Oh My! KUOW Reports on Boys&Girls Clubs of King County

You turn your back for a bit and look what happens. By the way, I enjoyed the slight snow in Seattle but yes, coming home to 79 degrees works for me.

First up, the KUOW story about the Boys & Girls Club and issues at Sugiyama High School. This story was written by Ann Dornfeld who used to cover the SPS beat but honestly, her lengthier investigative stories are fantastic and this one is no exception. 

There was a district investigation into these events and I will request a copy but that will take months to receive.

It was 2023, and the seniors were part of a new, elite basketball program, Great Futures Prep, a partnership between Seattle Public Schools and the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County.

It was based at Alan T. Sugiyama High School in Rainier Beach, which focuses on students at risk of dropping out, including teen parents. The school helps students catch up on credits and find career paths, like music production and horticulture.

The basketball program was its latest venture – and, an investigation would later find, it was in violation of district policies. 

 The catch was that families were being charged tuition for a public high school to the tune of $22K. That's a big nope. 

KUOW explains:

Sports prep programs, typically based at private schools, are part of a growing industry aimed at helping teens vie for college athletic scholarships.

The Great Futures website promised students a “national game schedule, elite level competition, and maximum exposure.” Their days would be highly structured: They’d attend Sugiyama High School, with basketball coaching in the morning and afternoons at the Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Club; weight training; nutritionist-designed meals; and help getting noticed and recruited by colleges.

Sports prep schools often let students prolong their high school athletic careers – and college recruitment opportunities – by moving their graduation date back a year, a practice called “reclassifying.”

It took a counselor at Sugiyama to blow the whistle to SPS in February 2024. Both the principal, Joe Powell and a teacher who coached basketball at Sugiyama were put on administrative leave and SPS immediately ceased using the program. 

 How it worked

Nearly all the students had enrolled in the district as homeless students “as a means of subverting the deadline for nonresident student enrollment,” the investigator found, because the federal McKinney-Vento law allows homeless families flexibility in when and where they enroll in school.

None of the students were actually homeless, the investigation found.

"Claiming McKinney-Vento status would be inconsistent with what is known about the Great Futures Prep players’ situations, given that their families were each paying a substantial fee to Boys & Girls Clubs of King County in order for them to participate,” the investigator wrote – between $5,000 and $14,000 after scholarships.

This is really and truly disgusting. McKinney-Vento is for students who are dire straits and need that attention and resource. To use it for any other purpose is vile.

Naming Names

- Principal Joe Powell told the investigator that he was unaware that students had falsely claimed homelessness, and was not involved in recruiting or enrolling teens for the program. However, the investigation found that Powell had his secretary give new Great Futures students McKinney-Vento questionnaires to fill out.

“We’ll be offering our young people another pathway,” said Joe Powell, principal of Sugiyama High School, in a promotional video for Great Futures Prep. “In today's day and age, in order to complete high school, you have to have had some form of pathway that you committed to while you're within school.”

That's rich given it doesn't appear these students even attended any classes.


- Dominique Brooks, a Boys & Girls Clubs employee who managed the program at the school and served as head coach, instructed families to claim homelessness, the investigation found. “While Mr. Brooks denied being involved in enrolling students or having them claim McKinney-Vento status, records make clear he was involved in this scheme,” said the investigation report. Families gave the district mailing addresses that belonged to either Brooks, the Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Club, or its employees, the investigator found.

In reality, some students lived in nearby cities and commuted to Sugiyama High; others stayed with teammates or “host families,” including local adults associated with youth basketball.

This is NOT the first time SPS has had this issue of student athletes couch-surfing with a local family while playing a season of a sport.

- International students who enroll in Seattle Public Schools must pay the district $19,000 in tuition per school year. Even though Principal Powell was aware that several students in Great Futures were recruited from other countries, the district never charged them international student tuition, the investigation found.

So the district lost money on this?

Laurie Black, the CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of King County at the time of Great Futures Prep, told KUOW that the payments families made covered students’ travel expenses to games across the country.

Why is SPS working with Boys& Girls Club of King County if B&G thinks students should be out of school to travel for athletic competitions?

Seattle Public Schools did not investigate what Powell’s supervisors at the district knew about Great Futures Prep, Charchuk said, because it “was a standard community partnership agreement that said nothing about running a basketball program.” She said nothing about the agreement had caused concern.

