Ben Chavis (educator)

Early life and education

Born Benford Chavis, the eldest of six children in a poor Lumbee Indian family in Robeson County, North Carolina, he was soon called "Ben", a nickname he has used all his life. He had a difficult relationship with his alcoholic father, who died when he was young. His mother remarried. None of his parents had much formal education, but Chavis said his stepfather taught him discipline, how to work hard, and to be accountable, a philosophy he applied as an educator.

Chavis attended local segregated public schools, where he was most interested in sports. He accepted a track scholarship by Oklahoma City University. Two years in, he was offered an academic scholarship by the University of Arizona, and transferred there, majoring in education. He thought at the time that the field would offer easy conditions. Chavis graduated with a bachelor's degree in education; he had worked part time as a school janitor to help pay for it. He continued to study, working on a master's degree through night classes at Northern Arizona University. Later he completed a doctorate at the University of Arizona, in education, with what he said were concentrations in philosophy and anthropology.

Career

In 1988 Chavis became a tenure-track professor in the ethnic studies department at San Francisco State University. In 2000 he was working as superintendent of schools at the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona.

That year he was recruited by a representative of Oakland's Native American community for the position of principal at the struggling American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, starting in 2001. By 2005 he had succeeded in dramatically raising scores of the middle school students and increasing enrollment at the school.

Chavis had generated considerable controversy by his methods. He was criticized by some parents and faculty for harsh treatment and verbal abuse of students and teachers. Chavis zealously mocked liberal orthodoxy and was praised by conservatives such as columnist George Will and Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute. The school claimed to be just as intolerant of unions as it is of drug dealers, and prided itself on firing under-performing teachers.

He worked with the school's board in 2007 to respond to community demand for more classes, and they added another middle school, AIPCS II, and a high school, AIPHS, under a new charter organization known as the American Indian Model Schools (AIMS) system.

While Chavis stepped down as head of the schools in summer 2007, the board asked him to serve in an executive, consulting role, and he was active in the schools' affairs. A K-4 elementary school was added to AIPCS II in 2012. During these years, the AIM system student body had a growing proportion of African American, Asian and Latino students, with American Indians comprising a smaller percentage. He resigned all ties in January 2012. By the 2012 school year, some 90 percent of the AIMS students were ethnic Asian. Some critics of the system attributed the high scores of the system schools to the student body, known for a culture that demanded high performance.

California state "extraordinary audit"

Chavis resigned all ties at the school system in January 2012 and returned to North Carolina, where he had been resident again for some time. After the results of an "extraordinary audit" by the California financial management system were released later in 2012, Chavis was strongly criticized for allegedly receiving more than $3.8 million in school funds for directing school payments to his and his wife's business without authorized contracts, from 2006 -2010. In addition, the board of the charter school system was criticized for lax accounting and financial mismanagement.

The audit "also documented more than $25,000 in unauthorized credit-card purchases by Chavis from 2009 to 2011, including $295 for Giants tickets and charges for restaurants in other states, airfare, hotels and items from stores in North Carolina, where Chavis lived at the time."

Following the results of the audit and other investigations of Chavis related to treatment of students and faculty, in February 2013, OUSD revoked the school's charter.

After Chavis' resignation, the school appealed the revocation and struggled for the next year to keep its charter. It gained a preliminary injunction from the Superior Court of Alameda County allowing it to continue to operate the three system schools. AIMS has since received a 5-year renewal of the charter.

During the next 2 1/2 years, the charter school system paid Chavis an additional $8.6 million to lease buildings which he owned in Oakland, because it was unable to find other spaces for its operations.

In North Carolina Chavis started a camp on his property to help students improve their math scores. It was modeled on the SAIL program used in California schools.

In January 2017 he claimed to help orchestrate a change in the county's school board. He said he had encouraged the firing of Superintendent Tommy Lowray of the Public Schools of Robeson County and the effort by six board members to hire Virginia-based educator Thomas Graves. Lowry filed a lawsuit against the board charging they had violated their own hiring policy in trying to hire Graves.

March 2017 Federal indictments

Chavis was indicted on March 30, 2017, by the federal government on six felony counts of money laundering and mail fraud; the case was filed in federal district court in San Francisco, California. The charges relate to his receiving federal grant money from 2006 to 2012 for the charter schools in Oakland, and his allegedly misusing the money in order to make lease payments on property he owned. The charges say that he benefited by $1.1 million on his transactions, as the schools made payments on property he owned, in what were illegal conflict-of-interest transactions. He was arrested and taken into custody in Wilmington, North Carolina. He will be assigned a federal public defender, as he says he cannot afford counsel, and will be tried in California.

Representation in other media

Chavis was among reform educators featured in the documentary Flunked (2008), directed by Corey Burres, about the failures of the United States public school systems and efforts in educational reforms.