How lobbyist's troubles felled Columbia school

Jack Abramoff promised much at Eshkol Academy. But corruption allegations would crumble his empire

18 May 2005 // The abandoned school in Columbia, its black and gold team colors still painted on the walls, holds the dusty remains of a Washington operator's grand plans.

The Eshkol Academy, founded by super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, promised a top-flight Orthodox Jewish education and gleaming facilities. Eshkol, its crest a raging lion, advertised all the privileges of a power school - a state-of-the-art sports program, a path to a fine college, a means to a sparkling resume.

But a year ago, after two problem-filled terms, Abramoff stepped onto the school grounds from his chauffeured limousine and announced that Eshkol would close its doors.

Graduation was just a month away, but no matter. Eshkol was over.

At that moment, Abramoff's empire was crumbling under intense scrutiny. The Justice Department was examining whether the powerful lobbyist - who earned millions of dollars representing, among others, American Indian casino interests - used nonprofit organizations to fund improper activities. Several months later, he would appear before a Senate committee and face accusations of corruption.

As federal investigators examine Abramoff's involvement in arranging perks for lawmakers, including House Republican leader Tom DeLay of Texas, they are also looking into the finances of a charity that Abramoff created - a nonprofit that helped fund Eshkol and also is alleged to have paid for an expensive overseas golf trip for an Ohio congressman.

'Like a Greek tragedy'

The controversy over Abramoff is playing out in the national news, but the price has already been paid closer to home by Eshkol, where the sudden closing left students without a school, teachers claiming missed paychecks and staff members sounding burned. Thirteen former Eshkol employees, many of whom depict the school as a misguided experiment in education, have sued Abramoff and his wife, Pamela, for $140,226 in back pay.

"The school was totally unable to function as an educational institution," said Samuel Whitehill, a former Hebrew teacher at Eshkol. "It was like a Greek tragedy."

Former staffers say Abramoff's plans for the school were flawed. They say he approved the purchase of two Zamboni machines to support an Eshkol ice hockey team even though the academy lacked a rink and that he lured Israeli students for the school basketball team even though league rules bar athletic recruitment.

"Jack was a very grandiose guy; he was in some sense infantile and suffering from delusions of grandeur," said Joe Sweeney, one of the Eshkol teachers suing Abramoff. "Even a number of children became quite cynical about the school. They'd say, 'Eshkol's a joke.'"

In Abramoff's defense

Abramoff and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, refused requests for comment for this article. A spokesman for Abramoff's lawyer said that Eshkol and the Capital Athletic Foundation, a nonprofit group started by Abramoff that helped fund the school, were properly run charitable institutions.

"Mr. Abramoff is active in his community and has been very supportive of a number of efforts, including being a primary donor of funds used to sustain the Eshkol Academy," spokesman Andrew Blum said in a statement. "It is unfortunate that Eshkol School could not continue, but the teachers who got most of their salaries have no basis to sue the Abramoffs, who did nothing but support that school for as long as they could."

Polly Haynes, Eshkol's accountant, said she was shocked to learn from The Washington Post last year that tribal money funded the school. Tribal dollars went into the Capital Athletic Foundation, and much of its $4 million was used to pay for Eshkol.

Abramoff "didn't tell me anything about the Capital Athletic Foundation; I thought it was one of his businesses," Haynes said. "I called a person, gave her how much the bills were, and she transferred the funds, enough to cover the checks. Nothing ever struck me as weird."

Lingering questions

But there are questions about the foundation's finances. A Senate committee reportedly is investigating whether the Capital Athletic Foundation, which advertised itself as a sports charity for underprivileged youth, paid for a golf trip to Scotland in 2002 by Rep. Bob Ney, the Ohio Republican who heads the House Administration Committee, and others.

And Eshkol itself is under scrutiny. According to Senate investigators, Abramoff tried to persuade the Tigua Indian tribe of Texas to take out life insurance on its elders and make Eshkol the sole beneficiary. The tribe rejected the idea.

