Felner laid out plan for education company at meeting with Schroeder, witness says

This from the Courier-Journal:

Former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner held a meeting with Thomas Schroeder in which he said he was setting up a company that would list Felner as president and Schroeder as an officer, according to a University of Rhode Island business manager who testified in U.S. District Court on Thursday.

Diana Laferriere, who attended the 2001 meeting with Felner and Schroeder, told Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Calhoun that Felner also told her that he wanted her to serve on the company’s board and paid her $1,000 a month for about three years for her service.

The company — the National Center on Public Education and Prevention in Illinois — was created in 2001 by Schroeder, who served as its executive director...

During her testimony Thursday, Laferriere recounted how Felner told her and Schroeder in 2001 that he was setting up the Illinois center to handle the training school district personnel would need to understand and use survey data collected and analyzed by another center he had previous set up at the University of Rhode Island.

That Rhode Island center’s name — the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy — bore a striking resemblance to name of the Illinois center. Prosecutors allege the similar names were used by Felner and Schroeder to cause confusion and conceal their scheme.

Laferriere testified during the three years she received checks from the Illinois center, she had to call Schroeder each year to get him to send her the necessary tax forms so she could file her income taxes. As time went on, she became concerned she was not being paid for doing anything, and asked Felner when she was going to do any work for the center.

“He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. You deserve it,’” said Laferriere, who told Felner in 2003 to stop sending her the checks....

From Alleged Felner Co-conspirator Thomas Schroeder's PreTrial Memo

Federal indictments allege that from 2001 to 2008 former Education Dean Robert Felner and alleged co-consprator Thomas Schroeder used a sham entity called the National Center on Public Education and Prevention (NCPEp) to execute a scheme to defraud.

In May, Felner was sentenced to 63 months in prison for his role in defrauding U of L and the University of Rhode Island of $2.3 million. Felner pleaded guilty to nine federal charges, including income tax evasion. In addition to prison time, Felner must pay restitution of $510,000 to U of L, $1.64 million to the University of Rhode Island and $88,750 to the Rock Island County Council on Addiction in Illinois.

Schroeder is essentially charged with mail fraud.

Count 1 charges that the two men executed their scheme using NCPEp to defraud the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy, a division of the University of Rhode Island (NCPE-URI), the Rock Island County Council on Addiction (RICCA), and the University of Louisville (UofL).

Count 2 charges they conspired to use NCPEp to launder the proceeds of the fraud charged in Count 1.

Count 3 charges that they conspired to defraud the Internal Revenue Service through, among other means, the use of NCPEp.

The government alleges Schroeder and Felner fraudulently used NCPEp to divert funds that were intended as payment for work actually completed. They diverted funds from three school districts, Santa Monica, Buffalo, and Atlanta. The invoiced work was never completed.

In all instances, NCPEp was invoicing the three school districts, RICCA, and UofL for work it did not complete. The only distinction was that Schroeder, on behalf of NCPEp, personally invoiced the three school districts and UofL, whereas Felner, on behalf of NCPEp, personally invoiced RICCA. The money from all three victims was laundered through NCPEp bank accounts controlled by Schroeder and/or Felner. RICCA was not aware of Schroeder’s involvement with NCPEp. Similarly, NCPE-URI and UofL were not aware of Felner’s involvement with NCPEp.

From its inception NCPEp was deliberately created as a subterfuge and from 2001 through 2008 NCPEp did no work. Instead, NCPEp was used exclusively to launder money stolen from URI, RICCA, and UofL. Schroeder’s fingerprints were all over NCPEp from the beginning in 2001 through the execution of a federal search warrant in 2008. NCPEp never filed a tax return.

Check out Page One Kentucky for more.

Former UofL Dean Robert Felner sentenced to more than five years in prison

This from the Courier-Journal:

Robert Felner, former University of Louisville dean of education, was sentenced on Monday to 63 months in prison for his role in defrauding U of L and the University of Rhode Island of $2.3 million.

Felner -- who was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Simpson III in Louisville -- pleaded guilty in January to nine federal charges, including income tax evasion.

In addition to prison time, Felner must pay restitution of $510,000 to U of L, $1.64 million to the University of Rhode Island and $88,750 to the Rock Island County Council on Addiction in Illinois.

The plea agreement was reached with the U.S. attorney's office after Felner was indicted in October 2008 in Louisville on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, income tax evasion and conspiracy to impede and impair the Internal Revenue Service. The charges against Felner carried a maximum penalty of 75 years in prison...

C-J Editorial sums it all up:

Felner's cautionary tale

Monday's sentencing of Robert Felner, former education dean at the University of Louisville, brings some degree of closure to a seamy, nationally embarrassing scandal.

However, the fact that Mr. Felner is going to prison is no cause for celebration at UofL. Nor is it merely an unpleasant episode that now should be forgotten.

To its credit, the university called in law enforcement authorities when it became obvious, some two years ago, that something was amiss in the education school.

But what followed was not the finest hour for President James Ramsey, who scoffed at the news in a TV interview about more than 30 grievances filed against Mr. Felner during his tenure. Calling the allegations “anonymous crap,” he said that the complaints showed him that the dean “was bringing about change that needed to be made.”

Change? Like granting an associate a Ph.D. after only one semester's residence in Louisville?Like running off solid faculty members whose complaints were given a deaf ear by the administration?

And change like stealing millions of dollars from UofL and the University of Rhode Island?It will take time, and a lot of obvious progress for the university to put all of this to rest.

Meanwhile, it should serve as a cautionary tale for many years to come. No official in a public institution should have the kind of unbridled discretion that Robert Felner enjoyed. And administrators eager to make rapid change should be wary of the cost that comes with such upheavals.

And Page One Kentucky has all the details.

KSN&C Backstory.

Robert Felner’s trail of deceit as seen from Rhode Island

This from the Providence Journal:

Robert L. Carothers still led the University of Rhode Island in 2008, when he placed a phone call to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside about that school’s newly hired chancellor, Robert D. Felner.

Felner had served as director of URI’s School of Education about a decade earlier, a tenure marked by great accomplishment and complaints about his behavior, particularly toward women. Carothers reached out to Felner’s new employer to make sure administrators had the full picture. Carothers began to tell Wisconsin officials about the complications with Felner, only to hear “harassment? That’s the least of our problems.”

“I said ‘what?’ ” Carothers said. He learned authorities had launched a criminal investigation in Kentucky into whether Felner had misappropriated a $694,000 federal grant. That probe eventually uncovered that Felner had embezzled $1.7 million from the URI educational research center he had founded.

Felner had begun to carve himself a national reputation in the education world when he came to URI in 1996. He brought with him millions of dollars in grants and a survey he helped develop that empowered schools, for the first time, to get a read on the culture within their doors by questioning parents, teachers and students.

His story was a compelling one. He told of his days as a teenage truckdriver cut short by a persuasive rabbi who encouraged him to head back to school. His GED certificate and his Ph.D. hung on the wall. He described himself as a gritty Brooklyn kid raised in the shadow of Ebbets Field and unapologetically acknowledged that some people liked him while others did not.

Fourteen years after coming to Rhode Island, his career trajectory has crashed amid scandal. He is awaiting sentencing in western Kentucky Friday for embezzling $2.2 million from URI and the University of Louisville. Prosecutors say he and a former colleague diverted money to accounts for a dummy organization and then used it for personal expenses and investments.

