Louisiana Voice

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—LouisianaVoice has obtained a copy of a 72-page report on an investigation conducted by the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) into allegations of abuse, sexual misconduct, neglect, and missing files at a New Orleans charter school run by a Texas construction and trading company affiliated with the Gulen movement, an offshoot of the Islamic faith.

The report’s five-page cover letter by Acting State Superintendent of Education Ollie Tyler to Penny Dastugue, president of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), claims DOE learned of the allegations surrounding Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in New Orleans on July 14, even though a state education official warned of problems at the school more than a year ago.

That official, Folwell Dunbar, was fired late last month along with his supervisor, Jacob Landry, who was director of the DOE charter office. The firings appear to be a classic example of the “shoot the messenger” mentality.

Abramson’s charter was revoked earlier this week.

The report does not address additional allegations by Dunbar of attempted bribery raised more than a year ago, nor does it explain how DOE officials only became aware of problems at Abramson despite a state audit dated June 10, 2010 which identified numerous deficiencies at the school.

Tevfik Eski, chief executive officer of Pelican Education Foundation in New Orleans, which ran Abramson until its charter was revoked recently by BESE, has denied any allegations of wrongdoing on a web page set up to address the accusations. He also claims religious bias in the reporting of the allegations.

Subsequent to the controversy surrounding Abramson, other complaints have surfaced with another Pelican-run school, Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School in Baton Rouge.

Pelican is affiliated with Atlas Texas Construction & Trading of Houston. Atlas also operates 38 charter schools in Houston, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo, Lubbock and San Antonio through Cosmos Foundatin under the collective banner of Harmony Public Schools.

Cosmos Foundation apparently is similar to Pelican Education Foundation in Louisiana.

A spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) said Friday she was unaware of the problems being experienced at the two Louisiana schools and that the only complaints, which she said were groundless, were of alleged attempts by the schools to indoctrinate students in the Gulen faith.

She also said in an email to LouisianaVoice that TEA has “an ongoing financial audit” of Cosmos but there is no scheduled date as yet for its completion.

Complaints contained in the DOE report to BESE on Abramson included:

• Unsupervised students roaming the hallway;

• Students physically attacking teachers;

• Students leaving classrooms without permission;

• Students physically harassing other students during class;

• Sexual misconduct among students;

• School break-ins in which the only missing items turned out to be student files.

The DOE investigative team included Assistant Deputy Superintendent for Departmental Support Erin Bendily, DOE executive legal counsel Joan Hunt, and BESE Executive Director Catherine Pozniak, the report says.

One teacher reported an incident in which she caught two male students engaged in oral sex in a classroom.

There was a subsequent break-in at the school in which the only item reported missing was the file on that incident. Files on other such incidents were also reported missing in other break-ins, the report shows.

“The failure to fully investigate instances of alleged sexual behavior occurring on the school campus is alarming,” Tyler wrote in her report. She said school officials never interviewed a “para-professional” who assisted the teacher who discovered the two students. “They offered no explanation as to why they never interviewed her,” Tyler said.

In another case of an alleged sexual encounter between a boy and girl during a Saturday when they were supposed to be in class, administrators were questioned as to why one of the student’s teachers was not interviewed. An unidentified assistant principal explained to investigators that he “didn’t know” the teacher.

One teacher, Rachel Hobson, reported that her white board was on a wall shared with an adjacent computer science classroom and when she attempted to write on the board, she felt the board shake because bodies were being slammed against the wall on the other side. Once, when she investigated, she found the instructor at his computer wearing headphones while several middle school boys wrestled and shoved each other. “Students informed me that (their teacher) frequently called his wife (who lived elsewhere) during their class period.”

The report redacted both teachers’ names as well as the residency of the computer science teacher’s wife, although Hobson’s name was provided in Tyler’s letter to Dastugue.

Hobson, who taught at Abramson in the 2010-2011 school year, also said the principal’s wife was supposed to monitor a class during state testing but left “because of her religion” when students started watching an R-rated movie.

She also cited instances of cheating by students and teachers alike.

“…Whenever I sent students to take a test in the resource room, they turned in tests with identical answers,” she said. “Even questions that asked for extended response answers or student opinions would be exactly the same for each student. Often, the tests would be written in the Special Education teacher’s handwriting.”

Hobson said she was instructed to give a student with special needs a “D” letter grade because the special education teacher said, “He isn’t going to get a diploma but if he gets enough Carnegie credits (credit hours) he will be able to get a certificate.”

She also revealed in her report claims of Abramson’s issuance of false college admittances:

“Near the end of the year many students who had not previously been accepted to any college began announcing that they had been accepted into North American College,” she said. “Surprisingly, students who were failing their English and math classes and who would not graduate from Abramson on time were still being accepted to North American College. The principal (Cuneyt Dokmen) used these acceptances as proof that Abramson was successful.”

She added that Dokmen was scheduled to work at North American College this fall.

North American College is a private, non-profit four-year institution founded in 2010 and is located in northwest Houston. On its Facebook site it boasts that it offers a “high-quality education” that enables students to “acquire, analyze, interpret, and synthesize information and knowledge; to communicate effectively in writing and speech; to reason critically, symbolically, quantitatively, and scientifically; to recognize ethical issues, to appreciate diversity; to utilize information technology effective, and to develop latent artistic skills.”

Despite Tyler’s claim of only learning of Abramson’s problems in July of 2011, Dunbar, in a memo to department colleagues a year ago said that Inci Akpinar, vice president of Atlas Texas Construction & Trading, told Dunbar while discussing problems at Abramson, “I have twenty-five thousand dollars to fix this problem: twenty thousand for you and five for me.”

This was in addition to the June 2010 state audit which cited cases of classrooms being without instructors for weeks or even months at a time and of students who claimed their science fair projects had been done by their teachers.

More recently, DOE has launched an investigation into allegations of student mistreatment, wrongful termination of teachers at Kenilworth in Baton Rouge.

That investigation was initiated following the filing of a pair of lawsuits against the school.

Former Louisiana Superintendent of Education, under whose administration the Abramson and Kenilworth charters were issued, has been unavailable for comment on developments at the two schools.