You Just Can't Keep A Crooked Charter School Down

Remember Dr Ted Morris Jr., BA, MA, PhD, and MSW, and his Greater Works Charter School?

Remember how the charter application was pulled back after Morris was revealed as a con man who lied about his degrees and his work experience?

Well, the school's back - and it's going to be bigger than ever:

The former trustees of Greater Works Charter School are applying again to open a charter school in Rochester, this time under a different name and without their disgraced 22-year-old leader.

Greater Works was approved by the state to open in 2015-16 before it was revealed that its lead applicant, 22-year-old Ted Morris Jr., had fabricated most of his academic and professional experience.

Morris resigned, and the remaining trustees withdrew their application. The New York State Education Department, which failed to catch the lies in the first place, later instituted new safeguards to verify applicants' credentials.

The remaining trustees, led by Keuka College education professor Peter Kozik, said at the time that they planned to re-submit their application without Morris, and they started that process in January with a formal letter of intent. The name of the venture has been changed to ROC Charter School.

The vision of the prospective school is somewhat different — for instance, the school would eventually serve grades 7-12 rather than just 9-12.

The letter of intent acknowledges the problems with Greater Works, but Kozik said the Morris affair, while unexpected, did not throw the remaining trustees far off their path.

"We didn't lose much momentum at all," he said. "There was really no sense of our progress being slowed."

Oh, goodie - the trustees didn't lose much momentum despite having worked with a con artist front man they met on the Internet to open a charter school with little-to-no financial backing from anybody but the state tax coffers.

And if approved by NYSED and the Board of Regents, they'll be ready for the charter school boom Governor Cuomo plans for his second term.

Good times in the charter world!

Nothing can keep a crooked charter school down.