Fugees Family celebrates its founder, fails to safeguard refugee children

With a solemn sense of obligation, we seek to bring to your attention critical concerns regarding the operations of Fugees Family, Inc., and its academic arm, the Fugees Academy. Specifically, we seek to highlight grave issues related to school governance and culture under the direction of the founder and head of the school, Luma Mufleh.

On multiple occasions spanning several years, current and former staff of Fugees Family and Fugees Academy attempted to communicate, first with the head of school and subsequently with the Board of Directors and SAIS, the school accreditation agency, to draw attention to these concerning circumstances. The examples below were compiled from multiple accounts written by former staff and educators that were submitted directly to those governing bodies.

Because we sincerely believe in the original mission of the organization and we care deeply for children we built relationships with over the years, we feel it imperative that this information is publicly available, especially as Luma’s sphere of influence continues to grow through publication and media opportunities.

Our biggest concern is Luma’s (the students often refer to her as “Coach”) treatment of children, both in personal interactions and in delivering consequences. Based on eyewitnesses’ personal statements and experiences, discipline is often inconsistent, unnecessarily punitive, and unpredictable; practices are in no way consistent with widely-accepted educational principles and would not be acceptable in a setting with appropriate oversight.

A student shared their reason for considering other schools: “Coach [Luma] can be really harsh. Sometimes I wonder if she goes home and thinks about the things she says/does to us. I feel like I am a good kid and I don’t deserve to be yelled at and treated like a bad kid.”

Another long-time student told us, “I am tired of feeling bullied. Coach says things that are hurtful. It’s like she doesn’t trust that I can be successful without being a Fugee.”

As former staff, we wish to share specific examples of the concerning treatment to which we are referring. These, and many more examples, were shared in communications with the Fugees Board of Directors between June 2015 and October 2018. Some of these communications were acknowledged via email, but to our knowledge, no further action was taken.

One of Luma’s discipline tactics is to place an entire group in seclusion to force a confession for misbehavior. This tactic breeds a sense of distrust and coercion among the students.

In one instance Luma kept all of the male students out of class for an entire day waiting on someone to confess to writing on the bathroom walls. Rather than being in class learning, the boys marched around the parking lot for the entire day while teachers sat in their classrooms without students to teach. During this time, she also made the boys pick grass on their hands and knees. At about 1:00 p.m., she sent the boys home. No one called their parents to let them know their children were coming home.

Similarly, a month later, students were kept out of class and lined up for 3 hours as she waited on a confession. After the 3-hour interrogation, Luma had lost her voice from shouting. The students were then sent home at 11:00 a.m. because no one would admit to looking up pornography on three student iPads.

In these instances, about 50 middle and high school boys were left to roam the streets of Clarkston during school hours, without any supervision. The following day, several of the students reported that their parents were furious at Luma’s handling of these situations.

She once taped a 6th-grade boy’s mouth shut with electrical tape and made him stand in front of the entire school during lunch.

During an all-school assembly, she addressed a 7th-grade girl who was failing English. She asked the girl how long she had been in the country; she replied that she was born in the United States. Luma replied, “So you were born in the US? Then why are you failing English? Are you stupid? Are you lazy?”

The high school students were misbehaving at lunch so they were not allowed to eat lunch for one week.

When she is angry with the students, she often chooses to speak to them alone, without any other adults present. One year, 90% of the 9th-grade class chose to transfer schools for 10th grade. Luma specifically directed the one teacher in the room to leave so she could discuss their choices with the group. After their conversation, the students reported that she asked each one of them to stand up and explain why they didn’t appreciate the Fugees. According to student reports, she publicly humiliated and attempted to bully them into staying.

On more than one occasion when donors visited, she selected specific students — usually ones who struggled to read and write English — and would put them in private rooms where they could not interact with donors. She would intentionally pull them out of class so that instead of learning and improving their English skills, they were kept away from visitors.

A student (we will call this student “Brian,” out of concern for his privacy) once told another sixth-grade boy to “go fuck his mother.” As punishment, Luma placed Brian in the hallway with paper taped to the front and back of his shirt that said, “I told ‘[ ]’ to go fuck his mother.” As the other students returned from lunch they walked past Brian standing in the hallway. They stared and snickered at him. Brian began to cry and started heaving in the hallway. Luma only pulled him out of the hallway after a teacher specifically drew her attention to his physical condition.

