Jean Rimbach

Staff Writer, @jeanrimbach

Linden sent truant officers to check petitions submitted by the Union Arts and Science Charter School

The truant officers said they found discrepancies with many of the names and addresses listed on the petitions

Linden sent its findings to the state education department, which reaffirmed its decision to approve the application

Two petitions had street addresses that don't exist within the city limits.

Another listed a vacant lot.

And yet another bore the name and address of a resident who said she had never seen the document, much less signed it.

All of these – and more – were found on petitions supporting the creation of a charter school in Union County, one in a growing group of publicly funded charters that has its roots in New Jersey’s Turkish community.

Documents show this and other evidence were submitted to the New Jersey Education Department last year by Linden public school officials who were then – and still are today – alleging fraud in the proposal for the Union Arts and Science Charter School.

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The state, which under Gov. Chris Christie’s leadership has looked to expand the charter school movement, approved the application and, after the allegations landed in Trenton, reaffirmed its decision.

The state official who contacted the firm behind the new charter about Linden’s claims now has an executive job with that firm.

The charter school is actively recruiting students in anticipation of opening in the new school year.

Linden district officials, meanwhile, have claimed in letters and a lengthy affidavit that an overwhelming number of the petitions purportedly signed by city residents in support of the Union Arts and Science Charter School were bogus, “either forged or were completely fictitious.”

In many cases when attendance officers – including a retired city policeman – knocked on doors, residents simply said they didn’t know the person who had signed the petition.

“They would say that’s my address, but I’ve lived here for the last so many years and nobody by that name lives here,” said John Horre, a district attendance officer who served three decades on the Linden police force.

In fact, in a spot-check of the petitions, The Record and NorthJersey.com found one was signed with the name and address of a woman who a widely used commercial database shows died in 2007; the forms were submitted to the state in October 2015 as part of the charter’s initial application.

The revelations come on the heels of an investigation by The Record and NorthJersey.com that raised questions about charter school oversight and showed how a growing group of schools that receive tens of millions of dollars in public funding have some leaders and founders with ties to the movement of a controversial Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen.

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A spokesman for the state Education Department said Linden’s “comments” were “reviewed” and the decision to approve the charter school application “was confirmed.”

A spokeswoman for the nonprofit management organization behind the charter – Elmwood Park-based iLearn Schools Inc. – said that when the state inquired about Linden’s claims, CEO Nihat Guvercin responded that the school has “no control” over what was written on the petitions by those who completed the forms, which were submitted “in good faith.”

“He had no reason whatsoever to believe the information petitioners shared was anything but valid,” said Dawn Fantasia, iLearn’s chief communications officer, in an email. “As such, these documents were submitted in good faith to support the opening of a public charter school.”

Linden school officials, meanwhile, contend that what they call falsified and fraudulent documents are reason enough for the state to rescind its approval for the charter to go forward. The school, slated to open in September at a former Catholic school in the city, has been accepting applications and holding open houses; state officials say a decision on the final granting of its charter is expected in the summer.

“I believe that it was clearly fraud. If its initial application was based on fraudulent documents, then I believe that should be enough to disestablish this charter school,” said Linden Superintendent of Schools Danny A. Robertozzi, adding: “I believe there’s shady business going on with this particular charter school application, and I think that if there’s shady business going on here, that there was other shady business going on in their other applications.”

State approval

The Union charter will be the fifth in the iLearn chain, and it is expected in its first year to serve as many as 240 students from Linden and Elizabethin kindergarten through grade two. In correspondence with the state, both districts took issue with other aspects of the application, including raising questions about the founders and the board of trustees and the degree of community interest. Three of five founders – including a former Bergen County sheriff – are either paid by iLearn or charters it runs.

Among the state Education Department officials who were sent information from Linden in 2016 about problems with the petitions in the Union charter application was the director of the state’s charter school office, Harold Lee – who is now iLearn’s chief strategy officer.

Lee and his team reviewed all charter applications, including the Union charter, and the office recommended its approval to then-Commissioner David Hespe, Fantasia said. When the allegations from Linden arrived in Trenton, it was Lee who contacted Guvercin to obtain a response and he subsequently reported the information to the education commissioner, Fantasia confirmed after speaking with Lee.

The state gave the initial go-ahead to the Union charter in February 2016, a letter from Hespe to Guvercin shows. All charter school applications are approved solely by the commissioner of education, a state spokesman has said.

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Lee left his state job in July and he recused himself on all matters affecting iLearn schools in May 2016, when discussions regarding his possible employment with iLearn occurred. Union’s charter application was approved Feb. 29, 2016, the same date that is on Linden’s initial letter to the state. The letter to the state from Linden was within the 60-day public comment period.

“To me, either it wasn’t read or they didn’t care,” Robertozzi said. “I don’t believe they did anything. I mean, they really didn’t have to do an investigation; if they just looked at what we sent them, they would clearly see that there was fraud, and how they could still approve that application after seeing that is beyond me.”

Among the findings Linden included in letters to the state:

The name and signature on one petition was Charles White. At the address given, a David Charles White said he never uses his middle name as his first and “adamantly denied ever previously seeing the document or signing it.”

