Awakening to Racist Child Abuse of Charter Chains

Fabiola St Hilaire is among a growing number of teachers from the "no excuses" cultural sterilization charter schools who are calling out the racist child abuse by charter chains like Success Academy. 

 

Working for this organization has truly showed me that as long as I stand with the inaction and blatant disregard for child morality and healthy development it in turn will make me complicit, which I will never be. --From former Success Academy teacher Fabiola St Hilaire's resignation letter

  

From a story by Michael Elsen-Rooney for New York Daily News:

. . . . For [some] educators and parents, however, Success’s approach feels heavy-handed and inflexible at a time when many families need the opposite.

 

“It’s inhumane,” said Fabiola St Hilaire, who resigned as a first-grade teacher at the network’s Flatbush, Brooklyn elementary school — lasting just one week under the new remote rules.

 

 “Just seeing how difficult it was for the kids to stay focused and still as they want them to be, it was like wow,” she said. “You see the fidgety bodies, you see the blank stares.”

 

Under the plan, kids as young as 5 have to log on by 8:50 a.m. wearing their checkered orange and blue uniforms, pictured here, and sit still with their hands clasped for nearly seven hours of live video instruction. . . .

 

. . . .The Far Rockaway mom whose little girl spends her mornings in tears urged the network to rethink its approach.

 

 “I think it’s unrealistic expectations for a 6 year old,” she said. “I don’t know how this is going to work every day until 4:30.”

 

Just months ago, [former SA teacher, Fabiola] St Hilaire helped spark a racial reckoning at the charter network, which mostly serves Black and Hispanic students, when she publicly challenged CEO Eva Moskowitz’s response to the police killing of George Floyd. That prompted a flood of social media posts from current and former students, parents and teachers decrying entrenched racism in the charter network.

 

Officials promised to redouble their efforts on anti-bias training and hiring staffers of color, but St Hilaire said she saw few changes.

 

The revamped remote learning regimen was the last straw, she said.

 

“Working for this organization has truly showed me that as long as I stand with the inaction and blatant disregard for child morality and healthy development it in turn will make me complicit, which I will never be,” she wrote in her resignation letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The News.

 

Another Success teacher, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said she resigned in part over misgivings about penalizing students struggling with tech issues or being out of uniform.

 

 “I want to work at a place that I can defend and stand behind,” the teacher told The News. “And I didn’t feel I could stand behind the policies they were asking us to carry out.” . . .

 

 

KIPP vs. Feinberg: Battle of the Moral Sewer Dwellers

For almost 25 years, Mike Feinberg broke enough rules to bull his way up to the top of a morally-compromised heap of paternalistic charter hell school operators. 

In the early days of KIPP, Feinberg is remembered as the hothead without boundaries who threw a TV through a plate glass window at KIPP Houston--the same reckless wild man who would load KIPP students into an unventilated U-Haul trailer for a "field lesson" across town. 

"Whatever it takes" was "Cage-Buster" Feinberg's mantra, and he and David Levin believed that, as KIPP's top leaders, they should model the aggressive, hyper-macho, and abusive "let the stallions run" style of leadership for their clueless regiment of KIPP "school leaders."  No holds barred, take no prisoners, let the rules be damned.

Who knows if their schooling "philosophy" of reckless abandon contributed to Feinberg's eventual bust for sexual harassment of two KIPP employees, sexual abuse of a middle school student, and another charge vaguely referred to as “repeatedly violat[ing] KIPP’s technology usage policies.”  

Sexting? Porno? Who knows what the "cage-buster" was up to?

When it became obvious to KIPP in 2017 that Feinberg's behavior could be the source of a major scandal that could damage the brand and, thus, jeopardize the flow of hundreds of millions of federal and private dollars to KIPP, KIPP launched its own very hush-hush investigation into allegations that Feinberg had sexually assaulted a middle student some years before.  That was in April 2017. See documents here.

On September 7, 2017, KIPP notified Feinberg that he was off the hook, while entirely downplaying the sexual assault charges with this: "Other than what the former student alleges, now almost 20 years after the alleged acts, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing." In other words, KIPP chose to ignore the charges and "to consider the matter officially closed."

Obviously, the allegations did not go away as easily as KIPP would prefer.  Just two  months after Feinberg was "exonerated,"  KIPP Houston hired a law firm, WilmerHale, to conduct a real investigation beginning in November 2017.  Contrary to KIPP's own findings just two months before, WilmerHale found the charges of sexual abuse with a middle schooler credible.  The law firm, whose specialty is investigating sexual misconduct allegations, also uncovered two sexual harassment cases involving Feinberg and KIPP employees, one of which resulted in a settlement in 2004.  

Did the KIPP Board know about this part of Feinberg's history when it gave him a free pass just months earlier?  How could they not know if a settlement had been paid?  

Unable to sweep all this under the rug any longer, KIPP sent a letter to Feinberg on Feb. 22, 2018 announcing that, as of that day, he was fired.  Furthermore, he was told that his email account had been closed and that he was to return all technology (computers, tablets, phones) that belonged to KIPP.  His belongings would be mailed to him.

In other words, Feinberg was fired the same way that Feinberg and the KIPP hierarchy have treated so many thousands of disposable teachers and staff over the past 25 years.  Such irony.

It is likely that Feinberg believed that he would be able continue his lucrative career as a "no accountability" charter kingpin.  After all, this has been the pattern for fired KIPP administrators, who have been able to move into higher management slots with other charter chains. That doesn't seem to be the case, however.  

Recently in an effort to reclaim a reputation that his own egomaniacal recklessness destroyed, Feinberg has decided to sue KIPP for its handling of his dismissal.  For its part, KIPP stands by bare-knuckled firing of Feinberg with its entire absence of due process, and they offer Feinberg this parting shot:

“This is a baseless and frivolous lawsuit. Mr. Feinberg’s employment was terminated last year after thorough investigations uncovered credible instances of misconduct incompatible with KIPP’s values. We regret Mr. Feinberg is choosing to put the women who came forward to share painful experiences, the witnesses who supported them, and the entire KIPP community through further distress.”

Stand by.  Who knows how much more of the truth will emerge during the trial?  Will we find out what was on Feinberg's computers, phones, and tablets?  Will victims get their day in court?

Charter Teacher Floors Six Year Old, Knocking Out Tooth

At the Exploration Elementary Charter School for Science Technology, the school's "hands on, minds on" philosophy has turned into hands on practice--by an out-of-control teacher who will face charges to be filed by the child's mother. One of Exploration's teachers, as yet unnamed, is "accused of slamming a 6-year-old student, Marlon K’Harii Williams, to the ground, knocking out his front tooth."