Tom Vander Ark Attacks ‘Agenda-Driven Criticism’

After receiving flack from the media and the board for the previously abandoned Bed-Stuy charter school project Brooklyn City Prep, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Executive Tom Vander Ark wants to paint a different picture and share his side of the story:

“The story was very inaccurate and very unfair,” Vander Ark wrote in an email to Patch.

After the New York Times reported Vander Ark had walked away from the three school charter projects, including the tech-focused school that was set to launch in Bed-Stuy in the Fall, Bed-Stuy the board of directors had already filed plans to try again for 2012 with new management.  

To hit back, Vander Ark filed a letter to the editor to the New York Times.

While its true Vander Ark invested millions and did eventually walk away from the project, he insists he didn’t leave the school in empty hands.

"Because of the fiscal crisis, they didn’t receive pre-opening grants, and each elected to take another planning year," Vander Ark said in his response letter. "However, 70 percent of new charters in New Jersey didn’t receive pre-opening grants in 2009-10, and they, too, took an additional planning year.

“When they were unable to raise grant funding, they asked us for a very large loan,” Vander Ark explained. “Instead of agreeing to their demands we introduced them to an organization that agreed to fully fund the opening.”

Vander Ark didn’t cite which management team he introduced the Brooklyn City Prep board to or when, but as of last week James Wiley and the rest of the board didn’t reflect on the relationship in the same way according to the reports.

Bed-Stuy Patch reached out to Wiley for a response Vander Ark's emails to Patch and letter to the Times, and he denied comment.

In the Patch report, Wiley summarized saying the project had just been approved by the Department of Education and they were steadily searching for new management unlike their experience from working with Vander Ark.

“A more cautious approach is an understatement,” Wiley said in the Bed-Stuy patch story. “I think right now we’ve got to take a forensic approach. We took a lot of time on the last one. All assumptions are off the table.”

Even if Vander Ark generalizes the breakdown as an isolated incident after a long successful run of launching charter schools around the country, Brooklyn City Prep has moved on and Vander Ark insists his mission to build prosperous charter schools lives on.

“I hope the agenda driving criticism of these efforts doesn’t undermine the paramount goal: transformative urban schools for kids who have one shot at a 21st-century education,” Vander Ark concluded in his letter.