Now a top staff member from Eshkol is under fire. Rabbi David Lapin, a friend of Abramoff's who served briefly as a top Eshkol administrator, is being targeted by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which cannot determine whether Lapin performed any work in return for a $1.2 million contract to promote ethics in government, according to The New York Times. That is one of several contracts the U.S. territory awarded to Abramoff and his associates.

hat a small Jewish school in a Columbia office park comes up in a news article examining a million-dollar contract in the Marianas is testament to Abramoff's diverse and intersecting interests. Abramoff, 46, built his profile through lobbying but also has owned restaurants and once dabbled as a Hollywood producer. Eshkol was his first school.

Promise unfulfilled

It began with promise. Short for Ish Eshkolot, a Hebrew term for "well-rounded man," the junior-senior high school was Abramoff's vision of an ideal school - an all-boys academy offering religious instruction, general education and more sports than the typical yeshiva. Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, set a confident tone, sending his two sons to Eshkol.

"It was a really nice school," said former teacher Judy Stern. "It was like a family."

But problems brewed beneath the surface. Abramoff couldn't find property and had to locate it on the grounds of a Christian community center in northern Montgomery County, after a deal to place it at a former psychiatric hospital in Rockville collapsed.

Shortly after school opened in fall 2002, the first principal left without explanation. Finances became a headache: Administrators complained of 11th-hour scrambles to obtain money from Abramoff's Capital Athletic Foundation to pay the bills. One teacher said he was so frustrated that he spent $400 to buy books for his students and submitted the bill.

Problems arose on other fronts, even in the sports program, the gem that was supposed to set Eshkol apart from other yeshivas. The ice hockey team was getting launched when some Orthodox parents, insistent on separation of the sexes, worried that Eshkol would face teams with female players. Despite the school's $105,234 in ice hockey-related purchases, according to Eshkol's 2002 tax returns, students said they never played a full season.

'Falling apart'

Eshkol's second year turned into its last. Again, it began with a mad dash for a building. With the first day of school looming, the academy finally settled on an office park in Columbia, off Broken Land Parkway. But once again, its principal left as classes started.

"When the second year came around, everything started falling apart," said Rick Drury, a school bus driver who ferried Baltimore students to Eshkol. Some boys, he said, slept on top of the buses during class time. "I asked one kid, 'How are you going to get an education if you never go to class?' He just smiled and said, 'They're going to pass me anyhow.'"

The boys, wearing white or blue shirts, khaki pants and yarmulkes, arrived at 7:30 a.m. and spent the morning in Judaic studies. At midday, the school brought in food - sometimes a catered lunch from Stacks, a kosher restaurant in Washington that became another failed Abramoff venture - and then continued with general studies until about 5 p.m.

But in this quiet business complex, the school's routines were not always welcome. Next door, Electronics Development Co. complained that lunch scraps left in the parking lot would attract vermin. The firm's staff criticized the makeshift facilities, with children running laps around the office park for exercise or playing inside the building.

"They apparently used an area as a gymnasium and they were very loud, bouncing balls against the walls," said Sandra Williams, the company's chief financial officer, who said kids eventually punched through a wall into the firm, which does classified work for the government. "We need a secure facility. We can't have holes in the walls."

'A big mistake'

Eshkol was not cheap. Tuition reached $15,000 a year, though parents say Abramoff offered many scholarships. The school advertised by word of mouth in Orthodox communities, and students came from Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta, Boston and Montreal.

The out-of-town boys offered the school some cachet, but also created another headache, as a proposed dorm for them was never built. Teachers say some boys lived with Abramoff's family. According to legal filings, Abramoff created a company that purchased another house on his street in an exclusive Silver Spring community. Parents say students also stayed in that home, a Tudor with miniature replicas of itself decorating the driveway. Eventually, the students left and were housed by other Orthodox families nearby.

