The Delaware State Board of Education renewed the charter of Family Foundations Academy at their board meeting on March 19th. The school is under a probation clause for six months, and they must give paperwork to the Charter School Office at the Delaware Department of Education each month for half a year. EastSide Charter essentially took over the school after Sean Moore and Dr. Tennell Brewington were terminated for stealing over $90,000 from one of the school’s accounts earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the famous education blogger Diane Ravitch picked up on the original story about Moore and Brewington yesterday. Delaware doesn’t come up often on her blog, but she covers education on a national level. Her blog gets 25,000 to 100,000 readers on a daily basis, so a lot of people read about FFA yesterday! She did refer to Moore and Brewington as co-founders, but Moore came on the scene later. To read the full Ravitchization of Family Foundations, please go here: http://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/21/delaware-charter-founders-fired-for-alleged-misuse-of-public-money/comment-page-1/#comment-2301018
The Season Of Myths 
The State Board did not renew their charter on March 19th. The charter was renewed in January and they were placed on formal review. The Formal Review was completed and the Board acted on remedial actions for the charter. The action taken was to place the charter on probation for a term of 6 months with specific conditions outlined in the motion acted upon.
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Dee, you really do crack me up! If they didn’t have their formal review approved, their charter would have been revoked, right? So in essence, because the formal review was lifted, their charter can continue. Same result, right? 🙂
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Kevin, this is one of those situations where you really could have avoided looking like an idiot by checking your facts in advance.
If the State Board had not voted to assent, formal review would have expired, with no consequences for FFA. Under the law, Formal Review is just that – a review – that may or may not result in remedial action against the school. The vote at the end of formal review is a vote on whatever outcome the DOE has decided upon – in this case, probation with conditions. A school doesn’t close just because the State Board does not assent to the DOE’s decision.
In this case, since FFA would have gotten away scot-free if the State Board had denied assent, your headline is just plain wrong.
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Yeah, keep using your temporary internet address that expires in 10-15 minutes “Betty”. Bottom line is FFA did get away scot-free. If you think it was just Brewington and Moore doing stuff there, you are sadly mistaken. And yes, the State Board and Murphy did save this school, in more ways than one Let’s keep them open because Eastside jumped in and saved the day. Doesn’t take away the years of abuse some of these students and teachers had. Bottom line, if the State Board and the DOE did their job much earlier, none of this would have happened. If Eastside hadn’t come in when they did, this school would have most likely been toast, and we all know it.
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Kev-O, My Man!!! Easy does it. I don’t know who Betty is, but believe me, Brewington and Moore were THE only two fuckups at the school.
Those people who were doing a lot of bitchin about FFA were primarily just pissed because Brewington and Moore wrongly fired them at somepoint. Believe it, Brewington and Moore made a lot of enemies over the years.
The new leadership and the new board are doing a good job of fixing what Brewington and Moore royally screwed up. FFA didn’t get away with anything. Brewington and Moore MAY HAVE, but FFA didn’t. The students and the parents did nothing wrong. Our kids shouldn’t suffer because of the extremely poor decisions of those two.
Who knows, maybe there will be charges filed against Brewington and Moore in the near fututre. Rumor has it, Surrel Holley, former finance lady, was being interviewed by the feds a few weeks ago. THE FEDS!!! Wouldn’t that be some shit?!?!
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Mock me all you want, but you should have the honesty and decency to follow through on your promise to admit when you made a factual error about the formal review procedure.
You can rant all you want about what happened at FFA, but that doesn’t do a thing to distract from the point that you were WRONG.
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Betty, you need to calm down. I wasn’t completely correct. Will that soothe your nerves? Good lord, you would think you were on the State Board with your ranting and raving.
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Betty, you seem a little stressed. It’s all a matter of semantics in my opinion. The State Board should have had the two former directors arrested and made an example out of them. The stole money, they fired people at will, and they promoted people they were having sex with.
The former board at FFA allowed this tomfoolery to continue, and the current board still has Moore’s girlfriend Dolcy, working at the school as the weather director or some made up nonsense
Please tell me that you are not one of the clowns on the state board?
Or, are you one of the federal investigators that has been snooping around FFA?.
Either way, you need to relax, have a drink, attend a NORML.org protest or something.
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Not part of the State Board, just someone who prides herself on getting her facts straight when she knows that other people will read what she’s writing. You should try it sometime.
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Well “Betty”, maybe you should write a blog on education in Delaware since you are the expert. God knows information isn’t always transparent in this state, but you seem to know all. And many “facts” as you put it are misguided and don’t represent what people truly know or are brainwashed into believing as fact.
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