For years, Adelita Grijalva, in her role as a Tucson Unified School District governing board member, has complained about the competition brought to bear by charter schools in Arizona. Now her father, Congressman Raul Grijalva, has called for an investigation into charter schools associated with the Gülen movement.
Grijalva, Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus and former member of the Communist Party, in a letter dated November 3, to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, asked for a status report on the FBI investigation of 19 schools in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, according to FultonCounty.com. Grijalva wrote, “As a member of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, I have a particular interest in charter schools operations that are funded by public taxpayer dollars. I believe that we have an obligation to ensure that no federal funds are being misused in these schools.”
Despite the fact that the Congressman is intimately involved with the daily dealings in his daughter’s District, where he got his start in politics serving as a Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) governing board member, he wrote, “Based on past Arizona Daily Star reports, there are a number of schools in Tucson that are affiliated with the same organization overseeing these schools.”
Those Tucson schools include Sonoran Science Academy – Tucson, Sonoran Science Academy – Broadway (in Tucson), Sonoran Science Academy – Phoenix, Sonoran Science Academy – Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Sonoran Science Academy – Ahwatukee, Sonoran Science Academy – Peoria, and Paragon Science Academy in Chandler, Arizona.
Sonoran in her sights
Adelita has had the Sonoran Science Academy – Davis Monthan Air Force Base site in her sights due to the fact that TUSD’s school pipeline for base personnel has been hemorrhaging students for years. Just this month, the TUSD governing board voted to expand Borman Elementary, named after famed astronaut Colonel Frank Borman, who graduated from TUSD’s Tucson High. Borman is currently a Pre K-5 school, and the District is going to expand it to include grades 6-8, in a desperate effort to keep students from gravitating to Sonoran Science Academy – Davis Monthan Air Force Base, which serves grades 6 -12.
TUSD has experienced a tremendous decrease in students during Adelita’s tenure on the board. The exodus is due in part to the politicization of classrooms since her father served. It earned national attention when a school board meeting was taken over by radicalized students protesting the State of Arizona’s finding that its Mexican American Studies classes taught hate and created division by race.
While State officials focused their attention on TUSD, charters in Arizona are doled out like Kleenex in a classroom in December. Republican leaders have ignored the concerns raised about the Gülen schools due to their zealous support of anything charter, and the shrillness of those warning about the Gülen schools. As a result, some say you now have a situation in which ideologues are competing for students.
Gülen network has pursued its educational agenda
According to the Pew Research Center, “The Gülen network has pursued its educational agenda aggressively, building hundreds of private schools around the world. The first Gülen school in Western Europe was established in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1995. By 2009, there were more than 50 such schools in Europe, primarily in Germany.”
“The Gülen movement lacks a centralized organizational structure, describing itself as a global cemaat, or “community,” whose primary mission is to reinforce the idea that Muslims can be both modern and faithful to Islamic traditions. It is perhaps best understood as an extensive and well-coordinated network of supporters, many of whom make sizeable donations to Gülen-linked foundations.12 The group’s priorities are set by Gülen, who entrusts a relatively small group of deputies to carry out his broad plans,” reports Pew.
Diane Ravitch, who is decidedly anti-charter, but hardly liberal, has questioned the schools. In 2013, she wrote:
In June 2011, a major New York Times investigative piece about Harmony exposed an extensive array of shady business practices (see “Charter Schools Tied to Turkey Grow in Texas.”).
Articles about Fethullah Gulen have periodically appeared in US news, but nothing compares to the media attention he’s been given this past week. For instance, an April 2012 New York Times article about Fethullah Gulen contained this comment (see “Turkey Feels Sway of Reclusive Cleric in the U.S.”):
“We are troubled by the secretive nature of the Gulen movement, all the smoke and mirrors,” said a senior American official, who requested anonymity to avoid breaching diplomatic protocol. “It is clear they want influence and power. We are concerned there is a hidden agenda to challenge secular Turkey and guide the country in a more Islamic direction.”
Ravitch’s work and the work by New York Times reporter Stephanie Saul are seen, by many, to be part of an effort to undermine the highly performing Gulen schools. However, Hakan Yavuz, a Turkish professor at the University of Utah, claims the “curriculums of these schools do not have any explicitly Islamic content,” but aspire “to create an educated elite.”
In an interview with Religiouscope, Yavuz states, “The movement wants to provide a good image of Islam, not so much through indoctrination, but to teach Islam through its members setting a good example by becoming good doctors, good mathematicians, good politicians, good cooks, and so forth. Such people want to teach Islam by doing their duty properly.”
Related article: Could The Qatar Foundation Save TUSD’s Failing Magnet Schools?
Others claim, but show no proof, that the Gulen schools are associated with and funded by the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, TUSD’s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood are well-documented.
E-Rate money
Whatever the case may be, in Arizona, charter schools connected to questionable movements proliferate, and like the Gulen schools, are raking in the cash through State funding and federal funding through the E-Rate program and others.
Not everyone can get E-Rate dollars, which are intended to “to expand telecommunication and internet access.” Only recently was TUSD allowed to even apply for those funds due to past accounting irregularities.
While there have been quite a few scandals involving E-Rate dollars, Rep. Grijalva specifically cites the irregularities in Gulen schools in his letter. He writes of the Gulen schools, “… many states have launched investigations into the contracting practices of this particular network of charter schools. Most recently, a 2015 report by the California State Auditor’s office determined that after reviewing 225 vendor transactions some charter schools linked to the same organization, 23 percent of the expenses lacked “either clear authorization or sufficient support for the transactions.”
In Conclusion
It is hard to separate the actions of the Congressman from his daughter’s interests. The truth of the matter is that they are, and always will be, one and the same. This would not be the first time he used his position to strengthen hers and their shared agenda.
Some find it nearly impossible to understand Republicans’ naïve commitment charter schools, in fairness, while both the Gulen school founders and the Grijalva’s believe that schools are vehicles for social change and indoctrination, at least the Gulen schools are producing really successful students.