Proposed Gulen Charter School in Maine fails despite the Gulenists honoring Govenor Paul LaPage

http://www.pressherald.com/news/Turkish_Cultural_Center_Maine_honors_LePage_.html

November 13

Turkish Cultural Center Maine honors LePage

Speakers point to business and education ties and potential as the governor and two others receive awards.

By Noel K. Gallagher ngallagher@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

SOUTH PORTLAND — To expand its economy, Maine must welcome more immigrants, Gov. Paul LePage said Tuesday, praising a new Turkish cultural organization for its work in the state.

 

Gov. Paul LePage gives a speech at the Sable Oaks Marriott in South Portland Tuesday after accepting a leadership award.

Gabe Souza/Staff Photographer

Eyup Sener, left, president of the Turkish Cultural Center Maine, presents Gov. Paul LePage with a traditional Turkish plate after LePage was honored with a leadership award at an annual Friendship Dinner held by the Turkish Cultural Center at the Sable Oaks Marriott in South Portland Tuesday.

Gabe Souza/Staff Photographer

 “It’s time that we here in Maine appreciate and work with other countries to improve our economy,” LePage said as he accepted a leadership award from the Turkish Cultural Center Maine at its first Friendship Dinner, at the Portland Marriott at Sable Oaks.

“It’s important for Maine to grow,” the governor said. “We need to invite (immigrants) to come and live among us.”

Also honored were University of Maine professor Habib Dagher, who heads the school’s Offshore Wind Laboratory, and Maine Deputy Attorney General and Augusta Mayor William Stokes.

“We strongly believe that the friendship and alliance between the United States and Turkey will significantly contribute to the global peace,” said Eyup Sener, president of the Turkish Cultural Center Maine and the New England director of the Council of Turkic American Associations.

The Turkish Cultural Center has existed for only about two years, he said. About 300 people from Turkey are living in Maine, although if Turkic people from many countries in southeastern Europe are counted, that number climbs to about 2,500, Sener said.

Turkey is Maine’s 11th-largest international export destination. According to a U.S. Census report, $11 million worth of goods, ranging from dairy cattle to wood products, were shipped from Maine to Turkey in 2010 to 2011.

Several speakers at Tuesday’s event emphasized the potential for business and educational ties, while spreading a message of peace. Stokes said Augusta is in the final stages of establishing a sister-city relationship with Uskudar, a section or borough of Istanbul.

Several state legislators who attended the dinner have gone on one of the three trips the Turkish Cultural Center has organized for lawmakers to visit Turkey. There also are educational ties between Maine and Turkey.

Sener said his group organized a trip to Turkey this summer for officials from the University of Maine System, and an educational exchange agreement has been signed with officials at the University of Maine at Augusta.

At the K-12 level, a Turkish group is trying to open a charter school in Maine. It would be part of a network of 800 schools operated internationally by followers of a Turkish imam, Fethullah Gulen. The group’s application for a charter school in Bangor was denied in early 2013, and the group has applied again this fall, for a school in the Lewiston area.

Followers of Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, have been involved in starting at least 120 charter schools in 26 states, according to investigations by The New York Times, “60 Minutes,” USA Today and other news organizations. The schools are often top performers and have an entirely secular curriculum, but they have drawn criticism for their lack of transparency, their hiring and financial practices and concerns about their motivation, which experts say has as much to do with shaping the evolution of Turkey as it does with educating young Americans.

A short film on Gulen and his mission was shown at Tuesday’s dinner.

A key organization in Gulen’s network, the New York-based Council of Turkic American Associations, arranged for the Maine legislators’ subsidized trips to Turkey and asked Le- Page to issue an executive order declaring April 3, 2012, the first Turkish Cultural Day in Maine.

Last summer, state Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, Rep. Karen Kusiak, D-Fairfield, and Rep. Dennis Keschl, R-Belgrade, visited Turkey. The three comprise the advisory board for the Turkish Cultural Center Maine.

Katz said Tuesday that he hopes Maine can attract Turkish students to the state university system. He noted that Maine has an aging population that is not very diverse.

“The only way to change that is to become a place that welcomes everyone,” he said.

Senate President Justin Alfond, D-Portland, also said he hopes the ties to Turkey will stimulate trade.