Olna Ben-Samuel, whose son was a student at Eshkol for a year, was outraged that her child was moved around several times as a sleep-away student from Ardmore, Pa.

"It's a terrible school," she said. "It was a big mistake, sending him there."

Ben-Samuel said that before Eshkol opened, Abramoff recruited her son Gadi at a Washington-area yeshiva, promising him a bright future with college and career connections.

"He said, 'Don't worry. Come to my school, you'll be a superstar,'" she said. Though she was offered half-price tuition, she complains that her son, now attending Pennsylvania State University, never got any special connections from Eskhol. In fact, she said, he never got a diploma.

"We are not rich, and when you have a person who has money and is willing to do everything for you, you're going to trust him to take care of you," she said. "My son put his hope with Mr. Abramoff, and this is what happened."

By early spring of 2004, enrollment had fallen from 100 to 70 and Abramoff's legal troubles were mounting; he had resigned from a Washington law firm amid reports that he received tens of millions of dollars in fees from casino-owning Indian tribes. At Eshkol, graffiti began to cover the walls as order eroded, former staff and students said.

"It was more like a camp than a school," said Yadin Klein, 17, a former Eshkol student now finishing high school in Baltimore. "I mean, the kids were all just kind of having fun."

Since it was a private school, its curriculum was not overseen by Maryland education officials. Eshkol registered with the state, but state officials say that because it was a religious school, it was not required to receive a state certificate.

Heartbreaking loss

Not all parents hold Abramoff personally responsible for the mess. When some saw him at parent-teacher nights and other occasions, they thought his intentions were good.

"My boys liked it - they learned quite a bit," said Tova NessAiver, a Baltimore mother whose two sons attended the school. "People started with high expectations and high desires. I think it was a lot more work and a lot harder than anyone expected it to be. But I don't think anything was done intentionally. I think Abramoff just ran out of money because of what was happening in his life, and that's something no one can count on."

School administrators tried to rally the students by promising better times ahead.

"I know the new building fell short of your expectations at first," Patti Lemere, the general studies principal, wrote in her 2004 yearbook message to students. "But the fitness room materialized and (as of this writing) the music room has a sign on the door."

Even though she later joined the lawsuit seeking unpaid wages, former teacher Stern said the Eshkol education was solid. The Silver Spring resident sent her son to the academy, where he took accelerated math and studied subjects such as oceanography.

"The teachers were very dedicated," she said. "The promise was to make students excellent in Judaic and secular studies, and to make them good people with good morals."

When Eshkol closed, staff members called it a personal loss.

"It was kind of heartbreaking," said Haynes, the school's accountant, recalling how a staffer lost her job before Passover last year. "We all had hoped this would be a success."

'Generous benefactors'

Abramoff's lawyers say the school, not the Abramoffs, is liable for the unpaid salaries. A legal brief filed by Abramoff's lawyers contends that he and his wife were "generous benefactors of the school" and calls the lawsuit an "ungrateful" act by teachers seeking money from the wrong people.

"The school would not have ever existed without the Abramoffs, and they almost single-handedly kept it going as long as they had resources to do it," Abramoff's spokesman Blum said in a statement. "The teachers who have sued have misplaced their anger against the people they should be thanking."

In Columbia, the Eshkol Academy is bare. Teachers have scattered to other jobs, students to other schools. The business park is back to its usual traffic of express mail delivery trucks and weekday commuters. The only sign of Abramoff's grand plans are two school buses, locked and empty in the school's old parking lot.

The last time Eshkol teachers saw Abramoff, he described himself as a man under siege. That spring day last year, Abramoff said he could no longer afford to keep the academy open.

"He painted a portrait of himself as a guy under attack for no other reason than some people said he charged too much for his services; he said this was all politically motivated," recalled Sweeney, one of the Eshkol teachers. "When he presented his case to us, it was more about him being concerned about his own plight than about pulling the plug on the school."