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School firm hired to run Philly
schools has ties to centers where 5 students died
By VALERIE RUSS
May 14, 2009
russv@phillynews.com
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. *
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