“Maine must be more welcoming,” he said. “There’s no doubt that Maine’s future rests on in-migration.”

Keschl also went on a trip in 2012, along with Sen. Joseph Brannigan, D-Portland; Rep. Jane Knapp, R-Gorham; and Rachel Talbot Ross, president of the NAACP’s Portland branch. Keschl has said that officials from the Council of Turkic American Associations were up front about their ties to Gulen when he questioned them directly.

The council is the regional affiliate of the Washington, D.C.-based Turkic American Alliance, the umbrella organization for the Gulen movement in the United States.

Noel K. Gallagher can be contacted at 791-6387 or at:ngallagher@pressherald.com

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Teacher at Gulen Charter School in Baton Rouge, Louisana questioned for lewed photos

Advocate staff photo by RICHARD ALAN HANNON -- An investigation continues into claims that a male teacher at Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School in Baton Rouge asked girls to take pictures of their genitalia and send the photos to him.

by Jim Mustian

Advocate staff writer

Baton Rouge police have opened a criminal investigation into claims that an instructor at Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School has been soliciting students to send him cellphone photographs of their genitalia, according to court filings.
The inquiry began May 9 after a counselor contacted the Baton Rouge Police Department and reported that Darrion Buckles had “propositioned” a 15-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl during gym class, the filings show. Buckles, who has not been arrested, allegedly asked the students to send him the images via text message.
Investigators recently searched Buckles’ cellphone and found several close-up photographs and a video showing a female’s genitalia, according to the documents, though it was not immediately clear whether the female was a juvenile.
Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, a police spokesman, confirmed the ongoing investigation Friday but said he could not comment further. Calls to Buckles’ home were not answered.
Mark Lambert, whose public relations firm represents Kenilworth, refused to comment on the investigation and would not say whether Buckles is still employed at the school. “We’re not going to say anything,” Lambert said.
The day after the counselor reported the girls’ claims, a detective interviewed the 15-year-old girl, who claimed Buckles had given her keys to the locker room and told her to go in there to take the photographs with her cellphone.
“The 15-year-old victim refused to comply with the defendant’s instructions and proceeded to a different class,” Detective Jonathan Medine wrote in an affidavit for a search warrant.
Medine also interviewed the 14-year-old girl, who said she had been asked by Buckles before and after Christmas break to send him a photograph of her genitalia. The detective learned in interviews “that there were possibly other juvenile female students of the school who have been approached by the defendant and asked to send photographs of their (genitals) to him,” the affidavit says.
The detective also approached Buckles, who signed a voluntary consent for the officer to search his cellphone. While the face of the female depicted in the video was not visible, Medine noted, “she was wearing a purple shirt, which is consistent with the school uniform of Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School.”
Investigators with the Baton Rouge Police Department and East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office searched Buckles’ home at 6648 Cameren Oaks Drive about 10:30 p.m. May 10 and seized a USB flash drive, two iPads and a laptop, according to court records. No additional details were available Friday afternoon.

Copyright © 2011, Capital City Press LLC • 7290 Bluebonnet Blvd., Baton Rouge, LA 70810 • All Rights Reserved

THE GULEN SISTER SCHOOL IN LOUISANA - ABRAMSON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WAS CLOSED, THIS SCHOOL IS HANGING BY A THREAD.........

MEANWHILE THE GULENISTS BEEF UP THE MEDIA, POLITICAL AND PUBLIC RELATIONS SUPPORT FOR KENLIWORTH AS IT'S FUTURE LOOKS GRIM.

http://www.kenilworthst.org/

Gulen Movement tries for a school in Maine, same story...Turkish Culture Center, dialog dinners, trips to Turkey, application for school

