Mike Feinberg's Lawyers Go After Abused Hispanic Family

In what has to be one of the greatest power disparities in the history of charter school sexual abuse, Mike Feinberg and his high-rolling legal team faced off against a girl and her mother last week at a hearing to determine if the predator KIPP founder will be able to keep his teacher's license after being fired for sexually abusing a middle school child.

Reading the excerpt from the Texas Tribune article below, it's not a tough call.  We will still have to wonder, however, if Feinberg will be able to buy his way clear.

. . . . In a petition calling for the hearing, a TEA lawyer said Feinberg allegedly performed a “yearly check up” on the former student, then a fifth grader attending KIPP in Houston in the late 1990s. While the two were in his office, the petition alleges, he placed his hand inside her shirt and rubbed up and down between her breasts and belly button. He had her “touch her toes while he ran his finger from her neck to her waist,” it says. 

A week or two later, Feinberg is alleged to have told the student he lost the file and had to redo the exam. He “took her back to his office,” closed the door and had her partially disrobe, the TEA petition claims. He inserted a Q-tip into her vagina for a few seconds and then instructed her to return to class, it says. He was a teacher and the principal of the school at the time. 

In testimony at the certification hearing Wednesday, the former student said she “felt confused” after the incidents. She put on her clothes, went back to class, and told her mother about it after returning home. Although her mother was upset, the student asked her not to share the information with her father. “I thought my dad was going to blame me for it and hit me,” she testified. 

Asked why she didn’t tell the school or police, the student responded, “They wouldn’t believe me because of my race.” She said she wanted to leave the school right away, but her mother didn’t know how to explain it to her father. She left a year later. “I wasn’t comfortable” anymore, she said. 

The student’s mother largely confirmed her daughter’s account. 

“I was in very bad shape. I started crying with her,” the mother testified through a Spanish translator. “I wanted to say something, but my daughter didn’t let me. We needed to talk to my husband, but we were scared of him because he was very strict and tough with her and with me.” 

Feinberg’s lawyers [called more than a dozen witnesses and] worked to dismantle the student’s testimony. Feinberg sat pensively observing, sometimes taking notes on a yellow legal pad, during much of the testimony. He winked at his wife as he sat down to testify; they clutched hands after he finished speaking and rejoined his lawyers at their table. 

“That did not happen … absolutely not,” Feinberg responded to detailed questions about the student’s allegations. Asked if he contended she was lying, he gave a long pause: “I contend that what she is saying are not the facts.” Asked why she would lodge the allegations, he said, “That would just be speculation.” . . . .

Charter School Teacher Chokes and Drags Student By the Neck

Warrant Issued for Abusive Charter Principal

For each of these felonious criminal abusers apprehended, how many thousands go unpunished?  By the way, the Walton Family Foundation is a partner in this abusive enterprise.

A Baton Rouge charter school principal is wanted by police after he was accused of locking a 5-year-old student in a closet as a form of punishment, according to police.

Shafeeq Syid Shamsid-Deen, the principal and founder of Laurel Oaks Charter School, at 440 N. Foster Drive, is wanted on counts of cruelty to a juvenile — a felony — and false imprisonment, according to an arrest warrant issued Monday by Baton Rouge police.

According to the warrant, a teacher heard a child screaming and crying inside the school Aug. 22. After two other teachers joined in the search, the 5-year-old girl was found inside a closet in the cafeteria. The closet was locked from the outside, the warrant says.

The student told authorities that Shamsid-Deen, 31, put her in the closet when she was “bad,” according to the warrant. No one was around the closet when the teacher found the child locked inside it, the warrant says.

When one of the teachers emailed Shamsid-Deen with objections about the punishment, he responded that the school “will work to make sure we have a proper time-out area for scholars to reset in the cafeteria,” the warrant says.

Four SASIC Charter Schools Shut Down in San Antonio

It was the school kitchen floor covered with meat blood after holiday break that made one charter teacher suspicious. She soon, thereafter, quit, and became a whistleblower.

