Editorial

LSU canceled the Region VII fair and the statewide fair because of midyear budget cuts demanded by the Jindal administration. Upon this, Pelican Educational Foundation announced it would hold the regional and the statewide science fairs this year instead of LSU.
“There have been literally thousands of students preparing for this, and we don’t want to let them down,” said Tevfik Kosar, President of the Board for the Pelican Educational Foundation.
The fairs, originally scheduled for Feb. 22 and Feb. 23 for Region VII, and March 28 to March 31 for the state Science Fair, were going to be held weeks later. However, LSU, later on, announced that they decided to organize the science fairs again. President of Pelican Education Foundation was told that Pelican’s intervention to organize those fairs had made LSU consider organizing the fairs again.
Consequently, the science fairs were organized by LSU in cooperation with Pelican, whose name was added as one of the sponsors of the organization.
Here, Pelican’s role to reinstate the organization of a traditional science fair is crucial. Without Pelican, neither LSU nor any other educational institution would be able to actualize the years long event.
Note: the relevant link of this news was removed by Baton Rouge newspaper: http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/82134652.html
You can still find out the full link on Abramson’s website: http://abramsonst.org/news/2theadvocate.htm

It has been determined that a larceny took place in the library building of Abramson Science and Technology Charter School on July 19, 2011. According to the police report, the power switch of the building was turned off and then someone broke into the building by breaking the window. The report also says that the drawers belonging to the librarian’s desk were rummaged through and left open. Two files in the file cabinet of School Counselor’s office were stolen. Interestingly, the files belonged to two five-year-old kindergarten students who were involved in the incident that happened earlier at our school. Isn’t it too convenient that the files of the students under investigation were stolen just before the investigation begins? The police, in the meantime, took blood samples and fingerprints and we will continue to closely monitor this issue.

This latest unfortunate development about Abramson has deeply saddened us. For four years, we have been providing excellent education to New Orleans community and our academic success is clearly an impartial indication for our dedication we have been putting together. There are several points to be considered here. These points prove that we are 100% right in our case and we certainly have the utmost self-confidence possible to answer those unfounded allegations.

As we all know, most traditional public schools are troubled with the incidents of rape, drug, gangs and teen pregnancy (just one example out of hundreds can be seen on this link http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/04/11-year-old_wicker_students_ra.html) and none of those schools have been closed because of those widespread incidents. However, is it a conscientious behavior to suspend a school just because of one single event that was professionally handled by the pertinent parties and whose case was closed by the police due to lack of evidence? As Abramson family, we are proud of the fact that our school is drug-free, gang-free and we do not tolerate any misconduct within the classrooms and the school property. We believe it is not good intention to suspend or close the school by singling out an incident.

After last year’s incident, Pelican Educational Foundation changed the top-level administrators, including Mr. Bayhan, the CEO of Pelican Educational Foundation and Mr. Dokmen, the School Principal, as part of a goodwill gesture to the state authorities. These moves hinted that Pelican Educational Foundation would be complying with the corrective action plan that the state imposed and cooperating with the state officials.

The state does not have the right to suspend any school. Moreover, we see a weird pattern operating with regards to this issue. For example, the state issued the press release and the letter on the 15th of July, but an official from the state came to the school on the 25th of July. It seems the decision (or the verdict) had been taken (given) first and then the official(s) came for the investigation. Besides, we have never been given the due process for the right to defend ourselves. We are confident that, given the opportunity to school with due process to address each of these allegations and claims, the suspension will be revoked and lifted immediately.