“Harmony schools causing discord.” San Antonio Express-News (TX), 1/4/2012
The 36 schools that make up the Harmony charter school network are among the highest-rated in Texas.But despite its glowing academic record, Harmony has received a flurry of criticism for its business practices.In particular, the charter network's reliance on visas for Turkish-born staff and use of Turkish-owned businesses for construction and other contracts has raised questions about how it spends taxpayer money and whether it is too insular...Some Harmony critics point to a burgeoning number of Turkish-American-led charter networks in the United States, more than 120 in 25 states, that they say are tied to Islamic political leader Fethullah Gulen...From 2008 to 2010, the Labor Department certified 1,197 H-1B visa requests from the Cosmos Foundation — more than double the number of visas certified nationwide for Texas-based computer company Dell USA and about 70 percent as many as were certified for tech giant Apple Inc...Harmony has about 290 employees working on H-1B visas, or 16 percent of its workforce, according to Superintendent Soner Tarim. Most are Turkish, said Tarim, who is also from Turkey...“Staffing Northside schools has never really been a problem,” said Pascual Gonzalez, spokesman for Bexar County's largest school district with 97,000 students, where Labor Department records show no H-1B visa certifications in recent years. “In the past there have been thousands of people applying for hundreds of jobs.”...At Harmony, Tarim said the charter network finds a shortage of qualified teachers in math, science and English as a second language sometimes prompts them to hire foreign workers...Nearly a third of the H-1B certifications received by Cosmos actually were for jobs outside those fields, however.Labor Department data includes visa certifications for legal counsel, accountants, assistant principals, public relations coordinators and teachers of art, English and history...Some students say they have trouble understanding foreign-born teachers...Tarim bristled at the implication that the charter network was giving much of its work to a closed circle of Turkish-owned businesses...But in recent years, eight of the charter network's 10 largest contracts have gone to just two companies, both of which have close ties to Cosmos: the Houston-based contracting firms Solidarity Contracting and TDM Contracting.Solidarity is run by a former Harmony school business manager, according to a report by the New York Times. TDM was formed a couple of years ago by a former Solidarity employee...Together, the two young companies have received more than $66 million in Cosmos contracts since 2009, records show. The total doesn't include cost overruns or smaller jobs they might have been awarded...In response to an open records request, Cosmos provided no criteria used to rank the five firms or information about how such criteria was weighted, saying simply that the contract was awarded to the lowest bidder...Some of Harmony's harshest critics point to somewhat opaque connections between the charter operator and Gulen, a charismatic religious leader from Turkey who espouses religious tolerance and a moderate brand of Islam from his self-imposed Pennsylvania exile.Tarim laughed a little when asked about the relationship between Harmony and Gulen, which he said is nonexistent...The Cosmos Foundation also provides management services to other charter networks.Tarim said Cosmos consults with the School of Science and Technology, a small San Antonio-based charter network run by a nonprofit called the Riverwalk Education Foundation...Though Cosmos and Riverwalk have separate boards, others referenced a closer tie between the two organizations, referring to their campuses as “sister” schools...... the TEA has spent the past several months conducting an audit of roughly $540,000 in “inadequately documented” federal grant funds received by the Cosmos Foundation, TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.
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