notifying the public. The purpose of one of these online meetings was to recruit a new board member. The potential replacement was a Richmond resident originally from Turkey.
In March, BayTech's school board failed to post agendas for two separate board meetings on BayTech's website. And in May, the board posted an incorrect date for a board meeting and then issued an agenda after a mandatory deadline, thereby hampering the public's ability to participate.
Furthermore, OUSD found that three of the school's board members withheld documents from two board members. The recent notice of concern sent by OUSD to BayTech didn't identify which board members were prevented from accessing the records, or what specifically the records pertained to.
The district's investigation was initiated after BayTech's principal, Hayri Hatipolgu, suddenly resigned at the end of the past school year. Several other senior staff also quit the school, and two board members, Alretta Tolbert and Gina Miller resigned, as well. The sudden departure of the board members and staff have thrown the school into chaos.
The three remaining board members, Fatih Dagdelen, Kairat Sabyrov, and Volkan Ulukoylu, are now accusing Hatipoglu of defrauding the school by surreptitiously changing his employment contract to give himself a three-year payout worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if he resigned, instead of a six-month payout worth much less.
Hatipoglu has fired back at the three remaining board members by accusing them of being part of a "shady network" that is trying to "take over" BayTech. But since he resigned, the Express has been unable to contact Hatipoglu.
Looming over the school's management crisis is its relationship to a larger network of charter schools that were established by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish imam who has been accused of plotting the 2016 coup against the Turkish government. Gulen resides in Pennsylvania.
BayTech's three current board members are all Turkish. When asked at the school's board meeting earlier this week if the school is linked to the Gulen movement, both Dagdelen and Ulukoylu declined to answer.
According to OUSD records, the district is reviewing BayTech's finances to see if any money was misappropriated. Hatipoglu's employment contract is also being examined to determine if the allegations against him are true.
BayTech's first day of school is August 13 and the school has hired an interim CEO to assist with reconstituting the board and getting the organization's affairs in order. OUSD is also considering appointing a board member to BayTech.
READ UPDATE TO CORAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE ON NELLIS AIRFORCE BASE prior principal Ercan Aydogdu 10/26/2018
Harmony Science Academy's original application is very revealing about Gulenists Educational lead Soner Tarim. First glaring interesting point about the Harmony School Application is the poor English grammar that Soner used to fill out an application. Its obvious Soner Tarim has no American teaching credentials or has spent any time in the trenches teaching American children. 
%20-%20The%20co-founder%20of%20Mongomery%E2%80%99s%20LEAD%20Academy%20charter%20school%20Charlotte%20Meadows%20announced%20she%20will%20run%20for%20the%20District%2074%20House%20seat.%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cdiv%20data-type%3D%22text%22%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0AIn%20a%20news%20release,%20Meadows%20said%20she%20will%20focus%20on%20being%20an%20advocate%20for%20public%20school%20education%20and%20helping%20students%20better%20prepare%20for%20today%E2%80%99s%20workforce.