Now all four of the SASIC corporate reform schools have been shut down, pending an investigation.

For the State of Texas to investigate, you know something stinks.  Oh yeah, the meat.

Serving rotted meat is not the only charge facing these charter industry predators.

Here are some of the other charges listed in a letter to Commissioner Mike Morath from State Representative, Diego Bernal:

Parent Corroborates Abusive and Illegal Conditions at "No Excuses" Charters

Thanks to Norm Scott, some amazing video has been posted that details the zero tolerance penal regimen used at the "no excuses" Achievement First charter schools in New York.  

This clip below, which runs 28 minutes, features a parent who served for four years on Achievement First school board before she finally got fed up and pulled her child before he entered high school.  

The testimony in this video corroborates the conditions documented by former "no excuses" teachers, whose stories form a central part of Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching.

Achievement First Charter School Parents Speak Out: Why they removed their children Part 1 from MORE-UFT/GEM on Vimeo.

No doubt this video will become crucial in a lawsuit that has just been filed against Achievement First in Crown Heights.  Apparently, the "lawsuit waiting to happen" has just happened.

Special education students at a Brooklyn charter school did not get mandated services and were punished for behavior that arose from their disabilities, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday.

• The suit, filed on behalf of five students at Achievement First Crown Heights, described a “systemic failure to provide them a free appropriate public education, in violation of their rights.” It said that students did not get physical therapy and other services for weeks at a time, and that a student with autism was disciplined for not looking in the direction a teacher instructed or for hiding under his desk.

In addition to the charter network and the school, the suit also named the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department, asserting they failed to make Achievement First, a network with schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island as well as in New York City, live up to its responsibilities.

“Kids with special needs not only should be granted accommodations for their needs, but they must be under federal and state law,” said Michelle Movahed, a senior staff attorney at New York Legal Assistance Group, a nonprofit group that is representing the students and their families. “This is not just a question of doing the right thing.”

Charter schools are publicly financed, but privately run, and they are required, like regular public schools, to provide individual learning plans for children with special needs.

The suit comes at a time when charter schools, especially those in the Success Academy network, have come under scrutiny for their enforcement of strict behavior codes, suspending even the youngest students. But advocates and families say that in both charters and traditional public schools, it can often be a struggle to ensure children with disabilities receive the services to which they are entitled.

A spokeswoman for Achievement First said on Thursday that the organization was reviewing the lawsuit. In a statement, she strongly defended the Crown Heights school’s record with special needs students.

“We serve a substantial number of students with both modest and significant special education needs, and our school leaders, teachers and other professionals work tirelessly each day to serve all our students well,” Leonore Waldrip, a spokeswoman for the charter network, said in the statement. “Most of our students who receive special education services are experiencing real growth, and we have high levels of overall parent satisfaction.

“That said, we constantly strive to improve our program and, in particular, have made significant improvements in our special education supports in recent years,” she said.

Dottie Morris, who has two children at Achievement First Crown Heights, said she had been battling with the school for years on behalf of her son, a third grader identified in the suit by his initials, D.W., to protect his privacy.

Ms. Morris said that despite her repeated requests, it took Achievement First more than two years to provide a paraprofessional to help her son. This school year, the suit asserts that Achievement First and the city’s Education Department did not provide D.W. with occupational therapy for about five weeks and physical therapy for two months, and that no makeup sessions have been arranged.

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Achievement First Crown Heights has also punished D.W., who is autistic, for “behaviors that are caused by, or have a direct and substantial relationship to, his disability,” according to the complaint.

D.W. was punished by the school for not looking where he was instructed to, or for “perceived misbehavior in the noisy, crowded cafeteria, an environment that can be overstimulating to children with D.W.’s diagnosis,” the suit said. His punishments have included being sent, as a third grader, to a second-grade classroom.

The complaint describes this approach as part of Achievement First’s strict approach to discipline. It quotes the network’s website, which describes a policy of “sweating the small stuff.”

