Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > CEDU / Brown Schools and derivatives / clones

Brien N. Gardiner/Todd Bock - ring a bell ?

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Oscar:
Just some random news from Philadelphia:

School firm hired to run Philly schools has ties to centers where 5 students died, Philadelphia Daily News, May 14 2009

Brien Gardiner, charter-school pioneer under federal investigation, commits suicide, Philly.com, May 14 2009

Anonymous:
The brown school legacy contiunes......

Ursus:
Copying out those articles for posterity's sake, here's the first one (the second one will be the post immediately following):

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Posted on Thu, May. 14, 2009
School firm hired to run Philly schools has ties to centers where 5 students died

By VALERIE RUSS
Philadelphia Daily News
russv@phillynews.com 215-854-5987

PHILADELPHIA School District officials are reviewing the background of a company with $13.1 million in contracts to run three alternative schools, after a city councilman raised concerns about the firm's ties to treatment centers at which five students died.

The company, Camelot Schools of Pennsylvania, also had ties to Brien N. Gardiner, founder of the Philadelphia Academy Charter School, who had been under federal investigation when he committed suicide yesterday.

On Tuesday, during budget hearings at City Hall, Councilman James Kenney asked the district to reconsider renewing its contracts with Camelot Schools, saying that he had heard reports that the firm was managed by some of the same executives who once ran problem-plagued centers for troubled children.

Five students at those centers died after being physically restrained, according to a Texas teachers' union official.

"When you're talking about issues related to child safety, I just want them to make sure they look under every rock," Kenney said yesterday.

In 2000, a 9-year-old Nevada boy died of a heart attack a day after he was held facedown by employees at the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, in San Antonio, Texas, for throwing a temper tantrum, the San Antonio Express-News reported at the time.

Laurel Ridge was run by the Brown Schools, a now-defunct company that operated 11 treatment centers in several states for children with emotional and behavioral problems, according to Gayle Fallon, a top official of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

Camelot Schools has contracts worth $13.1 million to run the Excel Academy, an alternative school for "over-age" high school students on Bustleton Avenue, near Harbison, in the Northeast; and two disciplinary schools, Daniel Boone, at 26th and Jefferson streets, Strawberry Mansion, and Shallcross, at Woodhaven Road near Knights, in the Far Northeast.

Todd Bock, Camelot senior vice president for education services, said yesterday that he and others had been officers of both firms, but adamantly denied that his firm was the latest incarnation of Brown Schools, which went bankrupt in 2005.

"Camelot Schools is not Brown Schools," Bock said yesterday. "That's like the difference between IBM and Apple. They never have been affiliated.

"Whoever is putting that piece of information out clearly does not have the facts correct . . .

"We've been a partner with the School District of Philadelphia for over five years, we have an impeccable reputation in the city . . . and we went through a competitive-bid process just like other nationally recognized [firms]."

Asked if any Camelot officials also had run the Brown Schools, Bock said that he had worked for Brown Schools in Houston for five years and that John Harcourt, president of Camelot Schools, had been chief executive officer for Brown Schools.

Camelot Schools got its first contracts with the school district in 2004-05 to operate the Boone School and Excel Academy, Bock said. It won a contract to operate Camelot at Shallcross for the 2005-06 year, he said.

A federal probe into Gardiner's financial dealings found that he had helped Camelot Schools win its first contracts in Philadelphia in 2004.

Gardiner was not paid to help Camelot get that contract, the Inquirer reported last year. After it won the contract, Camelot paid Gardiner's consulting firm, Charter School Development Associates, a $108,000-a-year consulting fee, the newspaper reported.

Yesterday, before news of Gardiner's suicide, Bock told the Daily News that he took issue with any implication that Gardiner had smoothed the way for Camelot Schools to do business in Philadelphia.

"I wouldn't say that he helped us get a contract," Bock said.

The Inquirer article - published on May 14, 2008 - quoted Bock as saying: "The arrangement was, 'If you can help us negotiate with the school district and get us in front of the right people to pitch our program, we will enter this contract with you to provide services to Camelot.' "

Yesterday, Cecilia Cummings, a spokeswoman for the school district, told the Daily News in a statement that the district "is investigating the allegations raised against Camelot Schools that were first brought to our attention by City Councilman At-Large James Kenney during the May 12th City Council hearing. We take these allegations very seriously and will conduct an uncompromised review."

From 1999 to 2005, dozens of allegations against Brown Schools, including fraud, and physical and sexual abuse of students, were reported in several newspapers in Florida and Texas.

In 2001, Matt Leary, director of a Brown Schools residential center in Beverly Hills, Fla., was arrested for failing to report child abuse.

One Brown Schools case was profiled on the television show "Dateline NBC" in July 2005:

In 2002, Chase Moody, 17, died after he was restrained by counselors at the On Track wilderness program run by Brown Schools near Austin, Texas.

The program said that Chase was the fifth child to die of a prone-type restraint at a Brown facility and the 16th to die from such a restraint in Texas since 1988.

Although Texas regulators alleged that an improper restraint was used at the program, a grand jury later concluded that no criminal charges were warranted, the program said. But within weeks of Chase's death, Texas officials cancelled the lease with On Track, and Brown Schools closed its campsite program.

Moody and his ex-wife accepted a settlement from the Brown Schools.

Ironically, the newscast noted, Chase Moody's father, Charles, had been an attorney for the Brown Schools, defending it against a lawsuit brought by a woman named Judy Chandler, whose son, Brandon, 16, died in 1988 while in the care of a Brown Schools facility in Austin.