“Professionally, he’s a dead man walking,” said Kenneth E. Fish, now retired from the Rhode Island Department of Education.

Interviews with more than a dozen of Felner’s colleagues, superiors and underlings throughout his three-decade career reveal a brash, yet gifted man full of possibility but hamstrung by an outsized ego and brusque manner. They describe him as a hard-driving boss who charmed those he needed and dismissed others with a terrorizing vengeance. More than one former coworker compared him to fallen former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., a skilled politician convicted of running a corruption ring out of City Hall.

“I can’t help but see the parallels between him and Buddy Cianci,” said Fish, who specialized in middle and high school reform. “The academic world is far less forgiving than the general public.”

Still, Fish admired Felner’s contributions. “He brought a tremendous resource to the state … We saw him as a partner in the Rhode Island reform effort.”

Felner declined an interview request through his lawyer, Scott C. Cox.

Felner, 59, was born in Norwich, Conn., a mill town near the Rhode Island border, and spent years in New York City. After quitting high school as a teen, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at the University of Connecticut and a master’s and doctorate in psychology at the University of Rochester.

He spent five years as an assistant professor in clinical psychology at Yale University, beginning in 1976. It’s there that glimmers of a pattern that dogged him throughout his career appeared. Within a year, some female students circulated a petition accusing him of sexual harassment, recalls Lisa Willner, who was then a freshman at Yale.

Felner inexplicably asked Willner, an attractive 18-year-old, to assist him in a research project and offered her the chance to take graduate-level courses. At the same time, female classmates were urging her to sign the petition critical of Felner’s behavior. She remembers feeling so uncomfortable that she switched her major to avoid the conflict.

“It really had a profound impact on my life,” said Willner, now executive director of the Kentucky Psychological Association. Willner felt vindicated three decades later upon learning of the allegations her former professor faced. “The charges just kind of affirm some of the doubts and questions I had about him.”

He was investigated and cleared of the harassment allegation, according to Emanuel Donchin, who hired Felner to be the director of clinical psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1987.

Still, his rude, quarrelsome nature rubbed many of the clinical psychology faculty, students and staff wrong, said Donchin, who led the department. Though he showed skill at raising money, the department let him go in 1990, Donchin said. “There was no indication of anything unethical. He was just a lousy character.”

From there Felner headed to the university’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs, where he served as founding director of the Center for Prevention Research and Development. “He did that very successfully,” said Robert F. Rich, Felner’s boss at the institute. “I respected him.”

He cultivated partnerships with the state, community and foundations to work toward school reform, particularly in middle schools, Rich said. He attracted grants and helped create a survey, known in Rhode Island as the School Accountability for Learning and Teaching, or SALT survey, which gave schools the tools to assess progress. By questioning students, parents and faculty and establishing data based on those responses, schools for the first time could get a read on what was working in the schools and what wasn’t. They could then design pointed strategies to improve school culture, and hopefully, test scores.

“He’s assertive. Not everyone gets along well with a very assertive personality,” Rich said.

URI wooed him away, without calling to check his references, Rich said.

As Felner headed to the Ocean State, a dispute erupted over who owned the intellectual property rights to the school assessment survey. It was settled that Felner and the university had developed it jointly, Rich said. Some former colleagues toasted his departure with champagne.

Felner came to URI as a professor and founding director of the School of Education in 1996, in part following a romance he would later leave for his fourth wife. URI officials say his main backer was Barbara Brittingham, then dean of URI’s College of Human Sciences and Services. Brittingham did not return several phone calls placed to her office at the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Felner arrived full of charm and chutzpah, Carothers said. “I think we saw him as a big-time researcher and grant getter.”

In 1997, while continuing as head of the School of Education, Felner founded the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy at URI, an education research center that contracted with school districts from Santa Monica, Calif., to Buffalo, N.Y., to develop school-improvement strategies, particularly for disadvantaged and high-need communities. The center operated as a self-supporting entity, bringing in millions of dollars in contracts from school districts nationwide as well as grants used to pay staff. Its $12-million contract with the Rhode Island Department of Education was its largest. The university did not share in the center’s income. “He was very smart and well-meaning. When he talked about kids, he did have passion,” said Julia
Steiny, who worked as a communications director under Felner and now writes an education column for The Journal. He took a novel approach toward schools based on the SALT surveys, and led the way for Rhode Island to develop a statewide system for measuring school improvement based on the survey results, she said.

At the same time, he lorded over meetings, spawning fans and detractors. A few inches over 5 feet tall and portly, he was known to pump his office chair up to make himself appear taller. He used his psychology training to study people’s personalities and then toy with them, colleagues said.

“Sometimes people have good information, good ideas even if he’s repulsive,” Fish said. “He had an enormous ego that needed to be fed all the time. Lots of strong leaders have strong egos.”

By 2001, three women had filed complaints about his “abusive” behavior, intimidation and sexual harassment, court records show. Though URI’s affirmative
action officer cleared him in all three cases, one woman, Theresa Watson, filed a civil lawsuit against Felner and URI. The suit accused the school of knowingly allowing Felner to perpetrate his actions. It was settled in 2008 under undisclosed terms.

“Anything you’ve ever read about a workplace bully he did it,” said Watson, now an elementary school teacher in Westerly. He belittled and bullied staff and then warned them “to keep things in the family,” court records show.

She cast him as a puppeteer surrounded by people who took him for a hero.

Carothers said he told Felner to ease up. Felner continued at URI until 2003. “He always pushed the envelope so there was always a worry about how fast he was going,” Carothers said.

Felner’s behavior contributed to his departure, Carothers said. “We encouraged him to move on because of the harassment. He wasn’t able to overcome that,” Carothers said. “We had pretty much had it with him.”

Felner left URI with great fanfare, telling The Journal his exit was prompted by his frustration with state law that caps the number of full-time employees public universities can hire.

He was granted unpaid leave from his $174,000-a-year job when he left in 2003 to become dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the
University of Louisville, according to Robert A. Weygand, URI’s vice president of administration. That leave, which officials said was granted out of consideration for concerns involving his family, was rescinded three years later.

Felner maintained his title as director of URI’s National Center on Public Education and Social Policy until 2006, continuing to serve as an unpaid mentor to its current head, Anne Seitsinger, Weygand said.

“We were not unhappy to see him leave, but he still did good work,” said now retired Provost M. Beverly Swan.

Carothers said he was annoyed that no one from the University of Louisville called to ask about Felner.

His time at Louisville would be marked by discontent. The faculty passed a no-confidence vote against him, 27 to 24, in 2006, but he remained at the university two more years despite 35 grievances about his abusive behavior, said Pedros R. Portes, former chairman of the department of educational and counseling psychology.

“The administration was negligent,” said Portes, who now works at the University of Georgia. “A sociopath was allowed to run loose in higher education.”

Still, administrators credited Felner with raising the University of Louisville’s profile and establishing collaborative relationships with community groups.

He next secured a position as chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in 2008. This time, Carothers placed a call to the university system vice president about Felner. He soon learned a federal investigation was afoot.

“I thought he was arrogant and difficult to work with, but I never thought he was a crook,” Carothers said.

The inquiry led to URI, where federal authorities say he and a former Illinois coworker, Thomas Schroeder, embezzled $1.7 million from the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy from 2001 to 2008. Under the scheme, prosecutors say the pair created a phony nonprofit in 2001 with a name deliberately similar to the URI center: the National Center on Public Education and Prevention.

