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Islamist charter schools being questioned in Texas (video)

Posted on July 18, 2011
by creepingsharia

We told you that Obama’s Islamist envoy and some Texas school principals visited Turkey recently, reportedly to learn more about the Turkish school system.

The fruits of those visits are coming to light already.

The Gulen schools are already under investigation by the FBI.

via Turkish programs grow in Austin schools, funded by groups tied to charter network

The expansion of after-school Turkish language and culture programs at three Austin public schools has turned into the latest chapter of a long-running campaign from conservative groups critical of Harmony Public Schools, Texas’ largest charter operator.

The new programs are a partnership between Austin Independent School District and the Raindrop Foundation, a Turkish cultural group that has paid for trips for trips to Turkey for Texas policy makers over the last few years.

…

In early June, the New York Times included the Raindrop Foundation in a story about ties between Turkish-run charter schools like Harmony, inluding, the Times reported, that “the Raindrop Foundation’s president, Mehmet Okumus, is a former Harmony school principal, and some of the foundation’s income — $770,000 a year, he said — comes through arrangements with the schools.”

Some lawmakers expressed concern about religious ties between Harmony and the foundations that organize the trips.

“Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, said he believes there are connections between the Turquoise Council, the Harmony Schools and the promotion of Islam,” the Statesman reported last month. “As for the Harmony Schools, Miller said, ‘Apparently it’s (involved in) indoctrination of Islam.’ … Although Turkey is a moderate Muslim nation, Miller said: ‘That just means they’re nonviolent. They won’t cut off your head.’”

Harmony’s superintendent Soner Tarim has long denied the connections to Gülen, or any religious instruction at the schools, and will likely find himself issuing those denials directly to lawmakers in an upcoming investigation of Texas’ charters and whether they play favorites in awarding construction contracts, as the Times story suggested was the case at Harmony. (Tarim has denied that too.)

Members of the House General Investigating & Ethics Committee have declined to comment on the investigation’s timing or its scope, and a Harmony spokeswoman said Wednesday they’ve heard nothing more.

That NYT article linked above is worth the read:

TDM Contracting was only a month old when it won its first job, an $8.2 million contract to build the Harmony School of Innovation, a publicly financed charter school that opened last fall in San Antonio.

It was one of six big charter school contracts TDM and another upstart company have shared since January 2009, a total of $50 million in construction business. Other companies scrambling for work in a poor economy wondered: How had they qualified for such big jobs so fast?

The secret lay in the meteoric rise and financial clout of the Cosmos Foundation, a charter school operator founded a decade ago by a group of professors and businessmen from Turkey. Operating under the name Harmony Schools, Cosmos has moved quickly to become the largest charter school operator in Texas, with 33 schools receiving more than $100 million a year in taxpayer funds.

While educating schoolchildren across Texas, the group has also nurtured a close-knit network of businesses and organizations run by Turkish immigrants. The businesses include not just big contractors like TDM but also a growing assemblage of smaller vendors selling school lunches, uniforms, after-school programs, Web design, teacher training and even special education assessments.

Some of the schools’ operators and founders, and many of their suppliers, are followers of Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish preacher of a moderate brand of Islam whose devotees have built a worldwide religious, social and nationalistic movement in his name. Gulen followers have been involved in starting similar schools around the country — there are about 120 in all, mostly in urban centers in 25 states, one of the largest collections of charter schools in America.

The growth of these “Turkish schools,” as they are often called, has come with a measure of backlash, not all of it untainted by xenophobia. Nationwide, the primary focus of complaints has been on hundreds of teachers and administrators imported from Turkey: in Ohio and Illinois, the federal Department of Labor is investigating union accusations that the schools have abused a special visa program in bringing in their expatriate employees.

But an examination by The New York Times of the Harmony Schools in Texas casts light on a different area: the way they spend public money. And it raises questions about whether, ultimately, the schools are using taxpayer dollars to benefit the Gulen movement — by giving business to Gulen followers, or through financial arrangements with local foundations that promote Gulen teachings and Turkish culture.

Or Islamic “culture.” Read it all and contact your elected officials.

This video from Stakelbeck on Terror has more on Gulen.

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