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California Congressman sends letter to Secretary of Education regarding Gulen Schools

Congressman Alan Lowenthal Gulen Charter School Letter from Gulen Cemaat

Caprice Young and her Terrorist Gulen Schools careen through American classrooms

American charter schools have become embroiled in a proxy fight between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen

By

IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN and

DOUGLAS BELKIN

Updated Sept. 22, 2016 6:13 p.m. ET

A global proxy war between the president of Turkey and his No. 1 nemesis played out early this year in an otherwise routine public-school board meeting in Fremont, Calif.

On the agenda during the January meeting was a pitch from the chief executive of a California charter-school chain, which had proposed opening an outpost in the Silicon Valley...lso in attendance, and bearing a long list of objections, was a lawyer representing the Republic of Turkey.

The attorney, from London-based Amsterdam & Partners LLP, “has been following us around lately” trying to block the chain’s projects,Caprice Young, chief executive of Magnolia Public Schools, told the Fremont board. “He is a representative of the Turkish government who seems to believe that we are affiliated with a religious group with whom we are not affiliated.”

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Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan pinned the coup attempt that gripped the country on a self-exiled cleric living in the U.S. named Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denies any involvement. Here’s a closer look at this influential preacher. Photo: AP (Originally published July 18, 2016)

Magnolia is among hundreds of targets in a battle between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his former political ally Fethullah Gulen , a Muslim cleric with millions of global followers, who left Turkey in 1999 and lives in Pennsylvania.

Turkish officials blame Mr. Gulen for orchestrating a July 15 coup attempt. They accuse him of trying to subvert the democratically elected government via positions his sympathizers hold in the judiciary, police and academia.

Turkey has asked the U.S. to extradite Mr. Gulen on charges unrelated to the putsch. U.S. officials have said they would consider all evidence Turkey presents as part of an extradition request; privately, many senior U.S. officials said they are skeptical of Turkey’s claims against Mr. Gulen.

Mr. Gulen’s network is hard to define. His supporters run schools and foundations around the world with clear ties to him. His links to other institutions are less clear, including to U.S. schools such as Magnolia. The chain was founded by two Gulen sympathizers and counts Gulen admirers among its teachers, said its CEO, Dr. Young. She said Magnolia has no legal, financial or governance connection with him.

Robert Amsterdam, whose firm was hired by Turkey, said he has about 25 employees and consultants fanned out around the globe to prove a theory, an effort that predated the coup attempt and has gathered momentum since. Roughly 150 schools in the U.S., and hundreds of other academic institutions and businesses around the world, he claims, channel millions of dollars annually to the Gulen movement.

“This is truly a global political and criminal movement,” said Mr. Amsterdam. “In the U.S., they’re teaching 60,000 students. I don’t know how they have time to teach when they spend so much time gaming the system.”

A Turkish embassy official in Washington referred inquiries to Mr. Amsterdam.

On a recent day, Mr. Gulen sat on a gold-colored couch in a book-lined office in a former summer camp in Saylorsburg, Pa., a Pocono Mountains town. He agreed to meet and be photographed but declined to speak, citing health concerns.

Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen at his Pennsylvania compound. PHOTO: IANTHE DUGAN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

His representatives referred inquiries to Yuksel Alp Aslandogan, executive director of the Alliance for Shared Values, a nonprofit that promotes Mr. Gulen’s ideas and his “Hizmet” movement. Mr. Gulen denies involvement in the failed coup, denies trying to subvert the government and is opposed to violence, said Mr. Aslandogan. The cleric, he said, is 77 or 78 years old.

Mr. Aslandogan defended the movement, saying: “There are hundreds of businesses and NGOs within the Hizmet movement that have been legally operating around the world…and have been praised by local authorities and heads of state for their contributions to the country in which they operate.”

Some U.S. schools on Mr. Amsterdam’s hit list were founded by Gulen sympathizers but Mr. Gulen doesn’t run them, said Mr. Aslandogan, who himself helped start a school in Chicago.

‘Money laundering’

Mr. Amsterdam is aiming to tie the schools on his list to Mr. Gulen and expose what he said is a “money laundering” scheme. Some schools, he said, illegally use public funding to pay for immigration lawyers to win visas for teachers and administrators from Turkey. The schools then expect these Turkish employees to donate to the Gulenist movement, he said, and pressure them to donate to American politicians who advocate for Mr. Gulen.

The schools, he said, illustrate why Mr. Gulen should be extradited. They “give him political influence in a very big way,” he said.