They then diverted money intended for the URI center into bank accounts for the dummy organization. The URI center did the work, while the phony entity did nothing at all, authorities say. The pair, they say, used the money for personal gain. Felner owned properties in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky and Jamestown in Rhode Island.

In addition, federal prosecutors say Felner and Schroeder used the dummy account to embezzle another $576,000 from the University of Louisville and attempted to skim another $240,000. Felner, now of Prospect, Ky., pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to launder money, mail fraud, conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and tax evasion. He faces 63 months in prison. Schroeder’s trial is set for August.

URI officials insist there were no indications of financial wrongdoing because the center remained “in the black.” Reviews of its books by the center’s business manager and the business manager of the College of Human Science and Services didn’t find cause for suspicion because the accounts remained flush, Weygand said.

“As long as a contract is successful … you’re never going to catch on,” URI’s general counsel, Louis Saccoccio, said. Plus, Felner camouflaged his activities by signing contracts in violation of university protocol and creating a shadow organization to which he funneled money, he said.

“The people who worked for him, he was almost like a cult figure,” Saccoccio said. “They had full trust in him.” The center’s work was so well respected that its business practices were overlooked, Weygand said.

Even after his departure, Felner remained in contact with URI. E-mail records obtained by The Journal from the University of Louisville show that he and his former colleagues traded messages about growing financial concerns at the URI center through 2008. Seitsinger wrote she didn’t know if they could pay salaries. Business manager Diana Laferriere asked whether he was giving out loans.

Weygand now attributes that financial hardship to Felner’s financial misdealings. “He was considered a god in many senses,” Weygand said.

Felner, now divorced from his fourth wife, Marilyn, has agreed to pay $1.64 million in restitution to URI and forfeit properties he owns in Florida and Illinois. Weygand said he is “not overly optimistic” the full sum will be repaid.

In the aftermath of the case, URI has initiated unannounced, random audits of its 39 other self-supporting entities, Weygand said. They vary from the Coastal Institute to The John Hazen White Sr. Center for Ethics and Public Service to the crime lab. Previously, the center’s accounts, like that of the other self-sustaining entities, were not audited. The business manager of the colleges that oversee the entities will monitor the accounts. All contracts will be reviewed.

The center — now operating under a new name as the Center for School Improvement and Education Policy — has been reduced from 16 employees in 2008 to 2 today and is rebuilding its reputation after the loss of Felner’s expertise,
Weygand said. It has one contract: a $67,000 deal with the Rhode Island Department of Education that expires in June.

The center cannot get grants from the Carnegie Foundation because it has not completed reports on how it used its money, according to the foundation. It has also been hurt by the economy and schools are facing deep cutbacks, Weygand said.

Rhode Island last year awarded the SALT survey project and management of its Infoworks database to independent nonprofit organizations after a competitive bidding process in which the URI center was a contender.

The state, said Elliot Krieger, spokesman for the Education Department, never encountered any problems with the center’s work, which always came in on time and on budget. “Even today nobody disputes the quality of his work,” Carothers said.

Despite the caliber of his achievements, Felner’s arrest did not come as a shock to some.

“It was more of a disappointment than a surprise,” said Fish, formerly of the state Department of Education. “There was always something about Robert Felner that was like a snake oil salesman. We were using his snake oil and it worked pretty good.”

Hat Tip to Page One

Sentencing delayed for former UofL dean Robert Felner

This from the Courier-Journal:

Former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner’s sentencing has been rescheduled for May 17.

Felner, who pleaded guilty in January to nine federal charges, including tax evasion, was due to be sentenced Friday. Scott C. Cox, who is Felner’s attorney, said the sentencing date was moved because of a scheduling conflict.

As part of his plea, Felner agreed to serve 63 months in prison in connection with defrauding U of L and another university of $2.3 million. He also agreed to pay restitution of $510,000 to UofL, $1.64 million to the University of Rhode Island and $88,750 to the Rock Island County Council on Addiction in Illinois. Additionally, he agreed to forfeit property to the federal government that he owns in Florida and Illinois, as well as bank accounts of undisclosed values.

Felner was indicted in October 2008 in Louisville on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, income tax evasion and conspiracy to impede and impair the Internal Revenue Service.

The charges against Felner carried a maximum penalty of 75 years in prison...

Thomas Schroeder of Port Byron, Ill., a co-defendant of Felner, is scheduled to go to trial Aug. 9...

Felner to plead guilty to siphoning millions from Louisville, Rhode Island U

This from Nancy Rodriguez at C-J:

Former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner will plead guilty Friday in a case in which he and a colleague are accused of defrauding U of L and another university out of $2.3 million, his attorney said.

Attorney Scott C. Cox said Monday the plea is part of an agreement Felner made with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He would not disclose any terms of the deal, including which charges Felner would plead guilty to or how much jail time he may receive. Felner was not available for comment.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Monday that it would have no comment until Felner formally enters his plea — he is accused of funneling millions of dollars through non-profit centers he helped create, then using the money to buy private property and make other personal expenditures.

A trial for Felner and his co-defendant, Thomas Schroeder of Port Byron, Ill., was scheduled to begin Feb. 1. Schroeder could still be tried in February...Felner’s charges carry up to 75 years in prison, while Schroeder faces up to 45 years.

U of L officials released a statement Monday in which they expressed “hope that Mr. Felner will be held accountable for his actions.”

This is an improvement - since Felner was never held accountable by President James Ramsey for anything, despite substantial reason to do so. Ramsey's own dismissive attitude toward the 33 faculty complaints as "anonymous crap" might not have uncovered the depths of Felner's wrongdoings, but it surely would have served to save the university from substantial embarrassment - if only Ramsey had trusted his faculty. As it was, Ramsey's low opinion of the faculty left him completely blindsided by the most serious Felner revelations.

In that time-honored tradition of declaring an end to ones own misery as soon as possible, the university issued a "move on" statement declaring,

“Our College of Education and Human Development moved past Mr. Felner some time ago with the hiring of Blake Haselton as its interim dean,” the statement read. “Enrollment is up, there were a record number of graduates last school year, and we've attained a significant accreditation. Those are the chapters being written since Mr. Felner left U of L.”

The statement did not specify whether UofL grads are now required to actually attend the university or do their own work.

While not part of the criminal case, Felner's treatment of faculty and staff at U of L’s College of Education and Human Development — and grievances against him — came to light during the investigation. Former faculty accused Felner of being vindictive, manipulative and threatening. As a result of those claims, the university revamped its grievance process, reviewed its faculty governance procedures and established an Ombuds Office to address faculty concerns and complaints.

Bryant Stamford, a former faculty member who worked at U of L for more than 30 years and who has joined other former education faculty in criticizing the university for its handling of Felner, said Monday he had “mixed feelings” about news of a plea agreement.

“… It was good that he was finally caught and held accountable for his actions, but I think all of us still sort of default back to: How is it possible that this man was allowed to operate in such a manner for years? He wasn’t operating in a vacuum.”

Blaming Felner for his toxic effects on the school is certainly appropriate.

But blindly absolving university leadership for their contribution to that climate is inconsistent with best practice. UofL trustees should have pled guilty to that.

