Young charter school founder resigns
The 22-year-old founder of a recently approved charter high school resigned Tuesday after apparent misrepresentations about his educational and professional background came to light.
Ted Morris Jr. of Rochester wrote on a 2013 charter school application that he received a bachelor's degree from Western Governors University and had served as assistant CEO of a local nonprofit; both assertions, among others, turned out to be false.
He submitted his resignation Tuesday afternoon, according to Peter Kozik, a Keuka College professor and fellow trustee who now will take over as lead applicant.
"It was too much of a distraction," Kozik said.
Kozik was circumspect about the situation and declined to say whether the revelations were new to the trustees but said they "took it under advisement" when they heard about them Tuesday.
The trustees still plan to open the school in fall 2015 as scheduled. Kozik said he discussed the issue with the state education department Tuesday and came away with the impression that the plan can go forward.
"The plan's outstanding; the board's outstanding," he said. ""Life can be difficult for sure. This is not the first parting I had. ... We need to move ahead and help educate the children of Rochester."
At issue are several biographical items Morris included on paperwork submitted to the state Department of Education for Greater Works Charter School, as well as assertions he made elsewhere.
• He said Sunday that he graduated from School Without Walls in Rochester, but clarified Monday that he withdrew from that school in 2008 and graduated later that year from Penn Foster High School, a private online high school based in Pennsylvania.
Former School Without Walls principal Dan Drmacich and the Rochester School District both verified that Morris left the district in 2008.
"From what I remember, he was very articulate, a great conversationalist, but ... he didn't go to many of his classes," Drmacich said. "We constantly worked with him through his teacher adviser and the school counselor, to no avail — to the point he realized and we realized he was just coming to school and hanging out versus attending classes on a regular basis."
Morris denied not attending class regularly but said he did not feel challenged at School Without Walls, part of the reason he left for an online school.
• Morris said in interviews and in paperwork submitted to the state in 2013 that he got a bachelor's degree from Western Governors University, an online college based in Salt Lake City. But a school spokesman said he attended classes there but did not graduate and is not currently enrolled.
• He then allegedly got master's and doctoral degrees from Concordia University Chicago through a program that required him to be on campus for one weekend a month, he said in interviews Sunday and Monday. But that school said it has no record of him ever enrolling there.
The resume he submitted to the state in 2014 listed bachelor's and master's degrees from Concordia (omitting the Western Governors University reference) and a pending doctoral degree from the online Grand Canyon University. He said in an interview Tuesday, however, that he only took a few classes at Grand Canyon and then unenrolled.
Representatives from Penn Foster and Grand Canyon could not be reached to verify his claims regarding their schools.
• The successful 2014 charter application for the school did not include a resume, but an earlier iteration in 2013 did, and it points to some apparent misrepresentations.
Morris wrote he was the assistant chief executive officer for the Hickok Center for Brain Injury, with duties including "developed and implemented all program policies and procedures" and "served as acting CEO in the absence of the CEO."
Elaine Comarella, the center's CEO, said his title was actually administrative assistant, and that the responsibilities he listed in the resume were "a little overshot."
"He worked on all those things, but he didn't actually do all that stuff himself," she said.
Morris said that he meant to describe his job as assistant to the CEO, but that he did serve as acting CEO at one point, a claim Comarella disputed.
• Another of the jobs listed on his resume was director of Church Women United's Task Force on Courts. That was accurate, but in the resume he submitted to get that position, obtained by the Democrat and Chronicle, he claimed he had bachelor's and master's degrees from Almeda University, an unaccredited online school in Idaho.
That apparently isn't true. He said Tuesday he'd never heard of that school and didn't know why it was on his resume.
A third job listing was senior administrator for Victory Living Christian Faith Centers from 2003 — when he was a few months shy of his 11th birthday — to 2010. The resume said he "hired, trained and supervised a staff of seven administrators ... (for) a national Christian organization)."
Morris reiterated Tuesday that he did in fact start serving as an administrator at age 10, "as little as I was," and "did all the official paperwork" in those seven years. His hiring and supervisory responsibilities started when he was around 15 or 16 years old and were done together with other leaders, he said.
Victory Living didn't return a call seeking comment Tuesday.
Morris also verified that he began planning the school at age 18, including recruiting a board of trustees. He found them mostly through posts on Craigslist, LinkedIn and websites for nonprofits, he said. Among them are two longtime college professors and a few local business owners.
One trustee, Penfield insurance saleswoman Emily Robbins, met Morris through Sparq Rochester, an eight-week youth program he helped fund and run in 2013. She said she met him several times in person but only learned his exact age in the last few months.
"He works harder than most people I know," she said. "I'm in my 30s, and I haven't accomplished a tenth of what he's accomplished at 22. ... I think what he's trying to do for the city of Rochester and today's youth is admirable."
Comarella, the Hickok Center CEO, also praised Morris, despite the misrepresentation of his role there: "He is a very talented individual and he did a great job," she said.
In the fall 2014 charter approval cycle, 51 organizations submitted letters of intent, 17 were invited to submit full proposals, and only four, including Greater Works, were approved, according to the state education department.
Perry White was part of the leadership team that got Vertus Charter School approved to open this fall; it currently has 100 ninth-graders, about the same size Greater Works will start with.
"We found the (approval) process to be very rigorous and professional," White said. "We felt they required a lot of detail and really scrutinized (us). Having led a charter for 12 years in Cleveland ... I was comparatively very impressed by how seriously the charter office took its responsibility as a gatekeeper."
White also said his school opened with the help of $750,000 in private funds to go along with substantial public startup funding. That money went toward buying computers, paying staff and is helping parry other expenses until the school reaches full capacity.
By comparison, Morris said Greater Works would rely almost entirely on the public money. An online fundraiser created in May has raised about 10 percent of its $10,000 goal.
Andrew Brown, a member of the Board of Regents, said in an email that the board and the State Education Department "undertake a very rigorous process" before granting a charter.
"That was done in this case," Brown said. "We rely on a considerable amount of data and information provided by applicants, along with conducting many in-person interviews before reaching a decision.
"If it were to turn out that we were deliberately provided misleading information by an applicant, that would of course call for further review of the issuance of the charter."
JMURPHY7@DemocratandChronicle.com