Chicago Sun-Times: Lawyers for Turkey call for probe of Chicago charter school

01.24.2017

Lawyers for the government of Turkey filed a complaint Tuesday with the Chicago Public Schools’ inspector general against a local charter group and its taxpayer-funded school in Rogers Park.

The complaint alleges Des Plaines-based Concept Schools and its Chicago Math and Science Academy engage in “sweetheart deals” that hurt local taxpayers — but benefit the global movement led by Turkish-born cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in a bitter struggle with the 75-year-old Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and has ties to charter-management firms that run about 150 schools across the country, including CMSA and three other publicly funded Concept campuses in Chicago.

The attorneys for Erdogan’s government, led by Washington, D.C.-based lawyer Robert Amsterdam, have filed similar complaints with education officials in three other states in recent months.

In 2011, New Plan Learning used money from a bond issue to buy the North Side school building from CMSA, add a gym and expand three schools in Ohio.

Under the deal, CMSA was on the hook to pay about $40 million in rent to New Plan Learning, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.

The newspaper also revealed in 2013 that the CMSA board treasurer at the time of the bond issue, Edip Pektas, was paid $100,000 by New Plan Learning as a financial adviser on the deal.

The lawyers for Turkey say the lease deal for the school building outlined “extremely poor terms for CMSA” and was renegotiated “for worse terms” a couple of years ago.

They also allege CMSA’s $1 million gym has “multiple leaks in its roof, cracks in its foundation, rodent problems, sanitary issue and flooring that peeled upward due to an improperly installed bleacher system.”

Read the full article here.