Posted on 01/22/2002 9:13:03 AM PST by Saundra Duffy
Welcome to California where the Muslims were given tax payer money to set up a sort of underground charter school system and establish a sort of enclave or compound where the community could separate itself from us California taxpayers. Fresno Unified School District last week revoked the charter for this suspicious Muslim charter school system. Here's the article from the SF Chronicle:
School's charter revoked Fresno operation has Bay Area satellites
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, January 17, 2002 The Fresno Unified School District board voted unanimously to revoke Gateway Academy's charter after finding that the school had $1.3 million in debt, teachers without credentials, employees without criminal background checks and falsified attendance records.
In a letter to Fresno Unified, Gateway Superintendent Khadijah Ghafur described the efforts to revoke the charter as "alarmist, post-Sept. 11 response." Gateway attorney Akil K. Secret threatened to take the matter to court.
But school board members said the charter's management was so bad, two teachers whose backgrounds were not checked were convicted felons working at one of Gateway's satellite campuses in Oakland. Another employee in Fresno without a background check was recently arrested on kidnapping charges, officials said.
The vote means that 620 students now must return to regular public schools or finish up the school year with independent study.
A Chronicle visit last month to one satellite campus, the Silicon Valley Academy in Sunnyvale, found children studying the Koran and parents paying tuition. Schools receiving taxpayer funds are prohibited from teaching religion or collecting tuition. Gateway severed ties with the school one day after a reporter inquired about the practices at the Sunnyvale campus.
The charter, started in 2000 by members of a secluded Muslim community in the Sierra foothills, began quietly adding satellite campuses as far away as Pomona. The rapid proliferation caught Fresno Unified off guard, and created an acrimonious relationship because Fresno became saddled with oversight of schools hundreds of miles away. Gateway leaders, said Fresno spokeswoman Jill Marmolejo, were reluctant to let the district know what was going on in their classrooms.
Under a law enacted in 1992, charter schools provide an alternative to traditional public schools by allowing founders to hire their own teachers and design their own curriculum. They receive state funds of about $4,600 per pupil, but must comply with the same health, safety and nonsectarian regulations as public schools.
Law enforcement from Fresno police, sheriff's office and the FBI began investigating Gateway's finances and operations in November.
Questions about religious instruction at Silicon Valley Academy prompted a threat from state schools chief Delaine Eastin to withhold public funds from Gateway, and a meeting between Fresno officials and the State Board of Education to explain the situation.
According to the district's recently completed 600-page compliance review, the situation is:
-- More than half of Gateway's 162 employees have not had Department of Justice background checks. Two employees of the former Institute of Human Excellence in Oakland were convicted felons. One was convicted for repeatedly carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.
-- None of Gateway's campuses has a fire permit.
-- Gateway failed to turn in financial audits, despite asking Fresno Unified for a $630,000 loan.
-- Gateway has repeatedly failed to provide requests for information about salaries, contractors, meeting agendas or an explanation as to why it bought a residential duplex with no apparent educational purpose.
-- Four of the Gateway schools, including Blackhouse Learning Center in Oakland, were in violation of state law because they were operating as an independent study where students pick up schoolwork and schedule meetings with their teacher. The state Education Code bars charters from creating independent-study schools outside the county or neighboring counties where the original charter was granted.
Gateway severed ties in December with those four schools as well, following a Chronicle reporter's questions.
Secret, the Gateway attorney, held a news conference Tuesday asking for more time to clear up the problems. Every point could be fixed, he said.
Employees lacking background checks have been placed on administrative leave, he said, and sites yet to meet fire-safety requirements will be closed temporarily.
E-mail Meredith May at mmay@sfchronicle.com.
Sadly no, not when the lemmings continue to vote to increase the government more and more with each passing year.
Most of us wouldn't consider it scary if a well-established Christian denomination were doing it. We would of course have questions about accounting practices, and the hiring of criminals . . .
It is always scary to have people of seriously different culture to deal with and to need to trust. Always. That is what makes the First Amendment is so radical. And the framers did call the Constitution an experiment. Established churches/mosques were all that were known, basically, outside of America. The Confederate constitution was explicitly Christian is its orientation, and would have been no barrier to discriminating against Moslems. For that matter, the Mormons made the trek to Utah to escape persecution in the settled parts of the US.
Secular liberals tend to treat Christians with the same suspicion that Christians tend to treat Moslems. That is because--not despite but because--they know that this society came from a Christian/Jewish worldview. They desire to transcend that "limitation"--and view efforts to strengthen Judeochristian culture in America with alarm. Christians and orthodox Jews, OTOH, understand (naturally, to different degrees and in differing ways) that the effort to "transcend" God is idolatry and hubris--that our culture not only came from but is based on Judeochristian principle.
911 was an attack on the 1st Amendment conceit that people of all religions can cooperate in peaceful society. It is understandable that people accultured to established religion might find the 1st Amendment to express an objectionable principle. Not only Islamicists but militant secularists (accultured to established atheism) manifest that response, tho the secularist gives it lip service while turning its plain meaning on its head.
This is clearly racism on the part of the school board. Don't they know that felonious activity and kidnapping were approved by The Prophet?
How unforunate for the brainwashed Holy Jihad sheeples.
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