Friday, September 27, 2013

School board member accused of possible wrongdoing in foreign student recruitment

School board member accused of possible wrongdoing in foreign student recruitment:

SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER ACCUSED OF POSSIBLE WRONGDOING IN FOREIGN STUDENT RECRUITMENT

If there's new money to be made -- particularly from China -- someone is going to find a way to exploit it.

What the hell is going on in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District? A recent investigation in the school's international students program lays out serious problems, including host homes with no heat and inadequate food, students subject to verbal abuse, as well as a board member's potential conflict of interest: Report outlines problems with foreign student recruitment at Hacienda La Puente schools.

Here is the situation as I understand it... Basically, a recruiting company has been making a ton of money by bringing over Chinese students who want to study in the United States. But when they get here, the students are completely neglected and even abused. An employee of the recruiting company blew the whistle on what's been going down, prompting the district to conduct an independent investigation that verified his claims.

You can read the full report here. (It's long.) But that just got the ball rolling...


A particularly damning part of the report focuses on a possible conflict of interest created by Hacienda La Puente school board member Joseph Chang and his relationship to Norman Hsu, a former board member who runs the