“In many urban schools, teachers and leaders ‘pick their battles,’ only addressing egregious instances of poor behavior,” the website goes on, according to the complaint. “Achievement First, on the other hand, has adopted sociologist James Q. Wilson’s ‘broken windows’ theory that even small details can have a significant effect on overall culture, and we believe that students will rise to the level of expectations placed on them.”

That approach does not work for her son, Ms. Morris said. “They treat all the kids the same,” she said. “There’s no differentiation if you have special needs.”

A spokesman for the state’s Education Department said it did not comment on pending litigation. A spokesman for the city’s Law Department said lawyers had not yet seen the suit on Thursday afternoon.

Chicago Charter School Student Dragged Down Hallway By Her Hair

After Cornerstone Charter Abuse Scandal Deepens in Memphis, NAACP Demands Accountability from State and Charter Operators

Cornerstone CEO Sippel

What began last fall in Memphis as the corporate reform schoolers' grand experiment to turn over public schools to white charter operators with no accountability for how children are treated, has turned into a nightmare for parents of children at Cornerstone Prep and other less publicized charter chain gangs for black and poor children in Memphis.

What began as a charter school abuse story that the local media in Memphis tried to ignore has erupted into deep rage among parents who previously were sweet-talked into sending their children to the total compliance charter schools where children are treated like dangerous inmates.  See latest accounts here on former mayor's call for Governor to intervene.

This from local ABC affiliate:
A child's words can be powerful.

"I started to urinate on myself and I started crying,” said 7-year old Cornerstone student as she addressed the crowd at the podium. 

That power is multiplied when repeated by other children.

"One time I urinated on myself and I had to go really bad,” said another elementary student.

"I soiled on myself because I tried to raise my hand and he (my teacher) said no,” said another student.

Parents are outraged at Cornerstone teachers. The state took over low performing Lester Elementary this year. Since then, student grades are up and they're making the honor roll. That's not the problem. It's teachers not allowing enough bathroom breaks. The school says they've corrected the issue and the kids are allowed 5 bathroom breaks. Parents say that's not true.

"It's going beyond saying no, they’re getting physical,” said a parent Lashanna Rogers. “They (teachers) physically stopped her (my daughter) instead of walking with her to the restroom."

All of this is taking place as a result of years of Business Roundtable efforts to turn poor public schools over to corporate interests, and today in urban America test scores are used to shut down public schools so they be run for the benefit of corporate welfare artists who are free to operate schools like private prisons, with no accountability to the public.

Clips below from the Commercial Appeal four days ago. Note that parents must now provide their own transportation if they decide that they do want their children to attend this chain gang school:

After weeks of complaints about Cornerstone Preparatory Academy in Binghamton, the state NAACP will ask legislators to pass a law allowing charter schools to be closed for more than financial instability and poor academic performance.

"There needs to be some other options for the ways we hold charters accountable," said Rev. Keith Norman, president of the Memphis branch of the NAACP.

The issue is on the state NAACP agenda and will be presented to lawmakers in February, Norman said. "You can't allow charters to exist in our community, to come in and set up shop and not be accountable beyond fiscal and performance-related issues."

Cornerstone Prep, a ministry of Christ United Methodist Church, opened this fall in Lester School in Binghamton under the authority of the state-run Achievement School District. It serves children in pre-K through third grade. Next year, it will take over the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. In 2014-2015, it will run the entire pre-K-8 school.

In the last month, Binghamton parents have cited instances of children wetting their pants because they were not allowed to use the restroom. Others have said teachers took children's shoes as punishment.

The most recent incident happened Thursday, according to mother LaShanna Rogers. "My daughter said one teacher said yes, she could use the restroom, but the other teacher in the room stopped her. She physically grabbed her. That is when she urinated on herself. She was scared. And then, she was so embarrassed, she was crying hysterically."

Rogers and unified Shelby County Schools board member Sara Lewis met Friday with Cornerstone executive director Drew Sippel. Lewis said she is "deeply concerned" about the lack of "cultural competency" among the staff and "in the routine kinds of things that should be done and are not."

