Kennedy HS whistleblower sues charter group
A former charter school network administrator who was fired last year after alerting superiors to suspicious grade changes at John F. Kennedy High School, is suing the school’s charter operator — the New Beginnings Schools Foundation — citing the state’s whistleblower law.
In the suit, the former administrator, Runell King, alleges he was fired immediately after threatening to go to the media when the charter group dismissed his concerns.
The timing, the suit charges, suggests that his refusal to participate in apparent grade inflation, telling his bosses about it and then threatening to go public were why he was fired.
King ultimately did go public with his concerns last year, shortly after his firing. In March 2019, he told The Lens that higher-ups at the New Beginnings Schools Foundation initially failed to conduct a thorough investigation into about a dozen instances of students’ grades being inflated at the Gentilly high school. Shortly after the story was published, the network’s board authorized a new investigation, which eventually uncovered much deeper problems at the school.
The network’s internal investigation — along with work by a contractor hired to help manage the network and probes by the state and NOLA Public Schools district — uncovered widespread mismanagement, special education problems and student CONTINUE READING: Kennedy HS whistleblower sues charter group | The Lens