Education firm linked to Fattah's son lays off all its teachers, administrators
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ALSO ON PHILLY.COM
Without warning, Delaware Valley High School - a for-profit education firm whose records were recently subpoenaed by a federal grand jury - has laid off all 50 teaching and administrative employees at the four alternative schools it operates in the region.
Staffers said lawyer David T. Shulick, whose company operates the schools, owes them each thousands of dollars for work during the 2011-12 academic year. They had been expecting back pay last week but got furlough notices instead.
In late February, the FBI raided Shulick's Logan Square law office, searching for documents related to Delaware Valley's relationship with Chaka "Chip" Fattah Jr., 29, whose father is U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Philadelphia Democrat. They also interviewed Shulick.
Delaware Valley had paid 10 percent of its $4.5 million contract with the Philadelphia School District for the 2010-2011 school year to 259 Strategies L.L.C., a minority firm owned by Fattah Jr., who had an office in Shulick's law firm. After firing Fattah Jr. last summer, Shulick rehired him in December but did not renew his subcontract.
Shulick, reached by phone, declined to comment on the layoffs and hung up. Fattah Jr. has not commented on his involvement with the school.
Federal authorities are investigating whether political influence helped Delaware Valley obtain contracts, according to sources, and whether Fattah Jr.'s involvement shielded the school from deeper cuts amid the Philadelphia district's widening financial woes.
The layoff letters sent to teachers were dated July 1 but not received until Tuesday.
The letters said the layoffs were necessary because Delaware Valley did not yet have a signed, one-year contract extension with the Philadelphia district to run a disciplinary school and program for at-risk students for 2012-13.
It is due to receive $3.6 million from the district to operate its disciplinary school on Kelly Drive in the fall for 300 students and an accelerated program in Southwest Philadelphia for 200 teenagers and young adults who have dropped out of school or are at risk of doing so.
Spokesman Fernando Gallard said the district was still working on the contract extensions for alternative-education providers that the School Reform Commission approved in June.
Gallard said the district would take the reported layoffs at Delaware Valley into consideration.
He said the district was up to date on its payments to Delaware Valley. The district sent Shulick's company $345,000 on July 6 and is scheduled to send the final check of the $4.1 million for the 2011-12 academic year at the end of the month.
"We are fully up to date," Gallard said.
Staffers said the sweeping furlough included not just teachers and staff in Philadelphia, but also at campuses in Warminster and Pottstown that serve students from districts in Bucks, Montgomery and Berks Counties.
"It is the entire company," said one stunned staffer, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals.
A few teachers who said they had reached Shulick by phone said he had threatened to sue anyone who disclosed the furloughs for violating the confidentialty terms in their contracts.
Teachers said they were not only worried about their jobs and being able to pay bills, but also apprehensive about what will happen to their students.
"These students need extra help," one instructor said.
Although the furlough letters contained no signature other than "DVHS," teachers accused Shulick of engineering them. Those getting notices included site administrators and the company's top officials - Mattie Thompson, chief academic officer; and Andre Bean, chief operating officer.
Bean and Thompson were furloughed even though the school sent letters to the districts it serves saying the two would soon gain enhanced authority, according to knowledgable sources.
The letters, the sources said, reported that Shulick was resigning as Delaware Valley's president July 1 and would no longer be involved in the school's operations. Bean would become chief executive, and Thompson would become chief operating officer, the letters said.
But Shulick still controls everything, including the furloughs, the sources said.
"Last summer, he did this only to those who refused to come back," one classroom teacher said. "This time, he seems to have done it to everyone."
Under the terms of their one-year contracts, instructors are paid over 12 months for teaching during the 10-month school year.
Three former teachers who were laid off last summer after working at the Kelly Drive site in 2010-11 have a suit pending against Shulick and his firm that alleges they are owed a total of nearly $20,000 in back pay.
Delaware Valley's school district contract shows teachers receive salaries of $45,000 plus benefits. But current and former teachers said the school pays $36,000 if they waive their benefits, $31,000 if they want them.
The letters said the school had been working with the Philadelphia district "to affirm their payment obligations and our contract" for the 2012-13 school year.
"However, until that situation is resolved, DVHS to immediately put your employment on furlough under the terms of our contract with you until we get such affirmation.
"Your last day of work was June 15, 2012. Your final paycheck was issued on June 30, 2012 . . .
"However, there is hope. Please understand that we are doing everything in our power to resolve the situations and we would like nothing more than to contact our Staff, and so notify them about the future. However, we are not in a position to do that at this juncture, but hope to be shortly."
Angry and upset staffers complained that there was no one they could turn to for help.