Judge sets Feb. 1 trial for former U of L dean

Felner faces fraud, tax evasion, money laundering charges

This from Nancy at C-J:

A trial date has been set for former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner, who was indicted last year on 10 counts of mail fraud, money-laundering conspiracy and income tax evasion.

The trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 1, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Calhoun said it will take about three weeks.

Felner's colleague, Thomas Schroeder of Port Byron, Ill., who is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, will be tried at the same time.

The trial date was set [recently] during a status conference before Judge Charles R. Simpson III. The judge told Calhoun and lawyers for Felner and Schroeder that the case has “been pending a long time. You've had plenty of time to get ready.” ...

Felner: Lack of Oversight Extended Beyond UofL

This from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Keeping an Eye on Earmarks:

the Education Department's Role in Oversight

The University of Louisville's former dean of education, Robert D. Felner, faces a criminal trial on charges that he and an associate diverted most of a $694,000 earmarked federal grant into their own bank accounts. Louisville officials have announced an administrative overhaul that will, they say, help prevent any future misbehavior with grants.

But what about the U.S. Department of Education, which was responsible for overseeing the grant on taxpayers' behalf? Should it, too, be doing some soul-searching in the aftermath of Mr. Felner's indictment?

The department wouldn't respond to inquiries from the Chronicle, citing the ongoing investigation, but open records requests have produced documents that show a pattern of delays and obfuscation that went unchallenged by federal officials.

Felner gained "no cost extensions" on his final report in the summer of 2006 and again in 2007 from program officer Ron Anson.

In both cases, Mr. Felner and his colleagues prepared new budgets and drafted extraordinarily vague statements about the status of the project. The 2007 declaration, which The Chronicle obtained from Louisville through an open-records request, said that "our final work and products will continue it's focus [sic] on two primary areas." One of those areas was "conducting ongoing research and evaluation projects — particularly those involving data, accountability, and assessment." But nowhere did Mr. Felner name any schools or districts where those alleged projects were taking place.

As has now been acknowledged by numerous sources at KDE and JCPS as well as the Education Cabinet no such surveys were being conducted. Had Anson asked for some tangible verification of how many surveys had been completed to date, and in which districts, perhaps the truth might have been revealed. But Anson told Felner not to bother sending the 2007 declaration wherein Felner indicated that the "scope of work" had changed significantly.

Significant change; yet an incurious lack of federal review.

The Education Department's own inspector general expressed concern that overworked officers had to monitor more than 100 such projects and the department's oversight of earmarked grants was lacking as a result.

UofL to Spend the $96K Felner Left Behind

This from Nancy Rodriguez at C-J:

UofL to use grant for

teacher quality study

The University of Louisville has received permission from the U.S. Department of Education to use the remaining $96,318 from a federal grant that was allegedly misappropriated by the school's former education dean to conduct teacher quality research.

The news was originally reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education, which devoted several pages of its latest issue to the criminal case involving Robert Felner, the former dean of U of L's College of Education and Human Development...

U of L and Jefferson County Public Schools officials confirmed yesterday they are working in partnership to use the money to study teacher performance and effectiveness in the school district.

"I'm delighted that U of L does want to partner with us and that they came up with this idea," said Bob Rodosky, the school system's director of accountability, research and planning. "I think this is the way that a partnership should evolve between us and the university. We are talking to one another and we are signing off on each other's work and moving forward and hopefully focusing on kids."

According to an e-mail between Bob Ronau, a professor of mathematics education and associate dean of research at U of L's College of Education, and Ron Arson, a program officer at the U.S. Department of Education, the university will use the school system's "information related to demographics, achievement, attendance, funding, teacher characteristics and variables" in its research.

"By identifying variables associated with effective teachers, JCPS can adjust a number of current practices, from hiring to professional development," Ronau said...

Chronicle: Red Tape Hid Felner's Red Flags

Former UofL Education Dean Robert Felner was big on promises.

Having received a $694,000 grant from U.S. Department of Education funds, earmarked by Rep. Anne Northup, Felner promised to create an elaborate research center to help Kentucky's public schools. Five UofL faculty members, supported by a staff of four, would work at a center under an advisory board headed by Kentucky's Secretary of the Education Cabinet Virginia Fox. The state would be carpeted with surveys. There would be papers and conferences.

Too bad Fox didn't know there was a grant.

Too bad none of the surveys were conducted.

Too bad the Kentucky Department of Education didn't know anything about the surveys.

Too bad there were no papers or conferences.

Too bad most of the money had disappeared.

By the spring of 2008, all but $96,000 of the grant had been spent, but none of the tasks listed in Mr. Felner's proposal had been accomplished.

So he approached Louisville officials for $200,000 more to enter into a subcontract with his buddy Thomas Schroeder's nonprofit organization in Illinois - a group that had already received $450,000 from the Felner grant.

Felner assured UofL officials that the surveys Schroeder was supposedly conducting with students and teachers in Kentucky would "let us give the feds something that should make them very happy about the efficiency and joint commitment of the university to doing a good job with an earmark, as I know we will want more from this agency," he wrote in an e-mail message on June 18.

Two days later, as Felner was preparing to leave for a new job at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, federal agents raided Felner's UofL offices and confiscated his files and laptops.

Turns out Uof L was not Felner's first rodeo.

By October a federal grand jury had indicted Felner on nine counts of mail fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. The indictment said Schroeder's National Center on Public Education and Prevention was a shell organization that existed to funnel money into the Felner and Schroeder's personal bank accounts. Prosecutors calculate that the men made off with the $694,000 earmarked grant plus $1.7-million in payments from three urban school districts connected to Felner when he was in Rhode Island.

But that's not the way it's supposed to work. There's supposed to be oversight. UofL officials made some promises too.

In their upcoming June 12 issue, the Chronicle on Higher Education takes aim at the lack of oversight at UofL.

When Louisville accepted the earmarked grant, its officials signed the boilerplate language attached to most federal contracts. The university, they promised, had "the institutional, managerial, and financial capability ... to ensure proper planning, management, and completion of the project."

But did it in fact have that capability? For several months in 2007, Mr. Felner charged almost $37,000 of his salary against the grant, but there is no evidence that he ever worked on the project. (In an October 2008 memorandum, Robert N. Ronau, the college of education's associate dean for research, declared that he knew of no
reports, articles, or other products that resulted from the grant.). Federal regulations require that universities use "suitable means of verification that the work was performed" when they prepare time-and-effort reports; Louisville officials declined to comment on how Mr. Felner's time-and-effort reports were processed.) And when he sent his first big payment to the Illinois group, Mr. Felner constructed the deal as a personal-services contract instead of a formal subcontract, which would have been subject to more oversight by the university. But no one corrected that error for more than a year.

Provost Shirley C. Willihnganz, seemed to admit that UofL's procedures could be overridden by an individual of high standing, such as a dean.

"I think what we had in this case was a person who abused the system. And so it's not so much that our policies were bad or that our procedures were bad. We had a person who did not follow them and did not respect them."

"This person was a dean," says Ms. Willihnganz, the provost. "And deans here have a very wide breadth of control. They have a lot of authority. I think, in fact, no one else here at this university could have gotten some of those things through. Because he was a dean, he was trusted."

But that explanation goes nowhere with former UofL education faculty who say they had plenty of reason to distrust Mr. Felner.

