FAME School Gets Extension of Its Charter Despite Audit
Shikeba Mehmood, center, takes a break with her friends during recess at the FAME charter school, which serves many Muslim students.
By CAROL POGASH
Published: March 11, 2010
A Fremont charter school that was the subject of a highly critical state audit will be allowed to operate, despite a continuing review by the Alameda County district attorney’s office.
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Maram Alaiwat, the director of FAME, has come under scrutiny.
The Alameda County Board of Education voted 5 to 0 Tuesday night, with two members absent, to extend the school’s charter for five years, regardless of the concerns expressed by the Alameda school superintendent that the school’s director may have engaged in unethical and inappropriate behavior.
Those facts, seemingly at odds, underscore the unusual status of charter schools. Intended as laboratories for educational innovation, they have broad latitude in many of their operations, and the authorities are often unclear or in disagreement about the extent of their oversight powers. The case of the FAME Public Charter School — its formal name is Families of Alameda for Multi-Cultural/Multi-Lingual Education — illustrates the bureaucratic no man’s land occupied by the schools.
Last year, state auditors pinpointed dozens of irregularities, including unusually high compensation of more than $336,663 for FAME’s director, Maram Alaiwat, for whom the school also bought a $75,000 Mercedes. In interviews with The New York Times, former employees have described a climate of intimidation punctuated by capricious firings, and a purchasing process so haphazard that textbook