The offices of the four campuses have been been shuttered, and campus phone numbers were removed from the letterhead on the furlough letters. The only number shown is for the company's headquarters at Shulick's law offices, but when teachers called, they said law firm employees told them the firm had no ties with the school.
Staffers said lawyer David T. Shulick, whose company operates the schools, owes them each thousands of dollars for work during the 2011-12 academic year. They had been expecting back pay last week but got furlough notices instead.
In late February, the FBI raided Shulick's Logan Square law office, searching for documents related to Delaware Valley's relationship with Chaka "Chip" Fattah Jr., 29, whose father is U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Philadelphia Democrat. They also interviewed Shulick.
Delaware Valley had paid 10 percent of its $4.5 million contract with the Philadelphia School District for the 2010-2011 school year to 259 Strategies L.L.C., a minority firm owned by Fattah Jr., who had an office in Shulick's law firm. After firing Fattah Jr. last summer, Shulick rehired him in December but did not renew his subcontract.
Shulick, reached by phone, declined to comment on the layoffs and hung up. Fattah Jr. has not commented on his involvement with the school.
Federal authorities are investigating whether political influence helped Delaware Valley obtain contracts, according to sources, and whether Fattah Jr.'s involvement shielded the school from deeper cuts amid the Philadelphia district's widening financial woes.
The layoff letters sent to teachers were dated July 1 but not received until Tuesday.
The letters said the layoffs were necessary because Delaware Valley did not yet have a signed, one-year contract extension with the Philadelphia district to run a disciplinary school and program for at-risk students for 2012-13.
It is due to receive $3.6 million from the district to operate its disciplinary school on Kelly Drive in the fall for 300 students and an accelerated program in Southwest Philadelphia for 200 teenagers and young adults who have dropped out of school or are at risk of doing so.
Spokesman Fernando Gallard said the district was still working on the contract extensions for alternative-education providers that the School Reform Commission approved in June.
Gallard said the district would take the reported layoffs at Delaware Valley into consideration.
He said the district was up to date on its payments to Delaware Valley. The district sent Shulick's company $345,000 on July 6 and is scheduled to send the final check of the $4.1 million for the 2011-12 academic year at the end of the month.
"We are fully up to date," Gallard said.
Staffers said the sweeping furlough included not just teachers and staff in Philadelphia, but also at campuses in Warminster and Pottstown that serve students from districts in Bucks, Montgomery and Berks Counties.
"It is the entire company," said one stunned staffer, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals.
A few teachers who said they had reached Shulick by phone said he had threatened to sue anyone who disclosed the furloughs for violating the confidentialty terms in their contracts.
Teachers said they were not only worried about their jobs and being able to pay bills, but also apprehensive about what will happen to their students.
"These students need extra help," one instructor said.
Although the furlough letters contained no signature other than "DVHS," teachers accused Shulick of engineering them. Those getting notices included site administrators and the company's top officials - Mattie Thompson, chief academic officer; and Andre Bean, chief operating officer.
Bean and Thompson were furloughed even though the school sent letters to the districts it serves saying the two would soon gain enhanced authority, according to knowledgable sources.
The letters, the sources said, reported that Shulick was resigning as Delaware Valley's president July 1 and would no longer be involved in the school's operations. Bean would become chief executive, and Thompson would become chief operating officer, the letters said.
But Shulick still controls everything, including the furloughs, the sources said.
"Last summer, he did this only to those who refused to come back," one classroom teacher said. "This time, he seems to have done it to everyone."
Under the terms of their one-year contracts, instructors are paid over 12 months for teaching during the 10-month school year.
Three former teachers who were laid off last summer after working at the Kelly Drive site in 2010-11 have a suit pending against Shulick and his firm that alleges they are owed a total of nearly $20,000 in back pay.
Delaware Valley's school district contract shows teachers receive salaries of $45,000 plus benefits. But current and former teachers said the school pays $36,000 if they waive their benefits, $31,000 if they want them.
The letters said the school had been working with the Philadelphia district "to affirm their payment obligations and our contract" for the 2012-13 school year.
"However, until that situation is resolved, DVHS to immediately put your employment on furlough under the terms of our contract with you until we get such affirmation.
"Your last day of work was June 15, 2012. Your final paycheck was issued on June 30, 2012 . . .
"However, there is hope. Please understand that we are doing everything in our power to resolve the situations and we would like nothing more than to contact our Staff, and so notify them about the future. However, we are not in a position to do that at this juncture, but hope to be shortly."
Angry and upset staffers complained that there was no one they could turn to for help.