Beginning in 2004, the university's grievance officers were approached dozens of times by faculty members and students with complaints about Mr. Felner's temperament and personnel decisions. Many of those records were first described last year by Page One Kentucky, a political blog that has aggressively covered Mr. Felner's story (and whose comment section has become a meeting ground for aggrieved faculty members at Louisville).

The Chronicle lists the most egregious alleged offenses which include harassment of a female grad student, threats, intimidation, violations of governance policies, questionable expenditures and a generally oppressive atmosphere in the department. This was followed by a 27-24 "vote of no confidence" against Felner.

After the vote, Ms. Willihnganz hired a mediation company called Just Solutions to review morale at the college of education — but after interviewing many faculty members, the company never filed a final report.

"I talked to a lot of people" after the no-confidence vote, Ms. Willihnganz says. "There were detractors, but there were also supporters. My hope was that Just Solutions could come in and find some common ground to go forward. They completed some faculty interviews — but in all honesty, at that point I realized that they weren't going to be able to accomplish what I had hoped."

Several months later, a faculty member circulated an anonymous note that read, "It appears that the Provost has chosen to bury that [Just Solutions] report without giving any feedback to faculty. ... Now the dean likes to taunt people about how nothing came of any of our complaints."

By the time university leadership finally recognized that they had been suckered by Felner's unmet promises they were stuck cleaning up Felner's mess. That didn't go all that well.

President James Ramsey and Willihnganz circled the wagons, inferred that faculty complaints were only from the disgruntled who refused to make necessary changes and Ramsey called their complaints anonymous crap.

Calls for Ramsey's resignation could be heard but he was supported by Louisville's board.

Last September he and 20 other faculty members who left the college of education during Mr. Felner's tenure wrote to Louisville's Board of Trustees, asking it to scrutinize how complaints about Mr. Felner had been handled by Ms. Willihnganz and by James R. Ramsey, the university's president.

"Felner often bragged openly at faculty meetings that he had the full support of the provost and president," the letter said. "Faculty should feel free to speak their mind
and be counted. Yet, when faculty did exactly that, they were systematically ignored and targeted for further abuse by Felner."

Former county superintendent and Council for Better Education president Blake Haselton was appointed interim dean of the college of education. Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Haselton's background promises steady leadership, not flashy research grants.

University-wide accounting and research-compliance reforms were undertaken but some current and former faculty members are skeptical that the reforms will go far enough - or that all parties who erred during the debacle will be held appropriately accountable.

The Chronicle concludes that too much red tape hid what should have been red flags to university overseers.

HOW RED TAPE MIGHT HIDE RED FLAGS

The University of Louisville, like other institutions, has struggled to bring order and coherence to its research-administration system. A single federal grant might be monitored by multiple offices there: one office to verify researchers' time-and-effort reports, another office to approve subcontracts, yet another to oversee the protection of research subjects.

Does that fragmentation allow some things to slip through the cracks? Robert D. Felner, a former dean of education at Louisville, has been indicted on charges that he misappropriated a $694,000 federal grant.

At one point, Mr. Felner set up a subcontract as a personal-services contract, which allowed him to bypass some layers of supervision.

In March, Louisville's Board of Trustees received a report on plans to improve the system. Deans will have less unilateral power to make purchases, and the university will "develop a central process to monitor research projects for compliance."

Belated hat tip to Page One Kentucky.

Felner Update

CJ's Nancy Rodriguez provided a brief update on the Robert Felner case on Comment on Kentucky this weekend. Somebody put it on You tube. Thanks to Jake for posting the video at Page One.



Page One also has a piece on a recent court filing. A motion from the U.S. Attorney’s Office counters Felner's claim that he thought he was under arrest. The transcript reads in part:

"You are not under arrest today. Uh, You know, I’m not here to arrest you, or what, you know, at the end of the day, you get up and go home and do whatever you want to do."

Updated update:

Judge rules Felner was not subject

to a custodial interrogation.

Felner's Motion to Suppress Statements denied.

Trials of Robert Felner and Thomas Schroeder not separated.

Details at Page One:

Felner Seeks Change of Venue due in part to "Intense Scrutiny on Local Internet blogs."

Perhaps if he didn't appear quite so ....Guilty

Robert Felner's attorney says his client cannot get a fair trial in Louisville and has asked that the case be moved. The former UofL education dean is accused of misusing grant money and other funds. Former U.S. Attorney David Huber previously described the case against Felner as "airtight."

This from C-J:

Felner's lawyer wants trial moved from Louisville

Media coverage called prejudicial

Felner and a colleague, Thomas Schroeder of Port Byron, Ill., pleaded not guilty in October to federal charges of mail fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and defrauding the Internal Revenue Service. Both are free on bond.

According to a motion filed by his attorney, Scott C. Cox, Felner has been "the subject of an extraordinary amount of prejudicial pretrial publicity within the Louisville jury division." The motion referred to the media coverage as "long-standing, widespread, and inflammatory."

Cox claimed his case was damaged by numerous Courier-Journal articles and editorials, WHAS broadcasts, various radio programs and intense scrutiny on local Internet blogs. So he wants the case moved to Paducah, Bowling Green or Owensboro.

...because the Internet doesn't go there?

Cox also asked the court to sever the trials of Felner and Schroeder.

According to Cox, Schroeder has repeatedly implicated Felner "as the sole wrongdoer" in interviews with law enforcement officials and federal prosecutors. And Felner, he noted, has given a lengthy statement to authorities in which he implicates Schroeder.

Page One has also learned,

Robert Felner’s lawyers filed a motion with the court to use an in-depth jury questionnaire.

Among the questions Cox wants to ask:

Do you hold any strong opinions regarding the University of Louisville or its
leadership?

Do you blog on the Internet and/or maintain your own personal
webpage or weblog?

Please describe your opinion (if any) of college professors or deans of universities?

Looks like there'll be no jury duty for me.

UofL upholds challenged doctoral degree

John Deasy, a former Malibu California school superintendent who had given a research center run by former UofL Education Dean Robert Felner a $375,000 contract in 2002, subsequently got a doctoral degree after studying there only one semester. Sweet.

This from Nancy Rodriguez at C-J:

...The agency that accredits schools in Kentucky and 10 other Southern states requires candidates for graduate degrees to earn the majority of their credits at the university awarding the degree.

And a university rule requires doctoral candidates to spend at least two years studying at U of L, including at least one in full-time residency.

Campus residency requirements are considered important because a university is vouching for a student when it issues a degree. For that reason, universities have typically insisted that a substantial part of the work must be performed on campus.

Deasy's degree was called into question last fall after The Courier-Journal and WHAS-TV reported that Deasy got the degree after studying at U of L for a single semester...

This from the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

...Before his short stint at Louisville, Mr. Deasy had earned at least 50 credits toward a doctorate at three other institutions, including the University of Rhode Island, where Mr. Felner taught until 2003.

In September the University of Louisville appointed a committee to investigate whether the degree had been awarded improperly. In a statement quoted by The Courier-Journal today, the university said that the panel had concluded that Mr. Deasy successfully defended his dissertation before a faculty committee. “The degree stands; no further action will be taken,” the statement said.

The university said the review had confirmed the “integrity of our degree-granting process. We do not give away degrees.” It also noted several changes it was making to put more checks on the process for granting exemptions from graduate-degree requirements.

