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| Supporters of the proposed Gulen operated charter school showed up with these pathetic signs, a lame attempt to get a school approved which had no comprehensive curriculum and obvious ties to the Gulen Cult. Average Americans showed up to these meetings, some ex-FBI and other homeland security top officials to protest the opening. AMERICA WINS!!!!
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School Board Rejects Charter
School Application
Danielle
Nadler | Posted: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 11:30 am
Loudoun
County will have to wait for a charter school.
After
six months of public hearings, work sessions and heated debates, the School
Board denied an application for the Loudoun Math & IT Academy public
charter school at its meeting Tuesday.
Board
members cited a long list of shortfalls in the proposal for the charter school,
including curriculum inadequacies, a poorly thought out transportation plan, a
governing board lacking educators and a budget that assumed hundreds of
thousands of dollars in federal grants.
“As
much as I wanted to support this effort, I can’t support this application,”
School Board member Jeff Morse (Dulles) said. “It is lacking.”
Bill
Fox (Leesburg) was the only board member to vote against the motion to deny the
application. He suggested suspending the decision to give the applicants six
more months to improve their proposal; however, his amendment died for lack of
a second.
“I
believe that the application can be fixed,” Fox said. “Not that it necessarily
would be fixed if we granted it another six months, but it certainly could be
fixed. It’s within the realm of possibility.”
But
even he called the application, “problematic, at best.”
The
application, led by Loudoun County parents Ali Gokce and Fatih Kandil, aimed to
open a sixth- through 12th grade public charter school for 575 students with a
focus on math and technology.
Of
all of the inadequacies School Board members listed, a lack of community
support was repeated most.
Jill
Turgeon (Blue Ridge) pointed to the applicants’ less than stellar instructional
plan that still remains unclear. But, she added, even if the proposed school’s
curriculum was “air tight,” she would still not support the application because
few parents, educators or students have backed it.
“A
strong public support of a charter is imperative,” Turgeon said. “We as a
system do not assign students to these schools—families have to choose to go to
these schools.”
The
proposal for the Loudoun Math & IT Academy was modeled after Chesapeake
Science Point, a charter school both Gokce and Kandil helped open in Anne
Arundel, MD. But as Gokce and Kandil repeatedly pointed to Chesapeake Science
Point as an example Loudoun could follow throughout the past several months,
flaws came to light about the school’s financial inadequacies and problems with
its special education program.
“I
think the biggest problem I had is CSP has been open for six or seven years
now, and I would think that the curriculum would be completely nailed down by
now, and it’s not,” Morse said. “And that to me speaks to the whole governing
body, and that is the model school for this school.”
DROP
CAPThe early stages of the review process for the Loudoun Math & IT Academy
looked promising. The application was first made public last April, just as
education and business leaders gathered for a rare pro-charter school forum in
Ashburn. The event did not endorse a specific charter application, but
advocated public charter schools as a means to offer Loudoun families more
educational choice.
Around
that same time, School Board members were bussed to Anne Arundel County’s
Chesapeake Science Point to get a visual for what could be possible in Loudoun.
At the dais Tuesday, Morse mentioned that trip, saying, “I can’t tell you the
enthusiasm I felt when we started this process.”
Also
last spring, letters of support poured in for the proposed Loudoun Math &
IT Academy. Almost every state legislator representing Loudoun County, as well
as several Loudoun County supervisors and a handful of business leaders, penned
letters. And in June, the Virginia Board of Education approved the charter
application just as the then-newly elected School Board members pushed through
a new vetting policy for charter applications that is more charter
school-friendly than the previous board’s policy.
However,
as the application came to the local level, and school leaders thumbed through
the 100-page document, they continually cited a lack of detail in the
applicants’ instruction, financial and staffing plans. The school system senior
staff told the School Board last fall the application was incomplete, and in
December, the Charter School Select Committee, made up of three School Board
members, recommended the full board deny the charter application.
“The
application appears to say whatever the committee wants to hear, but not with
any detail,” Morse said in December. “Are we willing to place our children in
the precise environment detailed in the LMITA application with the leadership
and management proposed? To this, I vote no.”
DROP
CAP Amid the talks of the charter school’s hiring practices or how many buses
it could provide was a community debate over the applicants’ credentials.
Since
the applicants first pitched their idea for a public charter school with
technology-heavy curriculum, a vocal group of about two dozen rose up to deter
their efforts. The group, led by Jo-Ann Chase, Loudoun resident and former
candidate for the House of Delegates, voiced concerns to School Board members
almost every time the board microphone was open. Opponents claim the applicants
have ties to a movement of Turkish Muslims opening a string of charter schools
across the nation, under the direction of modern Islam leader Fethullah Gulen.
In
that vein, Ashburn resident David Soloman during Tuesday’s public input session
warned School Board members that today the nation’s enemies do not wear
uniforms, but become a part of the society.
“When
I served in the military I took an oath to protect our country from enemies
both abroad and domestic,” Soloman said. “We have domestic enemies right here.”
At
the School Board’s final work session on the application last week, Kandil
addressed the allegations, saying he and his fellow applicants have no
affiliation with the Gulen movement. “The only affiliation this school will
have is to the Loudoun County School Board, the Virginia Department of
Education and the U.S. Department of Education.”
Before
their votes Tuesday, board members spoke against accusations that their
decisions were based on the applicants’ race or religion. Debbie Rose
(Algonkian) said she’s received “insistent phone calls, emails” and certified
mail accusing her and other board members of their opposition to the charter
school being racially motivated. Rose said her decision was based solely on a
lack of public interest.
The
few community members who have voiced their support for the charter school
spoke of a dire need for people trained in cyber security—a need they said the
charter school could meet.
“There
are multiple job openings in information security that cannot be filled,”
Nicolas Frangia of South Riding told board members Tuesday. “This is a national
security issue.”
Several
board members noted that the several positives of the months-long process
brought to light a lack of information security curriculum within the county’s
public schools. Morse extended an invitation to the applicants to team with the
school system’s senior staff to help “us provide world class IT and cyber
security curriculum for LCPS students.”
Board
members weren’t shy to show their willingness to work with future charter
school applicants. The current School Board has been outspoken about their
support for the possibility of opening a charter school in Loudoun.
“If
any applicant wants to open a charter school in Loudoun County, then you need
to impress us with what you’re offering,” Kevin Kuesters (Broad Run) said. “It
has to be a better way of doing things.”
Under
Virginia law, the board must identify the reasons for denying the application
in writing to both the applicant and the State Board of Education. The
applicants also have a right to appeal the School Board’s decision.
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