A woman named Aida Rodriguez verified her name and address as written but “stated she had never previously seen the petition and the signature contained on the document was not hers.”

At an Exeter Road home, the owner said he and his wife live at the address, but Sam Carter, who signed the petition, does not. The man “denied having any knowledge of Mr. Carter.”

The name “Stacy Rice” is on a petition with a Rosewood Avenue address. There is only a Rosewood Terrace in Linden, where the homeowner said “that Stacy Rice did not live at that address and denied having any knowledge of Ms. Rice.”

Residents of Union Street and Carolina Avenue said they had lived at the addresses for more than two decades, and the people named on the petitions hadn’t lived there in that time.

The street numbers written on two petitions with Hussa Street addresses do not exist within the geographic boundaries of the city of Linden.

Money issues

Charter schools and traditional public schools have an uneasy relationship. Money follows students to the charter, which operate independent of the local school board. Some see charters as a drain on the regular public schools, others view them as an opportunity for choice and innovation.

Christie is a charter school proponent, and he has tried to loosen regulations on the schools and give them more flexibility.

Linden officials concede they only started taking a close look at the charter proposal last year after they received the second phase of its application in January and learned the district’s $118 million budget would take a seven-figure hit. Kathleen Gaylord, Linden’s business administrator, said the most recent numbers from Trenton show the district needs to set aside $2.88 million for charter school children – which she said could mean a loss of 50 staff jobs.

Charter school applicants are asked to provide details about the role of parents, families and the community in the application process and, “if possible, provide evidence of support among parents, students, teachers, or any combination thereof.”

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To that end, 60 individual petitions were attached to the initial application; most were from Linden, five from Elizabeth and others from neighboring Rahway and Roselle. The forms are in English and Spanish and indicate the signer is advocating for the charter to open and would consider sending their child “to a new charter school.” There is a space for a name, address and signature.

“A large number of families with children attending Linden and Elizabeth public schools have expressed their desire for a better alternative to traditional public education,” the application reads.

It goes on to say many parents were involved in the planning and development of the school, and “it is because of the great interest of these families that this charter proposal is being submitted.”

The petitions caught the eye of Linden school officials.

“We did a cursory review of some of the addresses, looked in our student database system and things didn’t look right to us,” Robertozzi said.

There were no Linden public school students at the majority of the addresses on the forms, he said. At the addresses where there were Linden students, school officials said the names did not correspond to those on the petitions.

Linden’s investigation

Two attendance officers were then asked to conduct a more thorough investigation:

Horre, the former city police officer, said the first thing he noticed was “the handwriting.”

“It looked like – not all of them – but a lot of them were written by the same person,” he said.

He observed, too, that addresses on the petitions in many cases were slightly off; they might say "street" instead of "terrace" or "avenue" instead of "street." Others eliminated the direction – such as north or south.

“You don’t make that mistake with your own address,” he said.

Marla Fekete, the former attendance officer who went door to door with Horre, said some people grew angry or concerned when they were shown the petition. She recalled a young woman with a baby who said. “That’s me. I live here, but that’s not my signature.”

“She was nervous because somebody’s impersonating her,” said Fekete, who has since retired after 19 years with the district.

Over and over, Fekete said, residents and longtime homeowners said, “I’ve never heard of this person.”

“There were different names, wrong addresses. It was just, like, bogus,” she added.

Fekete and Horre checked names on mailboxes, talked to neighbors and landlords, and in some cases researched property records. At one address there was a vacant lot; at another, an empty house that has since been razed.

Initially, they visited 24 of the addresses on the Linden petitions and found 19 of them to be false for a host of reasons. They were able to verify the information in the other five under what district officials called “dubious” circumstances: some were older or elderly women with no school-age children while others had no children eligible to attend the charter. All said they had signed it at the behest of their pastor.

The charter’s initial application called for it to open in the St. Elizabeth school building in Linden; the district said it has since leased that building. The charter is now expected to open in the former St. Theresa school building.

After the first letter to the state, the two attendance officers visited 15 more addresses, many with similar results. The district sent those findings to the state in March, and Hespe wrote back about a month later to say the charter school application had been confirmed.

Late last year, the district sent the information to Hespe’s replacement, acting commissoner Kimberly Harrington.

Fantasia, iLearn’s spokewoman, said the petitions were collected by iLearn employees and founders and “original, unaltered documents” were scanned for submission with the charter application.

The Record spoke with four of five founders listed on the application, and none said they had a role in gathering the petitions.

Despite any concerns over the petitions, Fantasia maintained that data gathered from iLearn’s research of school performance, demographics, and community outreach in Linden and Elizabeth supported a need for public school choice. She wrote that it “demonstrated a willingness of parents, students, and community members to support the school.”

She said that outreach included multiple open houses, and distribution of petitions at local houses of worship, businesses and libraries. Social media, mailers and print advertisements also played a role.

Fantasia said she is unaware of any “large-scale effort or opposition” to the opening of the charter school in the past year by residents of either community.

“The greater community, including families, has been supportive,” she said in an email. “Additionally, if Union ASCS does not demonstrate demand through sufficient enrollment numbers, the charter school cannot open.”