"The administration and the school operators should be humane and focused, respectful and humane. From things I have been told, it is neither, simply because the people in charge don't know. They have no clue."

Sippel did not respond to e-mail questions about the latest incidents Friday.

. . . .

School boards have authority to close charters after two years of poor test scores, for insolvency and for violating conditions of their charter. The law says nothing about what happens when school leaders clash with the community.

Until the Achievement School District started assigning charters to run schools last fall, parents had the option to send their children to them. Under ASD rules, Cornerstone is now the neighborhood school in Binghamton. If parents wish to transfer, they can expect to drive their students to a new school.

Charter schools also do not have publicly elected boards, an issue for Norman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Binghamton. "We don't just want to make allegations and throw stones. We want a clear pathway for healing."

"When you reach out to help and serve, it helps not to send the signal that we are giving because they are broken. Our dignity is not to be exchanged for your dollars. Our dignity is for not for sale."

Cornerstone Academy Embroiled in Child Abuse Charges in Memphis

In order to encourage charter schools to "innovate," almost all oversight and regulations have been removed, so that now these corporate reform schools operate with impunity, free to pay school CEOs hundreds of thousands of tax dollars each year to run total compliance chain gangs for children, where teachers are more prison guard than educator.  The only innovation we see from these one-size fits all behavioral neutering factories is in the punishment techniques devised to break children down in order to make them entirely compliant.  

Such is the case in Memphis, which is now Ground Zero for the corporate charterization movement in U. S. urban schools.  With millions in Gates money funneled to corrupt politicians and church leaders, Memphis City Schools are being turned into a system of primarily apartheid corporate charter reform schools with large numbers of white missionaries from Teach for America hired to grind out test scores and to maintain total control of the children.

An outbreak of the new cancer growing in Memphis schools can be found at the Cornerstone Academy, which has just completed a hastily-arranged "audit" related to child abuse charges by children and parents.  Following the Rhee model of investigating yourself, the school prison hired an "independent" auditor (an accounting firm, no less!) to ask the prison guards if they had been mistreating the prisoners who were complaining.  No problem, said the prison guards.  End of audit.  No interviews of the prisoners or their families, or no other semblance of a real investigation.

This should be a wake-up call to Memphis parents. Who knows what the fact are, since the story comes to us from Gates stooge, Jane Roberts, who also draws a check from the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

An investigation of practices at Cornerstone Preparatory School by an outside auditor finds no ground to substantiate numerous allegations of child abuse at the Binghamton campus. 

Parents and community leaders are incensed, saying the audit is meaningless because Cornerstone hired the investigator and then excluded them from participating. 

"How independent is it when you are the one that hired them?" asked Chan Douglas, one of several community supporters organizing neighborhood meetings and acting as intermediaries between parents and Cornerstone, which is operating the school as part of the state's Achievement School District for low-performing schools. 

"If it was a true investigation, they should have reached out to the community. They have not spoken with the parents that complained. If you are not doing that, what are you basing your findings on? 

Executive director Drew Sippel said parents were not included because the audit was over internal school processes. 

"We voluntarily put it together in response to concerns we heard expressed at the meeting," Sippel said. "It's part of a three-pronged approach to the concerns. We also self-reported to the Department of Children's Services and we expect to hear from them in a couple of business days."
.... 
"My question is why didn't they reach out to me, the community leader and organizer, to find out who they needed to talk to from the community perspective?" asked Marty Merriweather 

Anger first boiled over in a meeting Dec. 19 at the Lester Community Center. One little girl told the crowd of 120-plus people in a three-hour meeting that her teacher refused to let her use the restroom or get her fresh clothes when she wet her pants. She also said the teacher took her shoes, apparently because she was slow tying her laces. Other parents said teachers twisted their children's arms or took their shoes as punishment. . . . .

DC Charters Kick Out the Problem Children and Keep the Compliant Ones

A clip from an investigative report by WaPo that details expulsion of 6 year old KIPP student:

. . . .Greenfield said the D.C. school system is far from perfect and too often relies on suspensions, including long-term suspensions of up to 90 days, to deal with bad behavior.