The offices of the four campuses have been been shuttered, and campus phone numbers were removed from the letterhead on the furlough letters. The only number shown is for the company's headquarters at Shulick's law offices, but when teachers called, they said law firm employees told them the firm had no ties with the school.
42 comments:
June 16, 2008 BCCT article:
Roadblock to drastic changes
Continuing their investigation into ways to reduce costs in Morrisville School District, Bill Hellmann and Al Radosti met with a Delaware Valley High School representative Tuesday afternoon.
She arrived at Hellmann’s West Bridge Street office just as a reporter and I were leaving it. We’d spent 90 minutes with Hellmann, Radosti and board member Bill Farrell, who agreed to share their rationale for proposing drastic changes to the financially strapped school system.
How drastic? They seem to have given up hope of any merger with neighboring Pennsbury. So, by September 2009, some board members hope to have closed at least one grade school, maybe two, and consolidated all grades in the middle/senior high school building. That is unless, by then they’ve been able to tuition highschoolers out at substantial reductions in cost per student. In that case, the current high school building would hold just K-8.
DVH is best known for educating at-risk kids, but President Dave Shulick has said it is accredited and experienced in regular education. Although Shulick has expressed interest in privatizing Morrisville High, Hellmann maintains he met with DVH this time to learn more about how alternative schools work. I have trouble buying that, but he’s insistent.
As for changes, Hellmann acknowledges the high school would need renovations to accommodate new grades, but that’s the least of obstacles.
The roadblock to consolidation and severe cost-cutting is a 5-year teacher contract that prevents furloughs or any substantial change to the student-staff ratio until 2012. Morrisville’s student-staff ratio stands at12.3 to 1, which doesn’t always give a true picture of class size, but does dictate the number of professionals who must stay on the rolls. There are 71 teachers, 1 psychologist, 3 guidance counselors and a nurse and two gifted/instructional support aides for fewer than 1,000 kids.
Hellmann said savings realized by farming out high-schoolers could be used to reduce teaching ranks. “Maybe retirement incentives,” Hellmann said.
He conceded Morrisville, under the direction of Superintendent Beth Yonson, is successfully educating children in its elementary schools, but says the high school has become a last resort for kids failed by the Trenton school system across the river. They move into Morrisville at very low reading and math levels. “We can’t be the special education center for Bucks and Mercer counties,” he laments.
Radosti, whose gruff way of expressing his unfiltered thoughts about kids today, changes in society and Morrisville’s proximity to the Trenton school system has won few friends among more liberalminded residents, says he’s weary of being accused of being racist and anti-education just because he wants to cut costs so people his age can keep their homes. He raises his voice two decibels to explain to me just how weary.
A Morrisville grad and a retired police officer, he worked two and three jobs to send a son to Notre Dame High School and a daughter to Grey Nun Academy. In each case, because he feared Morrisville classrooms were too disruptive. Nothing like the school system he enjoyed years before them. Don’t tell him he doesn’t value education.
Hellmann sent all but one of his kids to Conwell-Egan Catholic. He has approached CEC about a tuition program for Morrisville.
Neither man pretends to have any warm and fuzzy emotional ties to a school system they say is a drain on its townspeople. It’s a problem, Hellmann says.
It looks like he’s working to be rid of it — and soon.
Imagine if we had farmed out the kids. We would be up the proverbial creek without a canoe!
This just goes to show how wrongheaded and foolish SOC is.
We did send alternative school students there. Are we still doing that? If so, they're up the creek with no canoe.
Bill My Emperor, can I go to the meeting too? I want this farm out as much as you do. You know you can make me we and that I'll never never ever ever be responsible for any child because I am a school board member.
Stand back Marlys, let the menfolk handle this. You understand!
So I guess "for profit" schooling gets a "fail"?
It looks like this farm may really be out ......of business.
Handle kids the way Bain Capital handles private equity. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It's only kids and families and communities caught in the middle, so what's the big deal?
How many students do we currently have attending DVHS? What happens to them? I guess they have to be placed elsewhere before the school year starts?
Extensive background on prior Morrisville Farming efforts can be found here. A real eye opener.
http://savethemorrisvilleschool.blogspot.com/search/label/farming
"So I guess "for profit" schooling gets a "fail"?"
Failure University. F.U. for short.
there's a problem & more understanding is surfacing about the exact nature of the actual problem that's why no one is saying too much because the majority is just now realizing how where and why we are faced with the problems we have we are not unique the same problems are happening all over the nation we have power driven greed mongers that sit in higher places they control and decide what will be our future the people are getting angry and they are acting out in some places because they have finally had it surface and they know nothing can be done they are listening with their whole being not just their ears and their egos they know the truth it has reached their core we are down here and we are going to have to figure it out and we should stop fighting over the left overs and crumbs it will only get worse listen to the honest experts and strap on your battle fatigue and prepare for the final round GOT JESUS?!?He gives wisdom strength and victory to all who call out to Him thats all we need
LOVE He fills the empty with promise & abundant LIFE
Oh GOD. Not again!