Caprice Young, CEO of Magnolia Public Schools, one target of Mr. Amsterdam’s team, says the California charter-school chain was founded by sympathizers of Mr. Gulen but has no affiliation with him. PHOTO: MICHAL CZERWONKA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Mr. Aslandogan said the schools Mr. Amsterdam accuses of impropriety “are American institutions serving American children and their parents. Any illegal or unethical action by individuals who are allegedly sympathizers of the Hizmet movement would be against the movement’s core values.”

Both camps are focused on Washington, D.C., where they are enlisting lawmakers and lobbyists to argue for or against Mr. Gulen and his causes. The Alliance, which backs Mr. Gulen, hired the Podesta Group Inc., co-founded by the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s White House campaign, John Podesta, and now run by his brother,Tony Podesta.

Mr. Gulen rose to prominence in Turkey in the 1980s with his moderate Islamic teachings combining religion, democracy and science. When Mr. Erdogan rose to power in 2002, his party and Mr. Gulen shared some goals, working closely to break the military’s political monopoly and to overhaul laws they saw as discriminating against some conservative Muslims.

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When Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose to power in 2003, he promoted like-minded Islamists who were followers of a key ally, Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen. Now Erdogan says the U.S.-based cleric is a sworn enemy who he says was behind a failed military coup. Photo: Getty

Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Gulen eventually broke their alliance. The cleric accused the president of becoming dangerously authoritarian. Mr. Erdogan accused his opponent of attempting a soft coup when prosecutors and judges announced a corruption investigation against Erdogan allies. Mr. Erdogan and his allies denied the corruption allegations, and Mr. Erdogan’s government helped quash the investigation.

In December, Mr. Amsterdam helped sue Mr. Gulen in Pennsylvania federal court on behalf of a rival religious group in Turkey, claiming Mr. Gulen directed followers to carry out human-rights abuses. In June, a U.S. district judge dismissed the case, saying it was in the wrong jurisdiction. Mr. Aslandogan called the suit part of a “smear campaign.”

After the failed July putsch, Turkish authorities purged thousands of military officers, judges, prosecutors, police officers and academics over suspected Gulen ties. Mr. Erdogan is pressuring governments in Europe, Africa and Asia to shut schools founded by Gulen supporters.

Mr. Amsterdam said his team in the U.S. has been rounding up documents, filing complaints with state school administrators, interviewing students and parents and mining data on administrators and affiliates.

“We’re moving methodically from state to state. We have hit Texas, California, Ohio and Illinois. We are going to go to the Eastern Seaboard: New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and down to Florida,” he said, sitting in a New York hotel cafe on a recent day. “We’re going to do our own whistle-stop tour.”

‘We’re moving methodically from state to state,’ says Mr. Amsterdam, whose team is challenging schools he says are connected to Mr. Gulen. ‘We’re going to do our own whistle-stop tour.’ PHOTO: STEPHEN VOSS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In Texas, Mr. Amsterdam filed a complaint this summer about the Harmony Public School network to the Texas Education Agency. He alleged that the parent company of the schools hired Gulen supporters from Turkey, paid them more than other teachers and required them to donate to politicians.

The TEA said it is reviewing the complaint to determine if it should launch a formal investigation into some of the allegations, including whether the schools gave preferences to some vendors and misused state and federal funds. Harmony denied Mr. Amsterdam’s allegations and said it is cooperating with the review.

Harmony’s CEO, Dr. Soner Tarim, called the complaints “unfounded,” “ridiculous” and “frivolous.” As in many school chains on Mr. Amsterdam’s list, one of Harmony’s founders was of Turkish descent. Harmony, with 48 schools, said 197 of its 3,545 teachers are on H-1B visas. All of them are from Turkey. It has offered Turkish as a foreign language.

Mr. Amsterdam said he is preparing a complaint against Concept Schools in the Midwest, which is on his list of charter schools with ties to Mr. Gulen. A Concept spokesman said the school chain wasn’t aware of Mr. Amsterdam’s investigation and denied Gulen ties.

At Beehive Science and Technology Academy in Utah, Assistant Principal Germaine Barnes noticed the school on a list of supposedly Gulen-linked schools. The school has no ties to Mr. Gulen, she said. “We’re being unfairly portrayed and we have no control over it.”

In Massachusetts, at least three schools are on Mr. Amsterdam’s list. Among them is Pioneer Charter School of Science, which opened in 2007 near Boston. Pioneer declined to comment. Dominic Slowey, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, wrote in an email that the three schools get erroneously linked with Mr. Gulen because they have some Turkish administrators and offer Turkish as a language option. “This keeps showing up on various websites and we keep playing Whack-a-Mole with it.”