A federal indictment issued in October accuses Mr. Felner and an associate of diverting more than $2-million into their personal bank accounts from a federal research grant and from contracts with municipal school districts, including the district in Santa Monica, Calif., where Mr. Deasy served as superintendent from 2001 until 2006.

Mr. Deasy is now deputy director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The federal indictment of Mr. Felner does not suggest that Mr. Deasy knew about or benefited from the embezzlement that Mr. Felner is accused of. Mr. Felner has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

Ramsey Absolves UofL in Deasy Degree Scandal

UofL investigates UofL and Finds Integrity

“Based upon the totality of the circumstances

and information available,

it is evident that waivers were granted by the then-graduate dean

which permitted the student to register

and defend his dissertation in one semester.

The dissertation defense before a committee of

University of Louisville CEHD faculty

was successful, and the degree was subsequently awarded.

“The degree stands; no further action will be taken.

--UofL President James Ramsey and

Exec VP and Provost Shirley Willihnganz

Interpretation: This decision concludes our review and confirms the integrity of our degree granting process. We do not give away degrees.

Alternative Interpretation: We were so totally screwed by former Dean of Education Robert Felner that it took a lot of people months and to dig through all of the bad acts he perpetrated and we still found the record sketchy. What we do know is that Felner influenced a former graduate dean to bend the academic rules for one of Felner's buddies, John Deasy. We have high standards at UofL but sometimes we waive them. Deasy was permitted to register and defend his dissertation in one semester which effectively proves that the work was not done at the University of Louisville. But what are we going to do? Having given Felner the authority to screw us, he screwed us. Since the error was clearly UofL's, we're not in a position to take it back now. Maybe we'll get a big grant from the Gates Foundation some day.

In a letter from President Ramsey and Provost Willihnganz to the university community the issues surrounding John Deasey's easy degree was laid to rest.

• A blue-ribbon panel reviewed the awarding of Deasy's 2004 degree and found...
• In very rare instances, almost always when student well-being was at issue (though no such claim is made here), the graduate dean acted within his authority to grant waivers.
• The Blue Ribbon Panel reinforced the need to reconstitute the graduate school to increase oversight and accountability.
• The panel noted several needed changes that were made in graduate education at UofL since the Deasy degree was granted.
• The authority of the graduate dean was changed so that he or she could no longer allow certain types of exemptions and variances in graduate student programs.

That's a lot of fixin' for something that supposedly wasn't broken.

Hat tip to PageOne Kentucky.

Felner's Lame Explanation

"I'm not innocent because
I've done all these stupid things.
I know it. And I'm in some trouble."
--Robert Felner

At C-J, Nancy Rodriguez has been reading the transcripts of former UofL Education Dean Robert Felner's interview with federal authorities. Her report shows a desperate Felner looking to explain away the inexplicable - how houses in his name were really an investment; that sort of thing. It's hard to imagine any jury buying what he's shovelling.

Felner said he used grants

to build up company

Ex-dean spoke to investigators

Former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner
told federal investigators last summer that he and an Illinois colleague [Thomas Schroeder] used federal grant money to invest in properties around the country because they were trying to build up a nonprofit company that they had created for educational research, according to a 320-page transcript of the interview...

In the June 20 interview...Felner acknowledged that he deposited into the Louisville account $450,000 in checks paid from a U of L federal grant that was intended to create a different center at U of L to help schools boost achievement under the No Child Left Behind law.

He also said he deposited payments made to the Illinois center from school districts in New York and other states for contract work he said he did.

Federal officials said during the interview that Felner later moved that money into investment and personal accounts, or made cash withdrawals. According to investigators, Felner also used the money to purchase four properties -- two in Florida and one each in Oldham County and Rhode Island.

They say he also used money from the accounts to have landscaping done at the properties, pay property taxes and mortgage costs and fix a home spa.

The properties are all in Felner's name, but he told investigators during the interview that they were bought as investments for the Illinois-based center...

"The reason we invested in the houses, the reason we brokered the account were to just to try to build something up so we could actually have the money to do the kind of work that we wanted to do," Felner told investigators during the daylong interview, which took place June 20, 2008, at U of L's College of Education and Human Development.

But that isn't allowed under regulations governing federal grants, according to James Tracy, vice president of research at the University of Kentucky.

When it comes to federal grants, the general rule is: "You personally cannot gain or divert federal funding to benefit yourself," Tracy said.

"You can take a salary from a grant, but you have to say that and you have to account for that at the university," he said, adding that what Felner said he was doing "doesn't sound reasonable."

Asked why he didn't file conflict of interest forms as required by the university Felner claimed that oversight on that matter was pretty much absent.

Nobody around here, I mean, I'm sorry, but nobody around here submits their
conflict-of-interest forms," Felner said.

Provost Shirley Willihnganz admitted previously that faculty had not always filed such forms, but that the university has since improved its monitoring.

Catching Up on Robert Felner

I'm a few stories behind on the Robert Felner scandal at UofL, so to catch up...

In March, UofL released its audit of the College of Education and Human Development in the wake of the Robert Felner saga.

PageOne Kentucky reported UofL failed to follow its own internal processes regarding a personal service contract involving grant funds suggesting that the university can't effectively audit itself. The university's audit disagreed.

By the end of the month the court held a hearing to determine if comments Felner made during the interview preceeding his arrest could be used against him in a criminal trial.

This from C-J:

During a six-hour-plus interview with federal investigators last summer, former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner went from being described as confident by investigators and a colleague to saying he was "freaked" and asking if he could go to jail.

"I'm starting to feel like I'm getting thrown under the bus," Felner said in a tape-recorded conversation with investigators that was played in court today during a hearing to decide if comments he made during the interview can be used against him in a criminal trial...

UofL Police Sgt. Jeffrey Jewell and U.S. Postal Inspector Jason Tatum... maintained ... that Felner did not invoke his right to a lawyer.

Recordings of the interview include Felner asking the investigators on several occasions whether he needed an attorney. At one point, Jewell responded: "That's your decision ... I won't talk you into it and I won't talk you out of it."

Cox also asked Jewell and Tatum if they told Felner that he could leave the interview at any time and had the right not to answer their questions. Both men said they did not tell Felner that, but Jewell said he repeatedly told Felner he was not under arrest.

During questioning by Cox, Jewell said he felt that Felner was "being deceptive in his responses."The tape includes segments where Jewell appears to put pressure on Felner to talk. Jewell tells Felner he plans on getting his IRS files, and that he knows Felner has "criminal problems."

"I don't want you to get caught up in lying to me OK?" Jewell said. "I can help you."

Cox has argued that Felner did not know he was free to leave because he was escorted to and from the bathroom and his car, and in at least two instances during the interview was asked to sit down.

In a tape-recorded exchange with Jewell at the end of the interview, Felner acknowledged he knew he was not under arrest, but said he did not know he had the option of leaving or not talking to the agents.

"I felt like I was escorted everywhere. I couldn't go anywhere. If I made a move to get up and leave, then I was in trouble," he said to Jewell. "... I didn't feel like I could leave the premises."

Finally, in an apparent abundance of support, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Edward C. Halperin, dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Louisville equated the Felner affair to the Duke Lacrosse scandal warning in C-J:

In view of the controversy swirling around former Dean Robert Felner and Thomas Schroeder, their recent indictments on mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy and income tax evasion, and the collateral accusations made regarding oversight procedures at the University of Louisville, I would like to offer some lessons I learned during the Duke lacrosse episode that might be of use to others:

Don't rush to judgment...no one has been convicted of anything. All citizens are innocent until proven guilty. We have no idea whether, in reference to the grant money in question, there is a "scandal of substantial depth and magnitude" until all the facts are made available and the matter has been addressed in the courts...

