West Springfield planning discussion about charter school network with ties to controversial Muslim cleric
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WEST SPRINGFIELD -- With state lawmakers calling for an audit of a charter school slated to open in September in West Springfield, city officials are organizing a panel discussion and screening of "Killing Ed," a documentary about a charter school network affiliated with Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish imam who is the inspiration for a growing social, political and educational movement in the U.S. and Turkey.
The event is tentatively scheduled for next month, with details expected to be finalized soon, according to a West Springfield School Committee member who is involved in the planning process.
Ties between a network of Turkish-run charter schools in the U.S. and the "Gulen movement," identified by the Republic of Turkey as a terrorist organization, continue to fuel concerns in West Springfield, where the Chicopee-based Hampden Charter School of Science plans to open a new facility in about four months.
HCSS, as the school is commonly known, has alleged links to organizations with ties to the Gulen charter school movement, according to critics of HCSS, including Mayor William C. Reichelt and an international law firm hired by the Turkish government to expose Gulen's "suspicious activities."
Tarkan Topcuoglu, a Turkish national and chief executive officer of HCSS, has denied any connections to Gulen, his followers, or charter schools connected to the controversial Muslim cleric. But that hasn't stopped local officials from raising the alarm about HCSS-West, as the new school in West Springfield's Merrick neighborhood will be called.
The most vocal local critic so far has been Reichelt, the city's popular young mayor and a lawyer, who says a new charter school in his city could lead to higher taxes and siphon students and funding from West Springfield Public Schools, which recently achieved its highest graduation and lowest dropout rates ever.
The mayor is also concerned about the Gulen narrative associated with some of these Turkish schools in the U.S., many of which have taken advantage of a special visa program to import staff members from Turkey. By the year 2034, according to Reichelt, HCSS will have paid over $8.5 million to its Chicopee landlord, Johnson Road Properties, which is owned by Apple Education Services -- a firm with purported ties to Gulen.
"How can we be assured that the same practices wouldn't take place here?" Reichelt asked earlier this month. "To many parents, these kinds of allegations seem far-fetched, but the public record on this matter is deeply concerning."
"There are no financial ties to any movement," Topcugolo said in a recent interview with The Republican / MassLive.com. "We are an independent public school. We are not a religious school at all. It's not the purpose of this school. We are a college prep school."
Mark S. Hall, a Texas attorney and director of "Killing Ed," is expected to attend next month's panel discussion in West Springfield, according William Garvey, a School Committee member who is involved in organizing the event.
"This was just kind of completed today," Garvey said at the School Committee meeting on Tuesday, "so you'll be seeing some flyers and pamphlets and whatnot coming out shortly."
Garvey said the event is tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. May 30 at West Springfield High School, 425 Piper Road.
Also expected to attend are members of the Turkish-American Society of Western Massachusetts and attorney John Martin, senior counsel with Amsterdam & Partners LLP, the international law firm retained by the Republic of Turkey to pursue a global investigation of Gulen.
Before joining the firm, Martin spent a dozen years as a senior enforcement attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has an extensive legal background in both criminal and civil matters, including investigating and prosecuting cases involving insider trading, accounting fraud, and many other white-collar crimes.
Gulen, a cleric from the Sufism tradition -- a mystical Islamic belief and practice whereby Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience with God -- has been accused of trying to destabilize Turkey, a parliamentary representative democracy with a tradition of secularism.
Turkey has specifically blamed Gulen for trying to overthrow the nation's democratically elected government from the safety of his 26-acre compound in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, where he has lived in exile for almost 20 years. Gulen has denied any part in a July 2016 coup attempt, which the Turkish government has blamed on followers of the Gulen movement.
Members of the movement operate the largest network of taxpayer-funded charter schools in the U.S. Some of these charter schools have come under scrutiny by the FBI, which has investigated institutions in several states. Nationwide, there are an estimated 150 Gulen-related charter schools that receive roughly a half-billion dollars in public funding annually.
Publicly funded, privately managed charter schools are generally staffed by non-unionized teachers and personnel and tend to outperform some urban public schools.
In West Springfield, the primary concern of state lawmakers who represent the city on Beacon Hill has less to do with any purported ties to Gulen -- a moderate Muslim who's viewed by many as a bridge between Islam and the West -- and more to do with the process used by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to allow HCSS to open a branch in West Side.
"This process is completely broken and something needs to be done to fix it," Sen. James T. Welch told The Republican.
No face-to-face meetings were held with West Side residents, according to Welch, who characterized the approval process as "the shadiest type of deal I've seen."
Welch and his colleague, Rep. Michael J. Finn, have reached out to Gov. Charlie Baker and state education officials, asking them to reconsider the decision to approve the charter school. They have also called for the state to audit HCSS to learn how the taxpayer-funded school spends its money.
"They've shoved this down our throats and all we're getting from Boston is crickets," said Finn. "It's so infuriating. It's so outrageous."
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