Maine Legislatures visit Turkey, (SURPRISE)
 

http://tccme.org/maine-legislators-visit-turkey/

Turkish Cultural Center of Maine in collaboration with the Council of Turkic American Associations organized an intercultural trip to Turkey for State Legislators from Maine.
Maine State Senator Roger Katz, State Representatives Karen Kusiak, and Dennis Lee Keschl were in Turkey for an unofficial visit. During their trip to Turkey, they visited Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and Trabzon. Their trip to Trabzon had a special meaning since KARGID (Association of Turkish Businessmen of the Black Sea) personally invited the State legislators.
As Senator Katz pointed out, the main purpose of the trip was to develop economic, educational, and cultural relations between Turkey and the US. Throughout their trip, they had a chance to visit various economic and educational institutions that specialize in Turkey-US relations. Sen. Katz pointed out that Turkey and the US have close relations with each other because of the mutual history and by having these kind of trips they are taking those relations to another higher level. Due to their mutual history, Sen. Katz pointed out that Turkey and the US have close relations with each other; therefore, by having these kinds of trips, they take those relations to a higher level

March 11

Proposed Bangor charter school linked to Turkish imam

But Maine's commission rejected the Bangor plan over financial issues, its chairwoman says.

By Colin Woodard cwoodard@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

A proposed charter school to be based in Bangor is tied into an informal worldwide network of religious, cultural and education institutions operated by followers of a controversial and reclusive Turkish imam, Fethullah Gulen.

The Queen City Academy Charter School was one of four proposed taxpayer-financed charter schools whose applications were denied last month by the state charter school commission, but the school intends to reapply at a future date.

Followers of Gulen, who lives in exile on a secluded compound in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, have been involved in starting at least 120 charter schools in 26 states, according to investigations by The New York Times, "60 Minutes," USA Today and other news organizations. Their schools are often top performers and have an entirely secular curriculum, but they have drawn criticism for their lack of transparency, their hiring and financial practices, and concerns about their ultimate motivation, which experts say has as much to do with shaping the evolution of Turkey as it does with educating young Americans.

Gulen is an intriguing figure, a voice for moderate Islam, an opponent of terrorism and a champion of the impressive cultural, educational and scientific legacy of the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed in the aftermath of World War I and spawned the modern states of Turkey, the Balkans and much of Central Asia and the Middle East.

But his sprawling worldwide network of followers is also the subject of concern within the U.S. diplomatic community; a feared and powerful force in Turkey; and the target of investigations into the possible abuse of U.S. visa programs and the taxpayer money that flows into the charter schools they have founded. The movement's charter schools have been criticized in other states for their founders' evasiveness about the philosophical and institutional links they have to what is known in Turkey as Gulenism.

"They claim that these charter schools are independent and have no connection to the Gulen movement, and I said to them: 'That's baloney,' " said William Martin, senior fellow in religion and public policy at Baker Institute of Rice University in Texas, where Gulen followers have set up dozens of charter schools.

Martin has followed the movement for years, traveled to Turkey at their expense, and counts its leaders there as friends. "I say to them: 'Look, there's nothing wrong with your saying that you are admirers and followers of Mr. Gulen, and to say this is what he stands for and this is what you stand for,' but they say that their lawyers have said they shouldn't be open about it."

LINKED INTO THE MOVEMENT

The central figure behind the proposed Bangor charter school, construction company owner Murat Kilic of Revere, Mass., deflects questions about ties to Gulen as unimportant.

"Individuals might be inspired by him, but what their background is and what they are inspired by, I think that's a little bit irrelevant," said Kilic, who helped found several Gulen-linked organizations in the Bay State. "Yes, I have read a few books of Mr. Gulen and met with him two times, but I have also met (former President) Clinton. At the end of the day, it's how the board carries forth the mission of the charter school that's important."

Over the past year, Gulen's followers have been active in Maine on several fronts. A key organization in the Gulen network -- the New York-based Council of Turkic American Associations -- organized a subsidized nine-day trip to Turkey for three state legislators last summer and persuaded Gov. Paul LePage to issue an executive order declaring April 3, 2012, to be the first annual Turkish Cultural Day in Maine.

http://www.pressherald.com/news/proposed-charter-school-linked-to-turkish-imam_2013-02-17.html

 

Gulen Charter School Truebright Science Academy (PA) ordered CLOSED by School Board

Despite protests by the Gulen Marketing (with T Shirts, Signs, protestors bussed into the school board meetings) the School board ordered in October 2013 to not renew the Gulen Managed Truebright Science Academy in Gulen's backyard of Pennsylvania which join new application failures of (Young Entepreneur Academy in Lancaster and Allentown Science Academy)  Sounds like Pennsylvania doesn't want the Gulenists or their schools, Truebright  had been riddled with poor academic  performance and discrimination lawsuits filed by American staff.  The Gulenists have hired an attorney to try and fight this closure at the state level,. but lets see how far their money gets them when they have no community support except for what is paid for. 