Magnolia, the charter-school chain that proposed a school in Fremont, was founded by Gulen sympathizers who were Turkish graduate students in California, said Dr. Young, the CEO. The Los Angeles-based chain of 10 schools offers Turkish language, which Dr. Young said is in demand for State Department jobs.

Dr. Young said that some of Magnolia’s teachers are Turkish-Americans who have been influenced by Mr. Gulen, that the chain’s trustees include at least two Turkish-Americans and that the school has no affiliation to the Gulen movement. In a previous job as head of the California Charter Schools Association in 2007, she said, she joined a trip with educators and community leaders to Turkey funded by the Pacifica Institute, which supports Mr. Gulen’s ideas. She isn’t a Gulen follower, she said. LIAR    http://www.pacificainstitutegulen.blogspot.com 

At the Fremont school-board meeting, Dr. Young came prepared. A month earlier, representatives of Magnolia had been blindsided by an Amsterdam attorney, John Martin, at a school-board meeting in Anaheim, Calif. In that meeting, Mr. Martin alleged Magnolia had improperly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on H-1B visas to bring in Turkish teachers and said he suspected that those teachers were being forced to send money to Gulen organizations. Dr. Young denied the allegations.

In Fremont, Dr. Young, who became CEO in 2015, wanted to show the attacks were part of a larger fight. Before Dr. Young testified to her schools’ success, an employee handed out contracts showing that Turkey was paying Mr. Amsterdam’s firm $50,000 monthly. “We don’t understand it really any better than you do,” she told the group, “but I am here and happy to respond to any of the accusations.”

Mr. Martin took the podium, saying the Magnolia chain lacked transparency, overpaid external vendors for questionable services, “practices extremely poor fiscal discipline” and was tied to Mr. Gulen.

Afterward, Dr. Young and her colleagues from Magnolia “surrounded me and asked me ‘Why are you picking on the kids?’ ” Mr. Martin said. Dr. Young said only she approached him, adding: “He is telling baldfaced lies intended to hurt the children we serve.”

The Fremont board later in January denied Magnolia’s petition to start a school. In its written decision, without mentioning Mr. Martin’s assertions or Mr. Gulen as a factor, the board said Magnolia was “unlikely to successfully implement the program presented in the petition.”

Dr. Young said Magnolia asked to withdraw its petition before the rejection because the chain determined it couldn’t find an appropriate facility. Board spokesman Brian Killgore said it acted despite the withdrawal request.

In a February complaint to the California Department of Education, Mr. Amsterdam’s firm wrote that “California should not ignore the documented evidence that Magnolia has a long history of ambiguous financial practices, numerous business dealings posing conflicts of interest, all of the markers commonly associated with Gülen Organization charter networks under investigation.”

Dr. Young said the assertions are false. Magnolia lawyers have written to Mr. Amsterdam’s firm demanding it “cease-and-desist” making “false” statements.

In June, Magnolia published a release saying more than 30 alumni, parents and children had submitted a letter to the Turkish Consul General in Los Angeles “demanding the Turkish government stop spending substantial resources on high-powered lobbyists and lawyers to spread false information about their schools in an attempt to shut them down.”

A parent, Lourdes Gonzalez, said she agreed to be quoted in the release because she was furious Turkey would meddle in an American school. “We will not allow our children to be used as pawns,” she said in the release, “in a political game taking place 7,000 miles away.”

—Margaret Coker and Devlin Barrett contributed to this article.

Write to Ianthe Jeanne Dugan at ianthe.dugan@wsj.com and Doug Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications: 
An earlier version of this article misspelled Fremont school-board spokesman Brian Killgore’s name. (Sept. 22, 2016)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/turkeys-battle-with-muslim-cleric-careens-through-u-s-classrooms-1474553432

Gulen Schools Investigation press conference Ohio 10/11/2016

Gulen Inspired-Magnolia Science Academy California

Caprice Young's unprofessional presentation at the Santa Clara County Office of Education SCCOE, embarassing piece of garbage

Caprice Young has her attorneys Dan Wood and Jerry Simmons on speed dial. Caprice is a public figure (or so she has paid expensive publicists to spin her as such) she is fair game open for criticism. Caprice Young would never win a defamation case because the burden of proof is on her to prove that all facts stated here or anywhere else are not true.
100% The Magnolia Science Academy aka Magnolia Public Schools are affiliated with members of the Gulen Movement (Hizmet) They have also taught at other Gulen affiliated schools in the USA. Caprice Young is either smoking too much Turkish hashish or she is delusional with maniac dreams of grandeur she doesn't get it. It's rumored by many of the people that have worked at Magnolia Public Schools A GULEN CHARTER SCHOOL, that Caprice Young has a yearly salary of $600K to turn around this trouble organization of liars. It would be great if Charter schools were held to the same standard of transparency as traditional public schools which reveals School superintendent salaries. How about Capricious Caprice you want to share your salary?

