Second Gulen Charter Application in Gulen backyard DENIED, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania

A rendering of the proposed Business and Entrepreneurship Academy Charter High School in West Easton

- See more at: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/easton/mc-wilson-charter-school-vote-20130227,0,4279437.story#sthash.2ldoJMrp.dpuf

By Adam Clark, Of The Morning Call

10:40 p.m. EST, February 27, 2013

Wilson Area School Board on Wednesday night unanimously rejected the proposed Business and Entrepreneurship Academy Charter High School in West Easton.

The school pre-enrolled only one student and failed to demonstrate sustainable support from parents and community members, according to the resolution passed by the board. It also failed to demonstrate that it would provide expanded curriculum choices and that it has partnerships with local businesses to provide the curriculum and teaching model it advertises.

Furthermore, the charter's application failed to address plans for teaching health, family and consumer sciences and music, among other "core areas," the resolution says.

Joe Lewis, former Bethlehem Area School District superintendent and a consultant for the charter's founders, said he wanted to read the resolution before responding to the board's reasons for denying the application. He said he wasn't surprised with the decision and that it was consistent with public schools' across the state being threatened both financially and on an instructional level by charter schools.

The founders will meet and discuss whether they want to appeal, look for a different location or re-submit to Wilson Area for the 2014-15 school year, Lewis said.

"Stay tuned," he said.

The charter school's founding board has 30 days to appeal the decision, Wilson Area solicitor Don Spry said.

If the school had been approved, it would have opened this fall for ninth- and 10th-grade students and eventually would have expanded into a four-year high school. It would have focused on core curriculum in the morning and featured an incubator program in the afternoon.

Students would have developed business plans and worked with mentors in the business community to cultivate their ideas. They would have had internships or externships, gone on career exploration field trips and participated in a 10th-grade career fair.

Before the vote at Wednesday's meeting, several supporters spoke in favor of the school, including developer Abe Atiyeh, who would have leased the building.

"The kids in this school are going to be motivated to be entrepreneurs, business leaders and doing the right thing," Atiyeh said. "I just can't see a real reason for you all to deny this application."

Lou DiRenzo, president and founder of Bethlehem chemical company Puritan Products, said a school focusing on entrepreneurship is "long past due."

"I've seen kids today that just, there's no entrepreneurial spirit in them," DiRenzo said. "There's no enterprising young children in the area."

School board members didn't make any comments before voting.

"I think the resolution speaks to the reasons why the board denied it," Superintendent Doug Wagner said after the meeting.

The school's financial plan was based on enrolling 175 students in its first year. Charter schools are free for parents because the districts they live in pass money along to the charter school. But aside from the one pre-enrolled student, the charter submitted only nine letters of parental support. Two were illegible, and none of the others were from Wilson Area parents.

No one who lives in the Wilson district wrote a letter of support for the school or joined the founding board.

Lewis and the school's founders have said throughout the application process that the charter is intended as a regional school, with few students coming from Wilson and the majority coming from Easton or other districts. The application included 28 letters of support, but 10 were from people involved in founding the school.

The proposed school had no formal, defined partnerships with local businesses because it said it needed its charter approved first. It was the first charter school to be proposed in the district.

adam.clark@mcall.com

610-820-6168

Another Gulenist sponsored charter school application denied in Gulen's backyard Allentown, Pennsylvania

Exiled Imam Fethullah Mohammed Gulen's "Golden Generation" Compound in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.  Ironically, Gulen's wet dream is to operate schools worldwide and create a "Golden Generation" one which will be stewards of his neo Ottoman Empire.  Where only the ruling class will be Turkish and the subjects will be Turkified and speak the same language as their masters. 



http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/allentown/index.ssf/2013/02/allentown_school_board_rejects.html

By Colin McEvoy | The Express-TimesThe Express-Times
on February 28, 2013 at 8:50 PM, updated March 01, 2013 at 12:37 PM

For the fourth time in eight years, the Allentown School Board on Thursday unanimously rejected an application to establish a new engineering charter school in the city.

Board members previously expressed concerns about whether the group is associated with a controversial movement led by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.

But Superintendent Russell Mayo recommended the charter be rejected not because of any ties to that movement, but due to concerns about its curriculum, budget and lack of community support.

Board member Julie Ambrose praised the charter applicant's desire to create a individualized and safe school setting for its students, but said the academic merits of the application fell short.

"The charter option for students is supposed to be based on academics and provide a unique alternative academic experience that's not otherwise available, but that is sustainable through community support, and unfortunately this did not meet those requirements," she said.

Nobody from the charter application group or the public spoke during the board meeting.

The Allentown Engineering Academy Charter School sought to open at 265 Lehigh St. next year starting with 180 students from grades six to eight, then later expand to all grade levels.

The school board has rejected three engineering school applications since 2005 to establish the engineering charter school, in part because of those applicants' affiliation with the Gülen movement.

The current applicants argued they were not affiliated with those past applications even though all three were also called the Allentown Engineering Academy Charter School.

While the Gülen movement was discussed during a public hearing in December, it was not mentioned at all during Thursday's board meeting.

Mayo recommended rejecting the charter because the curriculum failed to cover core academic topics, and because the proposed budget did not cover necessary teacher training.

He also cited a perceived lack of community support, noting that the district received only five letters of support from individuals or organizations from the Allentown community.

"This application was weak in the area of community support, which is one of the required areas of strength," Mayo said.

Board member Scott Armstrong said the board regrets rejecting any charter, and encouraged the group to come back with a stronger application in the future.

"I think there's a lot of good in this application that I would encourage those advocating for it to pursue further," Armstrong said.

Howard Kurtz, an education consultant who wrote the current application, previously said "very offensive" and "obscene" efforts have been made to falsely tie the application to the Gülen movement.

Kutz said of the 22 members of the current charter foundation coalition, only two were involved in the three previous applications.

The Gülen movement describes itself as a nonpolitical civic movement that preaches religious tolerance and the importance of science in schools without advocating a specific religion. But critics call it a political movement seeking to spread an Islamic dogma, according to a New York Times article.

Contact Allentown reporter Colin McEvoy at 484-894-2549 or cmcevoy@express-times.com.

 

Loudoun County School board rejects Gulen Charter application

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!!!!



 

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.

http://www.leesburgtoday.com/news/school-board-rejects-charter-school-application/article_97156756-8090-11e2-8bb5-0019bb2963f4.html