The city’s traditional public schools use long-term suspensions more often than charter schools, imposing nearly twice as many in the past academic year, according to school data. That year, 2011-12, 601 students were suspended from traditional schools for more than 10 days as punishment for a single incident; 327 charter school students received similarly long suspensions.

But unlike expulsion, suspension does not allow a school to give up responsibility for a difficult child, Greenfield said.

She pointed to the case of a homeless 6-year-old her organization represents. He attended three D.C. public schools in preschool and kindergarten before enrolling this academic year in first grade at a KIPP DC elementary campus, part of one of the highest-performing charter organizations in the city. He was expelled in September.

(Donald E. Graham, chief executive of the Washington Post Co., is a member of KIPP DC’s board of trustees.)

School records show that the boy was suspended for a day after throwing a kicking-and-hitting tantrum. His mother met with school staff members to devise a behavior-management plan for the child.

A few days after returning to school, he ran into trouble again— curling up on the floor, wetting himself accidentally and throwing another tantrum. Records show that the episode began in a classroom, where he scratched a child, and ended hours later in the principal’s office, where he threw objects, punched, spit and screamed.

Over the summer, the child had been found to have an adjustment disorder related to the stress and instability of living in poverty, his mother said in interviews with The Post, a diagnosis she divulged to school officials after the second tantrum. The Post is not identifying the family to protect the young boy.

“Our appeal to them was to basically not make this another school’s problem, and get the student some help within this system,” said the family’s attorney, Timothy Riveria of Advocates for Justice and Education.

The principal expelled the boy, and a panel of KIPP DC administrators upheld that recommendation, according to school records. The boy then enrolled at Payne Elementary in Southeast, the school closest to the homeless shelter where he lived. He attended that school until the family moved to Florida in late November.

KIPP DC’s chief executive, Susan Schaeffler, declined to comment on the case because of privacy concerns. . . . .

How Do You Shut Down the Most Brutal and Corrupt Charter School in U. S. History? We Don't Know Yet

If you follow our model, you'll be a winner. By the time these kids are in ninth grade, I don't have to call them idiots anymore.  --Ben Chavis, founder of AIPCS

Ben Chavis is the foul-mouthed right wing thug turned schoolmaster, founder, and overseer (think plantation) of the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland (AIPCS). 

AIPCS openly disparages multiculturalism and openly advances the philosophy of Milton Friedman. Consider this 

teacher recruitment ad from the AIPCS website that became part of a story in 2009 by Landsberg in the Los Angeles 

Times: 

“We are looking for hardworking people who believe in free market capitalism . . . Multicul­tural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression libera­tors need not apply.”

The history of abuse, brutality, and mistreatment goes back years.  Here is a clip from the SFChronicle almost 6 years ago:

. . . .The 130 students at the school, in grades six through nine, follow strict rules. They must wear waist-high dark-colored pants with white shirts -- no jewelry, makeup or brightly colored hair accessories.

Most of the school day is spent in one classroom with one teacher, who moves with the students to higher grades. The day begins with three hours of math and language arts, followed by a 20-minute lunch. Forty-five minutes a day are devoted to physical education.

Arts are allowed only after school. And there are no computers. Chavis believes they bring mischief -- theft, pornography and unforeseen costs.

Students have hours of homework most nights, and two weeks of summer school are mandatory.

Those with good grades and perfect attendance all year are rewarded with spending money from Chavis' own pocket -- up to $100 depending on the student's age. Breaking a school rule, such as not completing homework, being tardy or breaking the dress code, means an automatic detention.

Repeat offenders are subject to public embarrassment. Those students must stand in front of other classes as Chavis or a teacher exposes their misconduct.

"An eighth-grader hates to be sent back to a sixth-grade class," Chavis said. "I want them to be embarrassed. I'm preparing them for the real world."

But it's the most extreme forms of discipline that have thrown the school into the critics' line of fire.

With parental permission, Chavis cut the hair of a student accused of stealing. A boy who admitted to calling his classmate a derogatory name was pinned with a note that read "I'm an (expletive)" in front of other students.

