Magnolia Science Academy is without a doubt a Gulen Managed charter school

The Gulen Movement is fantastic at advertising, PR, and bestwowing fake honors on their students, politicians, local media and academia. The Parents4Magnolia blog is NOT American parents it is members of the Gulen Movement in damage control mode. Magnolia Science Academy, Pacific Technology School and Bay Area Technology is the name of their California schools. They are under several Gulen NGOs: Pacifica Institute, Willow Education, Magnolia Educaiton Foundation, Accord Institute, Bay Area Cultural Connection. Hizmet aka Gulen Movement will shamelessly act like satisifed American parents or students. They will lie, cajole, manipulate, bribe, blackmail, threaten, intimidate to get their way which is to expand the Gulen charter schools. If this doesn't work they play victim and cry "islamophobia". Beware of the Gulen propagandists and Gulen owned media outlets. DISCLAIMER: if you find some videos are disabled this is the work of the Gulen censorship which has filed fake copyright infringement complaints to Utube



Thursday, February 11, 2016

Caprice Young sour grapes and unprofessionalism decides to threaten school districts with lawfare

Caprice Young the sad face of
once was a promising career.

Caprice Young we challenge you on your LIES in this article, you and Magnolia Science Academies are the
ones with no accountabilty.  You state "Magnolia has 3,400 students across 11 schools and that there are hundreds
of students on waiting lists"  How can this be when your enrollment has never been at capacity, in fact Magnolia #4, #5 are not even at capacity barely near 180 students.  Here is a novel suggestion for you:  Stop lying about these schools being high performing, they are not. Furthermore stop being in a rush to build more schools for bond money and other start up seed money when you have a horrid capacity record.  Your numbers don't warrant it. 
 
By
In an unprecedented move by any California school board, all five members of the Anaheim Union High School District board and the superintendent called for a statewide moratorium on all public charter schools last month.
They based their call on the tired argument by opponents that too many, in their words, “operate in the shadows with no transparency, no accountability, and no public review.”
The Anaheim leadership singled out Magnolia Public Schools, a group of eleven high-quality science academies I now lead. The school board went so far as to falsely accuse Magnolia of operating charter schools all over the nation and being controlled by Turkish nationals.
These statements are incorrect. The Anaheim Union board members and superintendent didn’t do their basic homework. As former president of the board for California’s largest school district, I have known these schools well since they submitted their first charter petition to Los Angeles Unified 14 years ago.
(Editors Note: Click here to read a copy of a Magnolia demand letter to AUHSD.)  SEE RESPONSE BELOW
In my nearly two decades of experience in public education, I’d be hard-pressed to find another school system that has been reviewed, audited and examined more than Magnolia Public Schools.
The State of California conducted an exhaustive audit of Magnolia schools in 2015 and simply found an organization that was financially solvent. The independent statewide investigative body even went so far as to praise Magnolia for having academically well-performing schools. Having Anaheim Union generate this hoopla reminds me of one of Winston Churchill’s finest: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
The State of California reaffirmed its confidence in Magnolia this year by investing in its continued growth with $17.4 million toward a new state-of-the-art facility in Santa Ana. State of California who approved this? the people the Gulenists took on Turkey trips? Perhaps CCSA lobbying helped to facilitate this.  One could say that the State of California needs to be held to a higher standard. 
What allows charters—public schools that are held strictly accountable to meeting high academic and operational standards while complying with federal and state laws—to overcome the charges of critics has been their strong academic performance, particularly within low-income communities.
The most recent study, a 2015 analysis of urban charter schools by researchers at Stanford University, found that charter schools provided significantly higher levels of annual learning growth in both math and reading than their traditional public school peers, and particularly larger gains for Black, Latino, low-income and special-education students.
Charters are helping the broader school systems in which they operate serve families more successfully, so a call for a moratorium, which is an indictment against all charters, simply makes no sense.
But this unprecedented call by Anaheim Union came without the input of the public that would be most affected by the decision. Anaheim Union is ignoring state law to the detriment of the community by proposing to deny them access to new high-quality public school choices in their community.
The Anaheim school board took a significant, potentially illegal public policy position that can affect thousands of its neediest students based on false premises. But what’s ironic is the very position they took was done without public input or discussion and did not take place at a school board hearing where it could be subject to public scrutiny.
Instead, it was coordinated in secrecy, resulting in a violation of public trust and governance, and even blindsided the respected Orange County Office of Education. So much for Anaheim’s charge of operating “in the shadows with no transparency, no accountability, and no public review.”
Our hope is that the Anaheim board will do right by families and embrace the opportunity for collaboration. Here’s why. Magnolia is successfully serving more than 3,400 students and we have hundreds on our waiting list.
Anaheim Union just needs to look at the evidence. Each year, we send anywhere between 92 to 99 percent of our students to some of the best colleges in the U.S. Last year, 65 percent of our graduates became first-generation college attendees. Our students are winning the top prizes in the most prestigious robotics and math competitions in the nation. These are predominantly low-income White, Latino, African-American kids, who now are well on their way toward achieving their full potential.
The school district needs what we offer and we want to help. This success is why enthusiastic Anaheim families and community members have come to us expressing their desire for a new public high school to open.
When you look across California and the nation, forward-thinking, cutting-edge school districts are embracing charter schools as part of their solution. These school districts that choose to incorporate charter schools into their reform efforts have seen first-hand that when you give kids and parents access to a quality education, everyone wins and all schools rise to a higher level.
Let’s expect more from our educational leaders. We did not elect them to make legally questionable public policy decisions in secrecy that are not in the best interest of the thousands of families in their own community. Listen to those who elected you into office, be open and transparent about your actions and make decisions based on what will allow students to thrive. Let their futures drive your decisions. Years from now, it’s them you’ll be answering to.
Caprice Young is the CEO and Superintendent of Magnolia Public Schools, a network of 11 high-performing public charter schools that serves 3,400 students in Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Clara and San Diego Counties. She is a longtime public education leader and former Los Angeles Unified school board president.
Anaheim Union High School District Board members wrote an earlier Op-ed calling for a moratorium on charter schools like Magnolia. 
Voice of OC is interested in hearing different perspectives and voices. If you want to weigh in on this issue please contact Voice of OC Publisher Norberto Santana, Jr. at nsantana@voiceofoc.org   http://voiceofoc.org/2016/02/young-anaheim-union-needs-to-live-up-to-its-own-standards-for-accountability/
 
