GateWay district ties in jeopardy Fresno-based charter school,
under investigation, misses documents deadline.
By Anne Dudley Ellis
The Fresno Bee
(Published Saturday, January, 5, 2002 5:21AM)
Fresno Unified School District officials are expected to recommend severing connections with GateWay Academy, a Fresno-based charter school that is being investigated by various law enforcement agencies and the state superintendent of public instruction. GateWay, which has four sites in Fresno and seven others up and down the state, failed to meet a Friday deadline to turn over a detailed accounting of its 2000-01 spending. Fresno Unified has been particularly concerned that the school appears to be $1.3 million in the red.(funding terrorist activities ???)
Fresno Unified governing board President Michael O'Hare said the trustees could vote on revoking GateWay's charter at their Jan. 16 meeting.
"They're basically upside down by 50% of their total budget," said Fresno Unified spokeswoman Jill Marmolejo.
"We've seen good teaching, that students are engaged and that there is parent involvement, but on the operational end of the schools, related to financial reporting, health and safety issues and actual student achievement, we have concerns in all those areas."
GateWay Superintendent Khadijah Ghafur could not be reached to comment. A woman who answered the phone at the school Friday said Ghafur was out of town.(someone check the airports)
Marmolejo said the district rejected GateWay's request for an extension until Jan. 15.
Should the school have its charter revoked by Fresno Unified, it could apply to another school district, an official from the state Department of Education said.
GateWay, the state's fastest growing charter school system, has an enrollment of about 620 students at sites from the Bay Area to Southern California. It began attracting statewide attention because one of its sites is located in Baladullah, a Muslim community in the Tulare County foothills, about 60 miles east of Fresno.
There have been media reports that authorities are investigating connections between Baladullah and a terrorist organization.
Concerns raised
In August, a man who had lived briefly in Baladullah was arrested and charged with fatally shooting a Fresno County sheriff's deputy.
Baladullah, because of its Muslim residents, is suffering an intense backlash from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Ghafur has said. She also has said that the school did nothing wrong and that questions about its finances are a "misunderstanding."(then why did you miss the deadline to account for your missing $1 million dollars, and straighten out this misunderstanding???)
Marilyn Shepherd, who assumed oversight of Fresno Unified's charter schools department in the fall, has been concerned about GateWay, and some of the district's other charter schools, for a couple months.
The district at that time began updating records on its 10 charter schools, making sure they were operating within state guidelines and had provided Fresno Unified with necessary documentation.
Charter schools, approved by the state Legislature in 1992, are independent campuses established by parents, teachers or others interested in developing alternative forms of education.
They are publicly funded based on enrollment, receiving about the same amount of per-student funding as regular schools. (the diferrence is they fund terrorists as opposed to teaching kids)
They are exempt from much of the state Education Code, but they are still required to teach to state curriculum standards, administer state-mandated testing and steer clear of religious-based teaching.
Unclear roles
Charter schools must have their charters -- a blueprint for their operation -- approved by a local public school district. But the chartering school district's oversight role has been murky, as has the oversight role of the state Department of Education.
Should the Fresno Unified board cut its ties with GateWay, it would be the first charter to be revoked in the district. Statewide, 14 charters have been revoked since 1992, an official at the state Department of Education said.
Shepherd's office also is expected to recommend the revocation process for two other charter schools, Fresno Prep Academy and Renaissance Charter School. They also did not meet a Jan. 4 deadline to provide required financial documents, Marmolejo said.
But the district is most concerned with GateWay, Marmolejo said.
"The other charters that have not turned in their audited reports are not in the same financial situation," Marmolejo said.
"Our big concern is that [GateWay] is $1.3 million in the hole. Given the funding they receive, it's very difficult to make that up. That's a really tough thing to overcome.
"They absolutely have to have a plan to address that, and that's what we haven't seen."
The district's concerns include:
Two loans totaling more than $1.5 million from Delta Public Finance of Sacramento, a private investment firm.
The more than $806,000 the school spent on capital outlay in the last school year. Such expenditures, usually for items such as desks and chairs, were unusually large for a school of GateWay's enrollment, the district said.
Money spent on salaries. The amount for classified administrators -- $253,000 -- "seems like a big number," Marmolejo said.
The reporter can be reached at aellis@fresnobee.com or 441-6328.
It looks like this Baladullah Charter School is up against the ropes, and about to collapse.
And, it is good to hear that the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies are really checking this place out.
About a month ago, a reporter doing research for 60 Minutes contacted me. She thought that I might have some "inside" information. She said they were going to do a story on the Al Fuqra organization, and there various compounds across the USA, and their terrorist connections. I am not aware if they have actually ran that story yet or not, since I never watch that show.
This is the power of the internet and Free Republic. Thanks to people like you, the truth not the PC spin of the local newspaper and lefties gets dragged out in the light of truth! The leftist mediots can't spike the reality of what happened and eventually the story gets legs!
When this is over, I predict that this is just the tip of the iceberg of a very dangerous exampleof Jihad in America!