Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin' to sell
-- Bob Dylan

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

After being fired by KIPP for sexual misconduct, Feinberg is back in business.


Mike Feinberg was fired from KIPP in February over allegations of sexual misconduct with a child. Somehow, it took 14 years for KIPP to discover that one of its co-founders had been sexually involved with former students.

But now Feinberg is back in the school privatization swing. After a quick rehab job, underwritten by the the Texas School Venture Fund (Feinberg's own creation) he has teamed up with veteran school voucher warrior Howard Fuller to start a new consulting group whose stated goal is, "helping educators create new schools and assisting single-site schools and existing networks of schools in opening new campuses." Feinberg says, he wants to work at least in part with KIPP alumni who want to start their own schools.

Feinberg is launching the new organization with Texas billionaire, a self-described "conservative communitarian," and long-time charter school supporter, Leo Linbeck III.

Howard Fuller
This will also be Fuller's attempt at a comeback since his right-wing patrons pulled their funding from his anti-union, pro-voucher group, Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO).

Feinberg was fired after being accused of sexually abusing a student in the late 1990s, but the allegation didn't surface until 2017, according to KIPP.

KIPP Houston Public Schools and an independent law firm hired by the network investigated the claims, and found "the allegation to have credibility". During the course of the investigation, the law firm, WilmerHale, turned up two other misconduct allegations against Feinberg by adult employees of KIPP Houston, both of whom were former students of the charter network. One reached a settlement, while the other allegation could not be corroborated, according to KIPP officials at the time.