Many great articles and facts about Woodland Preparatory and Alabama Education by Larry Lee
Some great examples of his educational reporting in Alabama
Woodland Preparatory doing things the wrong way
My last post was about University charter school on the campus of the University of West Alabama. As I wrote about the methodical approach they took to building public support, about the $350,000 they had pledged to the school before they applied to the state for approval and about the success they have achieved so far, it was impossible not to compare this undertaking to the to the unmitigated mess that has taken place with Woodland Prep in Washington County.
There is simply no comparison. One is daylight, the other is dark.
Nor could I take my mind off the fact that in the eyes of the state charter school commission, these two efforts are considered as equals.
So let’s make some comparisons:
The initial impetus for University charter came from the board of trustees of the University of West Alabama. They challenged university president Ken Tucker to search out alternatives to a woeful local school system. However, it was a completely different story with Woodland Prep where a wife sought revenge because her husband was dismissed from the county school system for inappropriate behavior.
There was not an outcry of parents upset with their local schools. The county system was rated a B. Of the seven schools in the system, three are graded as B, four are C. There is not a private school in the county. (There had been one years ago, but it went out of business.)
University charter had an existing building they could move into. Woodland Prep did not. They had to build one. (Their application said this would be built on donated property. But truth is, someone paid $92,000 for 12 acres, which my sources say is about double what it was worth.)
University charter had an abundance of education “infrastructure” at their disposal. Woodland Prep had none. Fact is that University charter is in one end of a building that houses the dean of UWA’s College of Education in the other end. So University charter did not have to seek out someone to tell them what is needed to run a school.. But those trying to start Woodland Prep were totally in the dark as to what they needed to do. They were just as dependent on outside “experts” as they would have been had they been trying to start a hospital.
(And the “expert” they hired, Soner Tarim of Sugarland, TX, is so suspect that the Texas state board of education turned him down in June when he wanted to open four charter schools in Austin.)
If there has been a groundswell of support for Woodland Prep, I haven’t been able to find it. In fact, they have had trouble getting people to join their board and remain on it. On the flip side of this coin, there has been a tremendous amount of opposition to this charter from the local community. Some 200 people showed up in Chatom on April 29 at a community meeting in opposition to the charter, 60 people rode a charter bus to Montgomery on May 9 to attend a state school board meeting and meet with legislators and at least 100 locals stood on the courthouse house lawn on August 2 when AEA announced they were suing Woodland Prep’s board and Soner Tarim for fraud because of misinformation in the charter application submitted to the state.
This is in stark contrast to community response to University charter, where enrollment climbed by more than 100 students between the first year of operation and the current school year.
As to local fund-raising, if Woodland Prep has been successful, it is a closely-guarded secret. In fact, one of the reasons the National Association of Charter School Authorizers said their application to open should be denied was their lack of demonstrated fund-raising capacity.
The NACSA says in its review: “…no information is provided about its fundraising track record. This is a concern, as the applicant’s plans include raising $500,000 to launch the school and secure its facility.”
On the other hand, University charter had $350,000 when they applied to the state.
Daylight and dark. Though some have tried to claim that since both Sumter County and Washington County are both very rural, these two situations should be viewed as comparable. Such a claim is beyond bogus.
And again, how the state’s appointed state charter school commission can ignore the obvious and green light both of these applications is beyond comprehension.
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| You should talk Soner Tarim aka Pinochhio |
Soner Tarim is the Muslim from Sugarland, TX whose company, Unity School Services, has management contracts with Woodland Prep charter in Washington County and LEAD Academy charter in Montgomery.
No doubt he sings the praises of all things Alabama when he shows up here trying to figure out how he can put together a business deal. But he sang a very different tune when he went before the Texas folks May 23 who approve charter applications in the Lone Star state. He wants to open eight new charters in Texas.
He was in Austin last week to make his pitch for these schools. He was questioned about his work for Woodland Prep, in particular why the National Association of Charter School Authorizers said the application should not be approved. His response was classic. He told the Texas folks that NACSA does not know what it is doing and does not know how to grade an application, in spite of the fact they have reviewed 500 charter applications in the last 10 years. Then he went on to say that the Alabama charter commission also did not know how to review applications until he taught them.
You can check out his comments on this tape of the Texas meeting. Comments about NACSA and the Alabama charter commission are at 36 minutes on the tape.
So if he is to be believed, he basically wrote the application for Woodland Prep–and then directed how it was graded. Dog gone, had I known you could get away with this, I would have graduated with highest honors from Auburn University years ago.
Then at the 62 minute mark you can listen to him once again use fake math proficiency numbers to blast Washington County schools. Of course, he just throws out numbers without giving their source. As we posted a few days ago, his numbers are no where close to agreeing with proficiency numbers for Washington County on the state department of education’s web site.
Tarim goes on to imply that he is just a missionary called to Alabama to save rednecks who have no appreciation for good schools and great education (which for a sizeable fee, he will be more than happy to give them).
All the more incredible is that while Tarim is in Texas telling folks how incompetent the Alabama charter commission is, this same board is bashing Washington County at their meeting, also on May 23, and defending Tarim at every turn.
As we say in Red Level, he is playing our charter commission like a fiddle.
Editor’s note: Just to rub salt in the wound, Tarim’s wife, Nancy J. Li, recently sent out a tweet that U.S. News & World Report ranked Alabama the second worst state. It’s one thing if I announce to the world that my baby is ugly, but don’t you dare tell me that. And we have people in this state who want to do business with folks who are this condescending? Have they lost their mind?
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| Soner Tarim cannot ever come close to the love and respect Alabama people have for their teachers and community |
Fruitdale: a lesson from rural Alabama
A Charlatan arrives Soner Tarim
Sweet Jesus. It was hot, like really, really hot. But what do you expect on an August afternoon in the middle of a football field just 90 miles from the Gulf of Mexico?