Chavis said incidents of such discipline are isolated. Still, one led Monica Peoples-Brown to withdraw her sixth-grade son, who was pinned with the note after a heated conversation with Chavis that included name-calling and a threat to call the police.

"My child was traumatized," Peoples-Brown said. "It hurt me to sign him out. My child was really learning. But I can't deal with an administration that is a dictatorship."

Some take issue with what they call Chavis' inappropriate use of racial stereotypes, cursing and name-calling to embarrass students at the school. Floundering students become the public targets of labels like "stupid" and "lazy Mexican."

"I tell the students, if you don't do your work, people are going to call you a lazy Mexican. You're black, they expect you to be an idiot," said Chavis, who is Native American. "I use it to motivate the kids."

The school loses about 10 students a year. Chavis said most of them moved out of the area. Disgruntled parents say they and others were pushed out or became fed up with Chavis' inappropriate language and overly aggressive discipline.

Rachael Huang disagreed when her daughter was assigned to retake Algebra I in September. After a series of intense discussions with school administrators, she said her daughter came home with a list of other Oakland schools photocopied from the phone book.

She took the hint and removed both her daughters from the school.. . .

Just days ago AIPCS's charter came up for renewal amidst allegations and a ton of evidence that Chavis and his wife have treated the school's account as their private piggy bank.  From the Mercury-News:

Staff members with the Oakland school district's charter schools office cited a host of reasons for the recommendation to reject the school's charter school renewal application. At the forefront is an ongoing state investigation into allegations of fraud and other illegal activity at American Indian Model Schools, the organization that manages this charter school and two others. School district staff say investigators with the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team are reviewing more than $3 million in questionable transactions by the organization during a recent three-year period.

Late last year, a former employee's claims of financial misappropriation and cover-up prompted the district and county superintendents to request a special audit. The former employee said funds for an after-school program were redirected to a company owned by Ben Chavis, the organization's director.

And this from the SFChronicle last week:

Superintendent Tony Smith recommended the board shut down the charter based on a separate district staff review and 2,100 pages of documentation that found a lack of "responsible governance" and "poor financial accountability," as well as a lack of services for special education students and English learners. It also found teachers were hired without credentials, as required by law. The district findings mirrored the issues raised in the state audit.

So let me end the suspense.  The School Board voted 4-3 to grant this chain gang another 5 year charter, as Chavis and his corporate sponsors looked on.

Do you think a school board in the leafy suburbs would ever allow this kind of evil, abuse, fraud, and brutality to occur in their communities?  With the safety and welfare of Seth and Caitlin at stake?   Not quite, but it is perfectly fine as long as poor kids are being manhandled, abused, miseducated, and humiliated.  This is a contemporary example of moral breakdown on a colossal scale, and what Arendt called the "banality of evil" in our midst:

. . . Arendt concluded that far from exhibiting a malevolent hatred of Jews which could have accounted psychologically for his participation in the Holocaust, Eichmann was an utterly innocuous individual. He operated unthinkingly, following orders, efficiently carrying them out, with no consideration of their effects upon those he targeted. The human dimension of these activities were not entertained, so the extermination of the Jews became indistinguishable from any other bureaucratically assigned and discharged responsibility for Eichmann and his cohorts.

 Arendt concluded that Eichmann was constitutively incapable of exercising the kind of judgement that would have made his victims’ suffering real or apparent for him. It was not the presence of hatred that enabled Eichmann to perpetrate the genocide, but the absence of the imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible for him. Eichmann failed to exercise his capacity of thinking, of having an internal dialogue with himself, which would have permitted self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds. This amounted to a failure to use self-reflection as a basis for judgement, the faculty that would have required Eichmann to exercise his imagination so as to contemplate the nature of his deeds from the experiential standpoint of his victims. This connection between the complicity with political evil and the failure of thinking and judgement inspired the last phase of Arendt’s work, which sought to explicate the nature of these faculties and their constitutive role for politically and morally responsible choices.