Dear Caprice:  STFU. 

 Response from Educational Law advocate open letter to Daniel Woods Attorney for Magnolia Science Academy

BTW Go fuck yourself
 
 From: *****@ucla.edu
Subject: Open letter to Dan Woods regarding the Gülen Network's Magnolia Charter Schools
Date: February 02, 2016 14:22:46 PST
To: d.woods@mpglaw.com
Mr. Woods:
Just read your heavy-handed letter [1] to Arthur M. Pakowitz, Esq.
As a courtesy I wanted to address some of your concerns, which are clearly based in your ignorance regarding both privately managed charter schools, and the shadowy Gülen cult that your client is associated with.
Regarding your insistence that the Magnolia corporate charter school chain's financial information is transparent. This simply isn't the case, and it wasn't until the public school district called for an audit that one was conducted. Said audits revealed millions of "missing, misused funds" [2]. These were public dollars, squandered under the private management of your client.
You then make the absurd assertion that "Magnolia's eleven charter schools are public schools…" In case you actually believe that misrepresentation, let me disabuse you.
Generally charter schools are not public schools. Both existing case law and public policy have long established this. The Washington State Supreme Court (2015) held that charter schools are not "common schools" because they're governed by appointed rather than elected boards. The 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals (2010) ruled that charter schools are not "public actors." The California Court of Appeals (2007) ruled that charter schools are not "public agents." The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) joined many other government agencies in unequivocally determining that charters are, in NLRB's words, "private entities."
By definition if a charter school is run by a for-profit company, or a (501c3) non-profit corporation (e.g. Magnolia Educational and Research Foundation), then it is not a public school. The United States Census Bureau frames this issue best: "A few "public charter schools" are run by public universities and municipalities. However, most charter schools are run by private nonprofit organizations and are therefore classified as private." [3]
Because these lucrative charter schools are not public, and are not subject to even a modicum of public oversight, they are able to get away with violating the constitutional rights of their students. The decision in Scott B. v. Board of Trustees of Orange County High School of the Arts saw Rosa K. Hirji, Esq. write: "The structures that allow charter schools to exist are marked by the absence of protections that are traditionally guaranteed by public education, protections that only become apparent and necessary when families and students begin to face a denial of what they were initially promised to be their right." [4]
Lastly, there is ample documentation tying the Magnolia corporate charter school chain to the Gülenist Movement, namely through their intertwinement with the Los Angeles based Pacifica Institute—a Gülen organization which denies the 1915-1918 Armenian genocide. [5] Moreover, Fethullah Gülen's ties to the Magnolia charter schools was reported to Turkish readers as early as 2010. [6]
Far be it for me to do your research for you, but as a courtesy I offer the following footnote [7] as starting point for your own additional discovery.
I understand that the model rules of professional conduct call upon you to vigorously represent your client's interests, but one would expect an attorney of your standing to at least base your arguments in a modicum of reality. I suppose in a way I owe you and your firm a debt of gratitude inasmuch as you provide examples of the type of attorney I don't want to be—seemingly ones that hold billable hours more important than the public interest.
Advocating Public Education and Social Justice
Robert D. Skeels
Juris Doctor Candidate
UCLA '14, PCL '18
*****@alumni.ucla.edu
"Problem posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the oppressor" — Paulo Freire
 

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)