We are sharing this information publicly after multiple good-faith attempts to produce change internally by reporting these concerns directly to the board governing Fugees and the accrediting body. These efforts were met with a range of hostility and inaction; some staff members were terminated in thinly veiled retaliatory actions and many resigned in exasperation.

By approaching the Board of Directors and the accrediting body, we were hopeful that those who are responsible for monitoring such an organization would do the students justice by, at minimum, investigating numerous individual accounts of these harmful actions. Because these oversight bodies have absconded their responsibilities by failing to protect these already vulnerable children, it is with frustrated, heavy hearts, we have decided to come forward in this manner.

With Luma’s growing sphere of influence (a soon-to-be-released book with Mariner Books and large donor contributions) we seek to protect the children she purports to serve, and hope current and future supporters will carry out proper due diligence before additional children are recruited into the Fugees school system and subjected to disciplinary tactics that have the potential to create devastating, long-term trauma.

If you would like to add your account to those that are available, we invite you to reach out to tellusaboutluma@gmail.com. We will honor your privacy if you choose to share your story.

If, after reading this article, you feel moved to share your story publicly, or stand in support as a witness to the experiences of our colleagues and beloved students, please do so with your “co-sign” in the comments.

ADDENDUM published 4/12/2022:

We wish to re-emphasize that we support the mission of Fugees Family, Inc.

By this, we mean that we are a collective of teachers, students, staff, and community members who believe that an exceptional and safe school environment tailored to the needs and gifts of the refugee community could fundamentally change lives, even a whole community, for the better.

This statement is the result of 10 years of students sharing with trusted adults and disclosing emotional and physical suffering, humiliation, educational frustrations, and feelings of exploitation — the polar opposite of the organization’s promise and potential. After continuing to hear from recent students and staff that nothing in the organizational culture had changed, and after students who wished to come forward expressed that they feared retaliation for doing so, we made the solemn decision to publish this statement.

In addition to the accounts of students that initially prompted this statement, students have courageously shared their stories in support of this statement without being asked or prompted by its authors to post. There are more who have privately expressed feelings of relief that “someone finally said something.”

We are absolutely sincere in our belief and respect for the students who have come forward to express disagreement with our statement and wish to share their own positive experiences. We in no way dispute that there are students and families who benefited from the program Luma created and personally from Luma’s assistance — those accounts are well-documented and highly promoted. However, that does not negate or excuse the accounts of others who did not share the same experience. We will not tell young people to be silent about their mistreatment because it’s an unpopular opinion about a charismatic, persuasive leader. We do not think it is unreasonable to champion educational environments that are safe for ALL.

Our hope with all past communication and the publishing of this post is that the Board of Directors will contract a reputable third-party investigative team to conduct a thorough review of these and other accounts at both Fugees Family, Inc. and the academic arm, now called Georgia Fugees Academy Charter School (GFACS). The ultimate aim of such a review would be to ensure Fugees Family as an organization is effectively and safely serving refugee students in a manner consistent with widely accepted educational principles and trauma-informed best practices.

The Board of Directors has been given ample opportunity to consider comprehensive remedies to systematic issues at the organization and has failed. Below is a detailed chronology of communication with the Board of Directors and the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS), the school accreditation body at the time:

• August 2014: Former staff members submit a letter to the Board of Directors detailing the mistreatment of students.
• May 2015: A group of students expresses specific concerns to staff about Luma’s treatment of them and their peers. Staff relay this information to Luma through one-on-one conversations.
• May 2015: Citing Luma’s refusal to acknowledge and address the results of the organizational review, the Board chair resigns.
• August 2016: Following a mass departure, former teachers submit a letter concerning academic, school management, and disciplinary habits to the Board of Directors and have a follow-up meeting with Board co-chairs.
• November 2016: Eight former staff and teachers submit a letter to SAIS outlining academic and behavior concerns.
• October 2018: Former teachers follow up with two separate letters to the Board of Directors.
• April 2022: Former teacher shares concerns about the educational environment from 2016–2021 (entire statement below in comments).

Copies of all past correspondence with the Board of Directors referenced here can be provided upon request. A good-faith investigation will add more individual accounts to those already shared, but only if conducted in a manner that truly protects those who wish to come forward. Our entire aim is for the leaders who have been entrusted to serve and safeguard these young people take that charge seriously enough to take action to protect them.

We formally made the board aware of this post on Monday, April 18 with a call to action for a formal review. As of Monday, April 25, there has been no acknowledgment or response to our communication.