But that case never went before a jury. After seven years of legal maneuvers and skyrocketing legal bills, Chandler agreed to a settlement from the Brown Schools, which never admitted fault in her son's death.

After Moody's son died in the wilderness program run by Brown, Judy Chandler wrote Moody a letter saying how sorry she was for his son's death. *

Ursus:
Posted on Thu, May. 14, 2009
Brien Gardiner, charter-school pioneer under federal investigation, commits suicide

By MENSAH M. DEAN
Philadelphia Daily News
deanm@phillynews.com 215-854-5949


Brien Gardiner, seen at an '07 School Reform Commission meeting, reportedly shot himself to death at a SEPTA station.

BRIEN N. GARDINER, the former darling of Philadelphia's charter-school movement who fell from grace amid a financial scandal, shot himself to death yesterday afternoon in the parking lot of a SEPTA regional-rail station, police in Montgomery County said last night.

"There was a suicide, and there is going to be a press release [today] at 8:30 a.m.," Sgt. Scott Smith, of the Lower Moreland Township police, said.

Lower Moreland Chief Pete Hasson confirmed that Gardiner died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound shortly before 1:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Bethayres train station.

The embattled Gardiner, 63, was the subject of an active federal probe related to his management of Philadelphia Academy Charter School, the Northeast Philly school he founded in 1999.

The kindergarten through 12th grade school - with its lower grades located on Roosevelt Boulevard and its high school on Tomlinson Road - won quick praise from parents and school officials for its special-education instruction and strong state test scores.

Paul Vallas, former district chief executive officer, often cited Gardiner and his school as shining examples in the city's growing charter-school community.

"Paul respected him and thought very highly of him," said Joe Lyons, a district spokesman from 2004 to 2005. "Brien had a high school that was successful, and Paul liked that.

"I didn't really work with Brien, but I knew him by reputation, and his reputation was good," added Lyons, communications director for the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School.

"Definitely a tragic situation," Lawrence Jones, president of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools, said of Gardiner's passing.

"When I came into the charter-school movement, he was one of the first people that I met," said Jones, who is also chief executive officer of the Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School. "Everybody knew him.

"He was a pioneer and a contributor, especially in the early years of the charter-school movement," Jones said.

In 2005, Gardiner opened a second school, Northwood Academy Charter, on Castor Avenue, and served as its first chief executive.

Last year allegations surfaced that Gardiner, of Huntingdon Valley, was giving jobs to relatives and was using his schools to enrich himself through various business arrangements.

The feds and Jack Downs, the district's inspector general, are investigating the allegations.

Gardiner, who was no longer employed by either school, had not been charged with any crime.

One year ago today, the Inquirer reported that Gardiner had a $108,000-a-year consulting agreement with Camelot Schools of Pennsylvania, which has a multimillion-dollar contract with the district to operate three schools.

That fee was in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars that Gardiner had collected from companies tied to Philadelphia Academy Charter School, the paper reported.

Last year, Philadelphia Academy's board complied with a host of conditions made by the School Reform Commission last year that were meant to prevent the type of financial and management issues that led to Gardiner's ouster.

Charter schools are approved by local school districts, which fund them, but are operated as independent schools. That independence is part of what has helped the city's charter-school community to grow from four schools in 1997 to 63 schools today. Six new charters have been approved to open in September.

A small but growing number of the schools, however, have become entangled in scandals of their operators' making. In addition to Gardiner's situation, the most serious to date are those at Germantown Settlement Charter and Renaissance Charter.

The district cited both schools for numerous financial and academic infractions, and has been given permission from the state to shut them down by the end of next month. This will mark the first time that the district will have shut down charter schools.

Jones said that he did not want to speculate as to whether Gardiner's suicide was prompted by the investigation.

"At this point in time this has nothing to do with the charter-school community," he said.

"I don't think any of us will ever know why someone would take this drastic, violent step. My only concern is with his family." *

Ursus:
And one more...

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Posted on Thu, May. 14, 2009
Autopsy awaited in school founder's death

By the Inquirer Staff

An autopsy is pending on the body of Brien N. Gardiner the charter-school founder who evidently took his own life yesterday afternoon, Lower Moreland Township police said this morning.

Police released few new details about the death of Gardner, 63, who was under federal investigation, saying only that his body was found in a grassy area near the Bethayres train station and that he had died from a gunshot to the head.

It was not disclosed whether he had left a suicide note.

Gardiner founded the Philadelphia Academy Charter School a decade ago and also opened the Northwood Academy Charter School in 2005. At one time he was chief executive of both charters.

He later became a consultant at Philadelphia Academy. He lost that contract last spring after the Inquirer disclosed that the Philadelphia School District's inspector general was investigating allegations of financial mismanagement, nepotism, and conflicts of interest.

A federal criminal investigation of Gardiner and of former chief executive officer Kevin M. O'Shea, who had replaced Gardiner as the head of the school, began last spring.

Sources say indictments were imminent.

In July, an internal report to the school's board by former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer and other attorneys alleged that Gardiner and O'Shea had systematically looted the school.

It said that more than $700,000 was missing from a school account and cited "substantial evidence of wrongdoing" by Gardiner, a former public school principal who founded the popular charter in Northeast Philadelphia, and O'Shea, a former police officer.

Lawrence Jones, head of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools, said Gardiner had contributed to the lives of countless public and charter-school children.

"This is a real tragedy," said David Hardy, chief executive officer of the Boys Latin of Philadelphia charter school. "I hope that people can remember the great things he did."

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