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Houston District urgedt o reconsider education deal: Ex-official blasts management of alternative schools
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By Ericka Mellon
The Houston school board must decide next month whether to continue working with the private company that runs the district's two schools for students with serious discipline problems.
The multimillion dollar decision comes at a time when Community Education Partners is suing one of its biggest critics in Houston and is on the other side of a lawsuit in Atlanta.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing CEP and the Atlanta school district, alleging the alternative school there is "a warehouse for children of color."
A federal judge dismissed four of the ACLU's six claims on Thursday.
Robert Kimball, a former Houston Independent School District administrator, has made similar complaints against CEP's alternative schools here — prompting the company to file a defamation suit against him in late May.
"I believe it's frivolous," Kimball said, "and it's trying to gag me prior to the renewal of their contract."
Since 1997, when HISD began outsourcing its disciplinary education program, it has paid CEP about $158 million, according to data from the district. That includes $18 million last school year.
Randle Richardson, the chief executive of CEP, which is based in Nashville, Tenn., defended his program's success with problem children who are behind academically and said Kimball has cost his company time and money. The lawsuit does not seek a specific dollar amount.
'False allegations'
"The lawsuit is about false allegations he made about CEP on a repeated basis," Richardson said Friday. "The interference of business relations is him sending letters to the superintendent and board asking that the contract be canceled."
Kimball said his attorney and CEP's counsel were in settlement talks last week.
CEP will operate 20 schools in Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia in the coming year. The Dallas Independent School District dropped CEP in 2002, with then-Superintendent Mike Moses criticizing the program as too costly and ineffective.
Kimball began targeting CEP a few years ago, arguing that most students enrolled in the Houston program later dropped out of school. Of the 180 students he studied in 2004, Kimball said that 90 percent were no longer in HISD, and only 1 percent graduated.
CEP disputes Kimball's findings, saying an outside firm determined that 35 percent were enrolled in HISD and 5 percent had graduated. Nearly all the other students, it found, were enrolled elsewhere, while about 15 percent had withdrawn from school or could not be located.
Kimball is the former assistant principal at Sharpstown High School who raised questions about the campus reporting zero student dropouts in the 2001-02 academic year. A follow-up investigation by the Texas Education Agency found that HISD had miscounted about 3,000 dropouts districtwide.
Deadline approaching
Kimball later filed a whistle-blower lawsuit, which HISD settled for $90,000.
HISD must notify CEP by Aug. 15 if it wants to ends its relationship after this coming school year, according to the contract. The company's current pact automatically extends a year if the district takes no action.
Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra, who was out of the office this week, did not respond to questions about CEP's effectiveness or whether he would ask the board to continue contracting with the company.
Mary Almendarez, an education activist in Houston, said she hopes district officials take concerns about CEP seriously.
"We really think HISD should take a closer look and study what the ACLU is claiming (in Atlanta). Is it happening here?" said Almendarez, a local officer of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Standing by research
Almendarez said she has faith in Kimball's research. In 2007, Almendarez wrote CEP's Richardson a letter criticizing the program and returned a $1,000 check his company had donated to her LULAC council's scholarship fund.
Rose Chratain, a union representative for teachers at the CEP schools in Houston, praised the program here and also had kind words for the Atlanta school, which she visited in March.
"The classrooms are very orderly. Teachers are up doing direct instruction. Students are participating and asking questions," said Chratain, of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
But Larry Schwartztol, an attorney for the ACLU, described the Atlanta school as one where teachers sat at desks but did not teach and students did not learn. He said he is concerned about the CEP campuses nationwide, though he has not visited the Houston schools.
"As we've developed this case," he said, "we've been keenly aware of the fact that CEP is operating nationally."
— Ericka Mellon
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5885136.html
2008-07-12
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