Fair enough. We look forward to reading his next letter to the editor when the court has ruled.

Hat tip to PageOne.

Prosecutors Oppose Separate Trial For Felner, Co-Defendant

US Attorneys have asked a judge to deny Thomas Schroeder's request for a separate trial from his co-defendant former University of Louisville Education Dean Robert Felner in the fraud case against them.

Felner and business associate Schroeder are accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $2 million in grant money from UofL and the University of Rhode Island. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

This from WLKY:

In a motion filed Monday, U.S. attorneys argued that the evidence against Felner and Schroeder is nearly "identical," and that there's no need for a separate trial.

"Regardless of the intertwined evidence, the defendant can not demonstrate that prejudice warranting severance would result if the defendants were tried together," wrote assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Calhoun.

Quick Hits

To fight truancy, Wise County judge trades hall monitors for ankle monitors: Wise County is going high-tech on truants. To keep tabs on students who are habitually absent, Justice of the Peace Terri Johnson can now place a GPS ankle monitor on them for 30 days. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

State revenue still sliding: Kentuckians can expect more state budget cuts or tax increases this summer, a leading lawmaker warned Tuesday as newly released data showed state revenues taking a nose dive in February. (H-L)

Player safety bill might be put off until fall: Efforts to prevent heatstroke among young athletes were in doubt Monday for this legislative session after the Senate Education Committee voted to defer the matter for study until fall.The move came despite testimony by University of Kentucky football coach Rich Brooks that many younger coaches in the state have little or no training in how to recognize heatstroke or what to do about it. (H-L)

University tuition increases capped: As expected, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education Friday limited tuition increases at state colleges for the 2009-10 academic year. The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville can boost tuition by no more than 5 percent.The state's regional universities Eastern Kentucky, Morehead State, Murray State, Western Kentucky, Northern Kentucky and Kentucky State can raise tuition by no more than 4 percent. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System was limited to increases of 3 percent. (H-L)

UK board OKs 5 percent tuition hike: The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees overrode opposition from some of its members Tuesday and voted to raise tuition by 5 percent, the maximum allowed under a state cap. (H-L)

West Jessamine student with MRSA has died: A West Jessamine High School student battling a drug-resistant staph infection died Tuesday morning at the University of Kentucky Hospital, according to a relative.Ryan Robinson, a junior, had been placed on life support after contracting methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, said Sam Pile, who coached the boy on the Jessamine Youth Soccer Association's Storm Soccer Club. (H-L)

Teacher's aide waives formal arraignment in sex-texting case: A Madison Middle School teacher's assistant who admitted that he exchanged inappropriate text messages with a student waived his formal arraignment Thursday in Madison County Circuit Court. (H-L)

Teachers Want Stimulus $ To Cover Loans: A group of Kentucky teachers asked lawmakers today to divert some stimulus money to a program which was supposed to give them free student loans. That program is out of money, leaving thousands of Kentucky teachers holding the bag on thousands of dollars in student loans. (Mark Hebert)

McClatchy To Eliminate 1,600 Jobs, 15 Percent Of Its Workforce: McClatchy Co. is shearing another 1,600 jobs in a cost-cutting spree that has clipped nearly one-third of the newspaper publisher's work force in less than a year. The layoffs will start before April. (Huffington Post)

University of Louisville: Financial Audit Update From Robert Felner Scandal, Open Records Request Fulfilled: Last Tuesday we discussed the financial audit of the University of Louisville’s College of Education and Human Development. That story revealed that UofL had not legally complied with our Open Records Request for a copy of the audit and we were reduced to linking to the audit’s executive summary, which was presented to the University’s Board of Trustees. Once that story went live, UofL’s legal counsel promptly and professionally complied by fulfilling our original request of the audit. (PageOne Kentucky)

The Robert Felner Scandal and Internal Damage Control at the University of Louisville: More on the Robert Felner front at the University of Louisville. Along with previously mentioned Open Records Requests, we’ve finally received copies of late 2008 emails regarding the Felner scandal and what we deduce to being expected internal damage control and CYA. (PageOne Kentucky)

Teacher Sex With Teenage Students Would be Felony Under S.C. Bill: South Carolina teachers who have sex with students 16 and older could be sent to prison for up to five years, under a bill that won initial approval from state lawmakers. (Ed Week)

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal of Student Armband Protest: The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to hear the appeal of an Arkansas school district over students’ black-armband protests against a school uniform policy. (Ed Week)

Amid protests, CMS sets stage for teacher cuts: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved a plan Tuesday that could lead to laying off 456 teachers and 83 assistant principals. (Charlotte Observer)

Charter schools' biggest crisis: A place to call home: A Georgia public charter school is crammed into a rented church, while a school building nearby stands empty.The school is bursting at the seams. Desks are packed so tightly in trailer classrooms that a fourth-grader at the International Community School (ICS) can scarcely slip out for a drink of water without knocking into someone. (Christian Science Monitor)

"Trust Me," Says Michelle (Aphorism: When the Powerful Say Trust Me the Powerless Tend to Get Pregnant): To some Michelle Rhee is a superstar, taking on teacher unions and creating a merit-based pay urban school system. For others she is a chimera, filled with fanciful ideas, with a bloated ego, out to destroy the lives of teachers and kids, to satisfy her lust for power. (Ed In The Apple)

Students post videos of schoolyard brawls online: In schoolyards across the country, all it takes to attract a crowd are the words "Fight! Fight! Fight!" (Associated Press)

Vanderbilt study ties autism to digestive problems: Same gene could cause autism and gastrointestinal disorders. Research released this week revealed 118 families out of 214 selected to participate have at least one child with both autism and gastrointestinal conditions, according to Daniel Campbell, research assistant professor of pharmacology and the study's lead author. (The Tennessean)

Secular Education, Catholic Values: Catholic-turned-charter schools in Washington are at the cusp of what is becoming a popular exit strategy for urban parochial schools facing untenable operating costs. (NY Times, Andrew Councill photo)

Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times: Full-time faculty jobs have not been easy to come by in recent decades, but this year the new crop of Ph.D. candidates is finding the prospects worse than ever. (NY Times)

U.S. Backs Student in Strip-Search Case: Strip-searches of students in public schools are unconstitutional in all but narrow circumstances, the federal government told the U.S. Supreme Court in a brief in an important education case to be decided this term. The U.S. brief in Safford Unified School District v. Redding (Case No. 08-479) largely takes the side of Savanna Redding, who was a 13-year-old middle school student in 2003 when she was stripped-searched by school officials looking for prescription-strength Ibuprofen pills. (School Law)

Administrator Loses Case Over Surreptitious Phone Call: Call it the Revenge of the School Administrator's Scorned Wife. A New Mexico assistant principal made a "sexually explicit" phone call to his school secretary, as court papers put it. It isn't clear whether there was a romantic interest between the two, or whether the call was a form of sexual harassment. What is clear is that the assistant principal's wife had installed a recording device on the couple's home phone. (School Law)

Senate vote means end of DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: The U.S. Senate on Tuesday opted to kill D.C.’s federally funded school voucher program rather than risk sinking the $410 billion omnibus spending bill that will fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. (DC Examiner)

35,000 college seniors apply to teach in low-achieving schools: Teach for America, a Peace Corps-style program, seeks to eliminate educational inequality, close the achievement gap and catalyze change in education. (San Jose Mercury News)

Schroeder Blames Felner, Wants Separate Trial

Citing "the gross disparity of proof against the two Defendants, [and] the presence of antagonistic and mutually exclusive defenses," indicted co-conpirator Thomas Schroeder has asked the US District Court in Louisville for a separate trial.