If the district's sign-off only saw it as a community partnership agreement, then perhaps Principal Powell may have signed something separately because someone in SPS HAD to have signed off on the Great Futures Prep.

Just before the investigative report was issued, Powell signed a settlement with the district. “In exchange for Mr. Powell’s resignation, Seattle Public Schools made no policy findings against Mr. Powell,” Charchuk said.

Why would the district - which appears to have caught Mr. Powell red-handed - give him a settlement and not fire him.

Nearly eight months after he agreed to resign, Powell still receives his approximately $199,000 salary and benefits from the district, including his annual raise – under the terms of the June settlement agreement, he was allowed to return to paid administrative leave until January 31, 2025.

And there's more money down the drain.

Lori Bae, the CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, declined interview requests, and responded to emailed questions via a public relations firm.

“In the 2023-2024 school year, Boys & Girls Clubs of King County in partnership with Seattle Public Schools developed a pilot program called Great Futures Prep to support teens in achieving a successful high school experience through culturally responsive educational and athletic programs designed to empower and inspire youth,” Bae said by email.

Wait, what? Is she saying SPS DID know about this program? 

“While the program achieved its goal, Boys & Girls Clubs of King County discontinued the Great Futures Prep program in March 2024 and dismissed the employee who was hired to manage it,” Bae said, adding that her organization “takes great pride in the team we hire, and we take any allegations of employee misconduct seriously.”

One of those allegations was forgery. A counselor at Sugiyama discovered an email with her name on it, saying she had sent an international student visa to the wrong address.

“I scrolled down, and I’m like, ‘What in the world? I did not write this,’” Byeman said. “You know when your body just kind of inflames?” She recognized the beginning and end of the email as the farewell she had sent to her colleagues when she quit.

The district investigation found that Dominique Brooks “doctored Ms. Byeman’s resignation email to include false information” to make Byeman appear responsible for the missing student visa.

Brooks did this repeatedly as well as trying to say he was a registrar and attempting to take a payment from a student account to the Boys&Girls Club account.

In an email last week to KUOW, a Seattle Public Schools spokesperson said that the district reported the findings to police last December, six months after the investigation concluded.

However, a Seattle Police Department spokesperson said the police report was made several days ago, at 9 p.m. on Sunday, as this story neared publication.

When police arrived at Seattle Public Schools headquarters, the district employee “stated he had not been part of any of the investigation and had simply been told by the district's legal advisors to call Seattle Police to file a police report.”

I - have - questions.

- So the district is not going to even look into what the Katrina Hunt, Executive Director for that region was doing? Because if she was doing her job - meaning, overseeing what programs were happening at schools - I'm not sure I understand how she missed this.

- The Enrollment office never flagged how many students at Sugiyama had the same address? I would think the software would do that in order to make sure people live where they say they live.

- The district only called the police mid-January 2025 when they knew about this February 2024? The district was defrauded the fees for international students. The district had employees who knew the program - as presented - could not pass district rules. The district had an employee who appeared to have committed forgery.
 

There are two codas to this story at the end of the KUOW story:

About the CEO at the time at Boys&Girls Clubs of King County, Laurie Black:

Laurie Black, who helped create Great Futures Prep in her time as CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, said the program achieved its goals despite lasting only one school year.

Black said she only learned of the district investigation into the forgeries and students fraudulently enrolled as homeless after the Boys & Girls Clubs decided to discontinue the program.

Otherwise, she considered Great Futures a successful endeavor.

“I was excited about the district actually being flexible to try something new,” Black said. “To not be so rigid, being able to flex and try something new, and then when it didn’t work, move forward.”

Other than the gunshot, Mr. Lincoln, how did you like the play? Is she serious? She created a program that made families pay thousands in "tuition" and she's proud of that?

About Dominique Brooks, the basketball coach:

As for the students from Great Futures Prep, several now play college basketball at schools across the country.

Others are on the roster at Elite Futures Prep, an Issaquah basketball program that lists Dominique Brooks on its coaching staff.

How does Brooks even have a job? I'll have to inquire.

Yes, folks, this IS Seattle Schools. Lay low, stay quiet, and pay people to go away. 

And guess what? We have a School Board that can offer no oversight.