Judges rule in favor of charter’s co-founder
Two administrative law judges recommended this week that KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg be allowed to keep his educator certification after state officials failed to meet their burden of proving he sexually abused a student in Houston in 1999.
In a 56-page recommendation released Wednesday, the judges found that there were “simply too many inconsistencies” in the student’s account, as well as enough evidence favorable to Feinberg, to warrant revoking his Texas certification.
The recommendation now goes to the State Board of Educator Certification for a final ruling. No date has been set for the board’s decision.
The findings mark the first legal ruling on the merits of allegations against Feinberg, who was fired from KIPP in February 2018 after a two-decade run with the organization he helped build into a pre-eminent charter school network.
“I’m grateful to the state of Texas for exonerating me and restoring my status as an educator in good standing,” Feinberg said in a statement Thursday. “When judges finally heard my case, I was vindicated, as I have maintained all along.”
Texas Education Agency officials moved in March 2019 to revoke Feinberg’s certification after allegations that he inappropriately touched and sexually violated a female fifth-grade student two decades earlier at Houston’s KIPP Academy. The allegations first surfaced publicly in 2017, when a relative of the former student disclosed them to officials at the charter school network, and triggered two additional complaints of sexual harassment against Feinberg.
While KIPP leaders could not definitively prove the three allegations against Feinberg, they said their lawyers found “credible evidence” to substantiate the claims after two investigations. Feinberg has denied all the allegations.
At a licensing hearing in February, the former student told administrative law judges Beth Bierman and Robert Pemberton that Feinberg abused her on two occasions in his campus office. The former student said Feinberg reached under her shirt and ran his hand down her chest and back and later directed her to undress and briefly inserted a Q-tip into her vagina.
At the hearing, the former student’s mother recalled her daughter telling her in 1999 about the two incidents. The former student testified that they did not tell KIPP or law enforcement officials at the time out of fear that the girl’s father would “blame me for it and hit me” and that her allegations would not be believed because of her Hispanic ethnicity.
Feinberg’s lawyers highlighted inconsistent statements made by the former student in recent investigations and legal proceedings, including the time the student first disclosed the allegations to her mother. They also presented evidence suggesting that it was implausible that Feinberg could have abused the girl during school hours in his office, which had a window that could be seen through by administrative assistants stationed in front of it.
The two administrative judges ultimately sided with Feinberg’s lawyer, finding that state officials did not meet their burden of proof — a preponderance of the evidence, or more likely than not.
“We need only conclude that even if one credits (the former student) with a goodfaith belief in the truth of her testimony, there are simply too many inconsistencies within her own recollections, and also with the evidence of what would have been the circumstances surrounding the incident, to establish that (Feinberg) more likely than not abused her sexually,” the judges wrote.
The administrative hearing in Austin did not include the two allegations of sexual harassment, which involved two former employees accusing Feinberg of offering them money in exchange for sex in the early 2000s. KIPP officials deemed the allegations credible, while Feinberg has denied them and accused the charter school’s leaders of conducting unfair investigations of him.
Immediately after Feinberg’s firing, KIPP officials said “critical facts about these events may never be conclusively determined” but that Feinberg at a minimum “put himself into situations where his conduct could be seriously misconstrued.”
In a statement Thursday, KIPP Director of Media Relations Maria Alcón-Heraux said the judges’ recommendation “does not change the circumstances of Mike Feinberg’s departure from KIPP.”
Feinberg sued KIPP for defamation in 2019, but a judge in Harris County dismissed the lawsuit in March.
After his firing, Feinberg founded the Texas School Venture Fund, a nonprofit that works to support the expansion of charter schools nationally.
KIPP operates 242 schools in 28 regions throughout the country, including 34 in the Greater Houston area.