Since the BIG GUY [THANK GOD!] doesn't need a press agent and Jesus Christ has not arisen to become the Morrisville School Board Solicitor let's admit that the SOCs were small minded fearmongers who bullied a small school district when it most needed responsible leadership and led us all to fiscal destruction.
I've not seen Hellman or Ruthrauff since the election. Radosti made his first appearance last week hoping for his pals to appoint him to the board. Seen plenty of Mihok. She acts like she's still in charge of something.
I suppose we should get down on our knees and thank SOC for not being able or willing to follow through with a farm out to DVHS.
Hellman has set his bad behavior towards the borough these days. Ya know threatening everybody, badmouthing some & not paying his bills. Same behavior, different day. He's very busy controlling the controller who, it would seem, cannot do his own job without Daddy.
Oh joy. What a creep.
Hellman's apparently not concerned about the hundreds of thousands of dollars in avoidable lawsuit money he was directly involved in with the school board.
PDE was supposed to rule on the Tech School lawsuit last September. 10 months later, has anyone heard anything?
DVHS = poster child for the downside of privitization
Are Hellman & Jr. still improperly taking documents out of Boro Hall without authorization???
'Hellman's apparently not concerned about the hundreds of thousands of dollars in avoidable lawsuit money he was directly involved in with the school board.'
Think of it as SOC's own personal garbage bill valentine to the taxpayers of Morrisville.
Where's Bob Evans when you need him?
No surprise that some folks seem to feel no shame in this town. If they did, they'd have moved on long ago. Instead they just keep peddling the same crap, and unfortunately, enough people keep buying it.
from that 6/16/08 bcct article
'So, by September 2009, some board members hope to have closed at least one grade school, maybe two, ...'
Historical point of record --- Hopes achieved. Reiter's furnace exploded 12/13/08.
SOC Central Command hates y'alls guts for bring these things up to light.
The truth hurts. Wouldn't you love to see a legitimate SOC rebuttal? Lashing out in a 3 month old thread doesn't qualify.
"The truth hurts. Wouldn't you love to see a legitimate SOC rebuttal?"
Legitimate and SOC don't belong together in a sentence.
"Legitimate and SOC don't belong together in a sentence."
Are SOCs born with their heads legitimately stuck up their asses or is there a special ceremony involved?
If there is a ceremony you can be sure it's not only secret, it's at Worob's house. I just THANK GOD I haven't been invited and never will be. I'm not that misguided ..... or limber.
"Are SOCs born with their heads legitimately stuck up their asses or is there a special ceremony involved?"
See? Somebody always has to prove me wrong!
You weren't wrong, you were absolutely right.One way or the other, their heads are up there. Any ceremony is merely pomp and circumstance.
Like a proud music that draws men on to die
Madly upon the spears in martial ecstasy,
A measure that sets heaven in all their veins
And iron in their hands.
I hear the Nation march
Beneath her ensign as an eagle's wing;
O'er shield and sheeted targe
The banners of my faith most gaily swing;
Moving to victory with solemn noise,
With worship and with conquest, and the voice of myriads.
Now let's get this ceremony over as quick as possible.Just cooperate and stick your heads up your butts. You understand? Any new bidness? Any old business? Adjourned.
You have to take roll call first!!
There's something fishy about this whole situation. For Shulick to furlough 100% of the staff AND step down, it seems there must be more to the story. I suppose time will tell.
I am especially thankful now that we did not hitch our wagon to DVHS [and sell the schools, as was being rumored] or else we'd really be SOL. I realize we utilized DVHS for some students, and it is unfortunately that their education is being disrupted, but there are other alternative schools that can handle those students, if this doesn't get straightened out.
Fishy is right. I think an orange jumpsuit fitting could be in his future.
Can you put up a new post? This guy's teeth are starting to scare me!
No worries. Shulick has a good lawyer. http://lawyers.legalhelpmate.com/PA-Lawyer-David-Shulick-580846.aspx
I know somebody who represented themself in court. It turned out really well. For the other guy.
Ouch!
Brother, can you spare 1,200,000 dimes?
Has anybody seen a single follow up article on DVHS? I haven't.
No but here's a ridiculous earlier article:
http://abovethelaw.com/2012/02/lawsuit-of-the-day-nightmare-vacation-for-rich-honkeys/
Hey Jon, this thread is getting tired. We need a new one.
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