Schroeder, through his attorney, David S. Mejia, is concerned that a possible "spillover" effect may occur if the two defendants are tried together.

According to the motion, "the potential that evidence against the principle (sic) Defendant [former UofL Education Dean Robert Felner] may inspire transference of guilt from Felner to Schroeder... will deprive Thomas Schroeder of a fair trial if he is not granted a separate trial.

Read Schroeder's Motion to Sever-Misjoinder.

The Defendants were indicted on October 22, 2008, of multiple-counts alleging an 8-year mail fraud conspiracy covering the time period of July 2001 to July 2008. Robert Felner was indicted in his capacity as a Director of School Education and Professor at the University of Rhode Island and thereafter in his capacity as Dean of the College of Education at the University of Louisville. Thomas Schroeder is indicted in his capacity as the incorporator of the National Center on Public Education and Prevention, a non-profit corporation in Illinois.

Felner had obtained contracts to survey and conduct assessments for several school districts: Atlanta (2001-2004); Buffalo and the New York Middle School Association (2002-2007); Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District (2002-2004). In 2007 the University of Louisville received a No Child Left Behind Act grant, which was administered by Robert Felner as Dean of the College of Education.

Former Superintendent, John Deasy, had given that Malibu contract to Felner. The entire $375,000 amount went to Felner's shell corporation and ultimately ended up in Felner's bank account. Deasy was a Felner colleague from the University of Rhode Island who - after awarding Felner the grant - was gifted a suspiciously quick doctorate under the guidance of Felner. Deasy's dissertation is dated seven months before he even enrolled at UofL. Felner supervised no other doctoral students during his five years at the university. Ray & Associates found nothing troublesome about the doctorate when they presented Deasy as a superintendent candidate to Prince Georges County (Md) schools. UofL quickly declared the doctorate to be proper.

The government's case alleges that from 2001 through 2008 Robert Felner defrauded the numerous educational entities of $2,534,577.00 Of that amount, "Thomas Schroeder received nearly one-tenth" which he says was legitimate income upon which he paid taxes.

"The fact that Thomas Schroeder is alleged to have received approximately 296,000 over eight years in connection with his work at his Illinois non-profit corporation (which he properly reported on his tax returns), while Robert Felner gained nearly two and a half million in fraudulent proceeds, is so great a disparity as to warrant separate trials of these two individuals."

"The indictment alleges Robert Felner – alone – committed repeated acts of tax evasion in the years 2002 through 2007, by his individual failure to report income (fraud proceeds he alone received) totaling $1,478,759.00." ...

Schroeder says he will prove that "the sole person who initiated the negotiations, entered into agreements, fulfilled or failed to fulfill the promises, and who committed the acts of concealment, misrepresentation and fraud was – Robert Felner."

Schroeder claims that Felner screwed him over just like everyone else.

Hat Tip top PageOne Kentucky.

Has Ramsey's Post-Felner PR Campaign Resorted to Lies?

The allegation being made over at Page One Kentucky is that UofL President James Ramsey "lied his rear end off" in a radio interview this week on WFPL's "State of Affairs."

When the interviewer asked Ramsey about the "damage to trust" due to numerous faculty grievances that were swept under the rug at UofL's College of Education, and whether those concerns were "heard and responded to" Ramsey responded that his trust was violated by former Dean Robert Felner.

To a degree, that must surely be true.

But still surprisingly, he treated the whole matter as if the only problem was a failure of the process - that Felner, not being from Louisville, did not follow the process. But Ramsey seemed to wash his hands of the process saying,

"I'm not involved in it, and really, the Provost is not involved in it." ...

"There were four grievances filed, against the former dean and none of them really made it to my desk as a problem."

Really? ...as a problem?

So is Ramsey suggesting that he was unaware that there were real problems? This, despite as many as 33 grievances consultations for sexual harassment and intimidation, four of which lead to formal grievances being filed under UofL's process, but most of which did not due an acknowledged fear that complaints would only lead faculty to be retaliated against.

And if Ramsey didn't see any real problems, why not?

As PageOne Kentucky reported, in 2005 the College of Education and Human Development was responsible for 42% (13) of faculty grievance consultations campus-wide. The 2006 report from Faculty Grievance Officer Suzanne Meeks showed that 15 (56%) of the 27 grievance consultations that took place were from the CEHD. Meeks confirmed in her letter that the Provost was very well aware of the problems.

Due to the number of consultations from CEHD, and the level of negative affect associated with those consultations, I have worked with the Provost’s office to recommend that they use administrative mechanisms to restore morale, faculty governance, and collegial interaction there. Although I believe interventions have been attempted, it is not be sense that they have yet been effective.

Again in 2007 more than 33% of the grievance consultations on campus came from the College of Education.

No problem?

Meeks reported to the Faculty Senate,

As with previous years, a disproportionate number of consultations have related to the College of Education and Human Development (one-third). Over the three years of my tenure as FGO, I have consulted with at least one-third of the CEHD faculty. Throughout this time, I have heard talk of retaliation against faculty members who file grievances or requests for mediation. The majority of those I have spoken with are not willing to file grievances because of this fear of retaliation, which extends to those who testify at grievance hearings as well. This situation demonstrates a significant weakness in the grievance system, in that there is no way to prevent such retaliation when one files a complaint against someone who has the power to determine work load agreements and salary increases, approve expenditures, and allocate resources.

Is Ramsey suggesting he and Provost Shirley Willihnganz were unaware of faculty senate proceedings? Both admitted they discounted the rare "no confidence" taken against Felner.

More likely, they didn't want to see the complaints as "a problem" - therefore, they weren't. In their minds Felner deserved credit for raising CEHD's ranking in US News and World Report. In his now famously unfortunate quip, Ramsey reduced such complaints to "anonymous crap." Calling faculty who were afraid to put their names on such complaints “cheap,” Ramsey credited Felner with “bringing about change that needed to be made.”

Willihnganz acknowledged that "the heat on this one is on us."

Now Ramsey says, "We're taking this very seriously," and called the whole episode "an opportunity to improve."

In an August letter, Ramsey assured the university community that an audit would take place. Now, the quality of that audit is being called into question. Page One Kentucky now reports,

Thanks to open records requests, we have been able to determine that there isn’t an audit per se. ...What is available, however, is a PowerPoint presentation from [Cotton + Allen] given to the Board of Trustees. It’s ‘Grants Management Internal Control - Preliminary Report to the Board of Trustees.’

See it here.

Ramsey called for a review of the grievance process and the entire shared governance model but the faculty committee that undertook the review was not charged with exploring infractions at the university, so it didn't.

Meanwhile, WLKY reports, a federal judge will hear arguments on March 25th about whether to suppress evidence in Felner's fraud case. Judge Charles R. Simpson also ruled against a separate motion asking him to suppress evidence taken from Felner's new office at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.