I was there to watch the 2019 version of the Fruitdale Pirates practice. Fruitdale is one of five high schools in Washington County. It’s a 1A school, the smallest classification in Alabama high school sports. There are dozens and dozens of such schools across the state, places where Dollar General coming to town is a big deal. (Fruitdale recently opened one.)
Places where community and school are joined at the hip. Take away the school and you’ve jerked the heart from the community.
This August afternoon coach Johnny Carpenter was getting his 32 players ready for their first game against A. L. Johnson of Marengo County. Carpenter grew up just down the road in Citronelle, played football at Mississippi State and met a cheerleader in college who later became both his wife and an M.D. This is his first year as a head coach.
When you coach at this level, you do it all. From teaching class, to cooking ribs for a fund-raiser, to lining the field, to selling signs to merchants to help pay the bills and to actually coaching. His staff is another teacher/coach, John Hobbs. Former player Michael Dubose is a volunteer coach.
There was a pep rally before the first game. Elementary, middle and high school students sweated and yelled. Cheerleaders cheered. Players were introduced. Later that afternoon, fifth grade boys went home and ran around their yard with a football dreaming of the day they could be a Pirate scoring touchdowns and making tackles. Fourth grade girls jumped and pumped their arms and yelled for their team.
I know about dreams and memories. Fifty-nine years ago this fall number 83 of the Theodore Bobcats scored the only touchdown of his high school football career. Quarterback Charles Bryant threw a short pass to his left end, a 160 pound farm boy, standing in the end zone. That touchdown catch will always be mine. No one can take it away from me.
More than anything, that is what Fruitdale is all about. A small school in a small place where dreams are realized and memories are made.
What once was
There was once a time when Fruitdale was bustling. A time before cars were common and interstates unheard of. A time before the internet and hand-held devices shrunk the world. A place where farmers came to town on a wagon pulled by mules and merchants were busy on Saturdays.
Just over 100 years ago Fruitdale was home to three hotels, two sawmills, a cannery, a bakery, a bank, drugstore, post office and even The Fruitdale Herald. It had a telephone system and shipped boxcars of peaches, pears, persimmons, melons, vegetable and strawberries north on the Mobile & Ohio railroad.
Even before this the Fruitdale Seminary proclaimed to one and all that education was important in the community. The red brick high school still in use, complete with hardwood floors and wainscoting on the walls, was built in 1904, the same year as the Union Chapel Methodist church.
But time waits for no one.
The hotels and sawmills are gone. Just as they are in communities I know well like Repton and Mckenzie and Red Level. Places where empty buildings stand as silent sentinels to what once was.
But the school is still in Fruithdale. As is Union Chapel Methodist.
A proud graduate
I met Aimee Rainey in 2008 when she was principal at Calcedever elementary in north Mobile County and I was involved in a research effort we called Lessons Learned from Rural Schools. She had a great school, in spite of the fact it was probably in the poorest physical facility I have ever seen called a school. Aimee was impressive and one knew she would not be a principal the rest of her life.
Today she is Dr. Aimee Rainey, an assistant superintendent in the Vestavia city school system on the south side of Birmingham. On my first visit to Fruitdale high school I found her picture on the wall with the class of 1992. She was Aimee Turner then. This was before she went to the University of Southern Mississippi and then to graduate school.
Aimee’s family has close ties to this school. Her mother and grandmother went to Fruitdale. Her great grandmother worked there. A first cousin and aunt teach there now. Her mother drove a school bus.
“I am incredibility thankful for being raised in a small community and going to a small school,” she says. “We had the opportunity to do everything.” Aimee was a cheerleader, in the band and played softball. She marched with the band in her cheerleader outfit.
“Growing up in a small community surrounded by a large, close family is one of the best blessings of my life. My core values were developed by wise, hard-working and loving souls,” Aimee says.
A charlatan arrives
Soner Tarim does not know Aimee Rainy or coach Johnny Carpenter or Fruitdale principal Curt Stagner. Nor does he know anything about Fruitdale high school, its roots and its relationships. Nor does he care. While this charter school consultant proclaims he only wants to help children in struggling schools, his six bedroom, four bath mansion in a toney Houston suburb tells us something else.
His real mission is making money.
Tarim is the consultant hired by the board of the proposed Woodland Prep charter school in Washington County. The same guy now being sued for fraud by the Alabama Education Association. The same guy the Texas state board of education told in June that he could not open four charter schools in Austin. The same guy who says he wrote the application for Woodland Prep charter school that the National Association of Charter School Authorizers recommended not be approved.
The same guy engineering a school that will potentially take $2.2 million from the Washington County public school system and do irreparable harm to the capacity of Fruitdale and other county schools to meet their needs.
I am a realist. I know that rural Alabama has been being hollowed out for at least a century by forces that are as certain as the tide coming in. Circumstances have forced school closings time and time again. This will not stop.
But we darn sure don’t need to be hastening this process with policies handed down by Montgomery bureaucrats and lawmakers and carried out by mercenaries like Soner Tarim. Washington County needs a charter school about as much as cotton needed the boll weevil.
Instead, we should value the words of people like Aimee Rainy and the dreams of yet-to-be quarterbacks and cheerleaders. We should take to heart the lessons Fruitdale has taught us for more than 100 years. We should cling to our small communities and their schools, not sacrifice them because someone wants to make a few bucks.
Editor’s note: Fruitdale won its first game of the season on Aug. 23 by the score of 53-0. It was only their second win in the last three years. Quarterback Dalon Hill scored two touchdowns. If he is fortunate enough to be around in 59 years, he will still remember them.
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