%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cdiv%20data-type%3D%22text%22%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%E2%80%9CImproving%20the%20public%20schools%20in%20Montgomery%20is%20the%20key%20to%20recruiting%20new%20industries%20and%20opportunities%20for%20our%20citizens,%20preserving%20jobs%20at%20Maxwell%20and%20Gunter,%20and%20making%20sure%20that%20District%2074%20remains%20growing%20and%20vibrant,%E2%80%9D%20Meadows%20said.%20%E2%80%9CWe%20must%20attract%20more%20businesses%20to%20fill%20the%20empty%20storefronts%20that%20dot%20our%20legislative%20district,%20we%20must%20work%20to%20stop%20the%20crime%20that%20occurs%20in%20our%20neighborhoods,%20and%20we%20must%20preserve%20a%20quality%20of%20life%20that%20keeps%20our%20friends,%20neighbors,%20children,%20and%20grandchildren%20from%20moving%20elsewhere.%20I%20know%20we%20can%20make%20Montgomery%20the%20same%20vibrant%20city%20that%20I%20remember%20from%20childhood.%E2%80%9D%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cdiv%20data-type%3D%22text%22%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0AMeadows%20was%20a%20member%20of%20the%20Montgomery%20School%20Board%20for%20six%20years%20where%20she%20served%20as%20board%20president%20from%202010%20to%202012.%20She%20is%20also%20the%20former%20director%20of%20Alabama%20Outreach%20of%20StudentsFirst,%20a%20non-profit%20organization%20that%20works%20to%20improve%20public%20education.%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cdiv%20data-type%3D%22text%22%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0AGov.%20Kay%20Ivey%20set%20a%26nbsp;%3Ca%20href%3D%22http://www.wsfa.com/2019/04/01/special-election-set-late-state-representatives-seat/%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%3Especial%20election%3C/a%3E%26nbsp;for%20the%20District%2074%20seat%20after%20the%20death%20of%20State%20Rep.%20Dimitri%20Polizos.%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Cbr%20/%3E%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Ca%20href%3D%22https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ALRs3T5wiOUFeKJ0V1BFrzIygX4qrVHSdXZCsor8hUwqzRQS9X5oBdwo1yg1Vp-VWEX2Rh3vy7-zqKLIbsxDx7KyKK1jUf8k2VeJNOX_Fcx9csjTKC53iAgloCitRaP2oqUKFlkKcbA/s1600/CharlotteMeadowsStateSenate74A.png%22%20imageanchor%3D%221%22%3E%3Cimg%20border%3D%220%22%20data-original-height%3D%22493%22%20data-original-width%3D%22877%22%20height%3D%22356%22%20src%3D%22https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ALRs3T5wiOUFeKJ0V1BFrzIygX4qrVHSdXZCsor8hUwqzRQS9X5oBdwo1yg1Vp-VWEX2Rh3vy7-zqKLIbsxDx7KyKK1jUf8k2VeJNOX_Fcx9csjTKC53iAgloCitRaP2oqUKFlkKcbA/s640/CharlotteMeadowsStateSenate74A.png%22%20width%3D%22640%22%20/%3E%3C/a%3E%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cbr%20/%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Ca%20href%3D%22https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkuXnyL8p_kdFlGeWoc6y48SqmPSqcxvsGHPwxLVO-5Or9GksE1usRy0HVK1QVnyqqxicBT3D5cWDWUebPDt3D4Vtnm1Tjw-5BVqw4C9bNP4JclJ7f3LbRXXV-XTYiiP7_tS0uVM52ABw/s1600/HarmonyNewspaperMentioningMagnolia.jpg%22%20imageanchor%3D%221%22%3E%3Cimg%20border%3D%220%22%20data-original-height%3D%22592%22%20data-original-width%3D%22890%22%20height%3D%22265%22%20src%3D%22https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkuXnyL8p_kdFlGeWoc6y48SqmPSqcxvsGHPwxLVO-5Or9GksE1usRy0HVK1QVnyqqxicBT3D5cWDWUebPDt3D4Vtnm1Tjw-5BVqw4C9bNP4JclJ7f3LbRXXV-XTYiiP7_tS0uVM52ABw/s400/HarmonyNewspaperMentioningMagnolia.jpg%22%20width%3D%22400%22%20/%3E%3C/a%3E%3C/div%3E%0A%3Cdiv%3E%0A%3Cbr%20/%3E%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E%0A%3C/div%3E)
In a strange bizarre case of "hide a Turk" Muhammed Erdogan aka Frank Erdogan first came under our spotlight in 2009 in Utah as principal of the troubled Gulen charter school Beehive Science and Technology School. It was due to close in 2010, after much controversy over Holocaust teaching remarks from Frank /Muhammed. There was other controversy surrounding substandard teaching and the Gulen Movement involvement.