While you are at it, explain and give an accounting of:
Excessive amount of administrators at Magnolia Public Schools A GULEN CHARTER SCHOOL, there are 23 of which 9 are Turkic National (GULENISTS, there is barely 4,000 students enrolled at 11 campuses, it's been stagnant between 3,800 to 4,000 since 2012-2013. Although your pathetic presentation says only 3,400 students but you claim to have waiting lists despite 3 schools are grossly unsustainable under 200 students.

 What is the expenses paid to your publicist Larson Communications who is spinning you as some sort of Educational trailblazer and whitewashing Magnolia Public Schools A GULEN CHARTER SCHOOL - please give the breakdown and justify this money spent to market, advertise and public relations of having Congressman Brad Sherman give a Congressional award to a few Magnolia students (same as what the troubled Gulen School in Oklahoma did) Dove Science Academy your sister Gulen school.

 What is the legal expenses paid to have Dan Woods send threatening letters to silence your critics? or the expenses for Jerry Simmons to show up at school districts and clean your mess up? Your reputation proceeds you, 5 counties denied your 8 charter school applications, School Superintendents do not want your schools and your trouble in their districts. You are a failed system of what goes wrong in charter schools when there is no accountability. Should you follow through with your lawfare, I am sure that the media would love it and more school districts would be eager to do business with a troubled charter school known for suing everyone and spending their time sidestepping, whitewashing and not assuming accountability.

Magnolia Public Schools Materials Revision Request 4/6/2016 from Gulen Cemaat

May 4th was suppose to be the answer to the above Materials Revision request, but this is the
message on the SCCOE Agenda. Sounds like you are in hot water again.

Exactly what are these "violations" SCCOE is investigating?
I doubt if Jerry Simmons will be able to get you out of this mess.

Magnolia Science Academy, how to get awarded $6 million in bonds 4 days after closure notice?

Why High-Yield – The Untold Story of a California Charter School Bond Issue

Charter schools form a growing and lucrative part of the municipal finance landscape. As we learned recently, charter school bonds can have stories beyond those told in their offering documents.  Here is one uncovered by Bitvore for Munis.
Last month, the California School Finance Authority issued $6.02 million in bonds for the benefit of Magnolia Science Academy in Reseda, California.  The Academy is one of a dozen schools operated by Magnolia Educational and Research Foundation, a not-for-profit charter school operator. Magnolia is using the bond proceeds to purchase and upgrade the facility in which the Science Academy currently operates. Because charter schools are tuition-free, the debt will be serviced primarily from aid payments received from the State of California and the Los Angeles Unified School District in which it operates.
The BB-rated bonds pay generous coupons ranging from 5.25% to 7.00%. The school has been operating since 2002 and is virtually full, suggesting a relatively secure source of repayment. Bondholders should be fine as long as LAUSD continues to renew the school’s charter, which is next up for renewal in 2017.
Shortly after the bonds were issued, this benign scenario took a major hit – as Bitvore users recently learned. A local education news site reported that LAUSD shut down two other Magnolia schools. According to the report, the district decided to close the schools after receiving the results of an audit from its Inspector General. If two Magnolia charters in LAUSD have financial irregularities, it is reasonable to wonder whether others – including the Reseda-based Science Academy – have similar issues.
Another challenge for Magnolia is its association with the Turkish Islamic Gulen movement. Reports on 60 Minutes and elsewhere have featured accusations that Gulen-linked charter schools rake off public funds by obtaining visas for Turkish immigrant teachers and then requiring these teachers to kick back a percentage of their salaries.
The internet holds an incredible wealth of information and some of it may impact the value of your bonds. Finding that information and linking it to bonds you hold or are considering buying is the job of Bitvore.
http://bitvore.com/2014/07/why-high-yield-the-untold-story-of-a-california-charter-school-bond-issue/



$6 million in California School Finance Authority School Facility Revenue Bonds
issued on 7/1 /2014  4 days after LAUSD issued an official letter that Magnolia #6 and 7
would not be renewed.

 

 

Within a few days the Magnolia School web site is boasting about a new schools but notice the

name on the school is under Pacific Technology not "Magnolia Schools" which is Where the

money was granted.

 

 



 Learn how Accord Institute is connected to Faruk Taban and
Turkish Lobbying http://gulenpoliticians.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-gulen-boys-are-at-it-againthis-time.html