The School Reform Commission voted unanimously Thursday night not to renew the charters of Community Academy and Truebright Science Academy Charter School. Both remain open pending expected appeals to a state board.

All four commissioners present voted to terminate the charters. SRC Chair Pedro Ramos was not in attendance.

Both schools have been in bitter battles with the District.

The commission had previously voted to start the non-renewal process at both schools. Thursday's SRC action followed months of hearings in which Truebright and Community Academy got to present a case for why they should stay open.

Community Academy is the oldest charter in Philadelphia, and grew out of a school that started more than 30 years ago. Originally a high school that operated under contract with the District, it was founded to serve near-dropouts. After becoming a charter it expanded to a K-12 school.

Grounds for the non-renewal include academic underperformance and a questionable financial history, which founder and CEO Joseph Proietta has vociferously disputed.

When the non-renewal process started with a vote by the SRC in January, Proietta vowed a long legal fight. He was not present Thursday night. He has been in court with the SRC since 2011, when only two of the four sitting SRC members voted to renew the charter, which the school contends was a majority.

The resolution adopted Thursday night said that if a court determines that the charter was renewed through that vote, the SRC now intends for the charter to be revoked.

Truebright has been facing closure since an initial non-renewal vote by the SRC 18 months ago.

A contingent from Truebright was present. Two teachers and the school's attorney, Brian Reinhouser, disputed the reasons for terminating the school's charter.

“As a faculty member I have never felt as valued as I do at Truebright,” said teacher Nicole Thuestad.

The school intends to appeal to the state Charter Appeal Board (CAB).

"Truebright will remain in operation and continue to enroll new students up to and beyond our vindication at CAB," said a statement from the charter's board.

He said that other schools with similar or even worse records have been allowed to stay open.

"Truebright is being treated differently," he said. Truebright is one of more than 130 charter schools that have been linked to a controversial Turkish imam. Many of its board and staff are Turkish.

Commissioner Joseph Dworetzky countered that even if it is true that charters of comparable performance have been renewed,"we would not compound that error. Our job in each case is to make the best call for each school. ... If we made errors in the past, that doesn’t mean we are bound to make them in the future."

http://thenotebook.org/blog/136564/src-votes-terminate-two-charters-including-citys-oldest#comment-67333

MEANWHILE AMERICAN TEACHERS SETTLE DISCRIMINATION CASE AGAINST TRUEBRIGHT SCIENCE ACADEMY IN MAY 2013

http://articles.philly.com/2013-05-14/news/39258203_1_truebright-less-qualified-turkish-nationals-turkish-male-employees

By Martha Woodall, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: May 14, 2013

A former English teacher from Truebright Science Academy Charter School who alleged the North Philadelphia school discriminated against her on the basis of national origin and gender has reached a settlement in her civil rights suit.

U.S. District Court records show that Regenna A. Jalon, a former head of Truebright's English department, and the charter school ended the suit last Friday because of the settlement.

Jalon, who worked at Truebright for four years, alleged in a suit filed in February that the school had engaged in a pattern of hiring, promoting, and paying less-qualified Turkish nationals more than American-born educators who were certified and had more experience.

Terms were not disclosed.

Neither Jalon's attorneys nor Truebright's lawyers returned calls or responded to e-mails Monday seeking comment. Jalon had sought $150,000.

Truebright had denied Jalon's allegations.

She was one of at least nine Truebright staffers who filed discrimination complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2011. She filed her suit after the EEOC issued a letter in January saying she could proceed with a suit.

Truebright is one of more than 130 charter schools across the country linked to Fethullah Gulen, a controversial Turkish imam who lives in the Poconos.

Truebright's board, top administrators, and a third of its teachers are Turkish. Many are working in the United States on nonimmigrant visas.

Truebright officials have said the school has no ties to Gulen.

In her suit, Jalon had contended Truebright engaged in "a concerted effort to deprive" non-Turkish staffers of the ability to earn as much as the Turkish male employees.

She resigned in late November.

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