SCHOOL RECORDS MISSING: TRANSCRIPTS FROM SOME STUDENTS AT CLOSED ARMENIAN SCHOOL HAVEN’T BEEN FOUND
By Max Zimbert
Glendale News Press
Feb 11 2010
CA
Burbank public education officials are reporting that about 40 students
lack academic records from a private Armenian school that filed for
bankruptcy last year.
An unknown number of students who left Scholars Armenian School
and Arts Center for elementary, middle and high schools in Burbank
Unified lack their records, forcing administrators to consider starting
them off with clean slates, said Cathy Krailo, an assistant guidance
counselor at John Muir Middle School.
"We can’t find them," she said. "We need the educational history so
we can place the kids."
Some parents were soured when the school closed, Krailo said.
John Muir officials have not been able to track down the student
transcripts since Scholars closed its Grandview Avenue location in
January after a dispute with the landlord, Alex Kuiumdjian.
After declaring bankruptcy in May, the school’s owner and president,
Anahit Grigoryan, said she was confident her school would continue,
but Burbank Unified officials have been unable to find her.
Grigoryan did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.
Sources close to the bankruptcy trial and Grigoryan had speculated
that she reopened Scholars under another name and under a new patron
organization operating at 3800 Foothill Blvd. The building, which
has no signs, is the Scholars Academic Foundation, according to a
man who identified himself as Arthur Danielyan and a board member
for the school.
"This is a totally different school," he said outside the building
Thursday. "I don’t know what happened to Scholars."
But in a voluntary audit, Scholars officials submitted to the
California Department of Education on Oct. 19 — roughly four months
after Grigoryan declared bankruptcy — listed Danielyan as director
or principal of the school.
But the man who identified himself as Danielyan said Grigoryan had
no connection to the Foothill Boulevard school and the nonprofit
organization associated with it. He also said the school had moved
from place to place in the last year, including West Hollywood,
before opening the foothills campus.
"We’re considering hiring Anahit," he said. "It’d take meetings and
minutes. A process."
A woman contacted at a phone number that Danielyan gave for the school
said it was a wrong listing.
A statement issued by a board member for the foundation, Silva Zeneian,
acknowledged that she was "assisting the new school in every way she
can to help the displaced children and is of great help to the new
organization," but that the school was a "completely different entity"
and not her own.
Neighboring business employees said the school had just opened.
Private schools are not regulated by state or county education
officials. Officials from the California Department of Education ask
private schools to voluntarily file an annual audit, a head count of
how many students there are in what grades and who’s in charge.
Officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Education said
incomplete transcripts, such as those for the former Scholars students
now at Muir and elsewhere in Burbank Unified, are more common from
students who transfer from another state or country.
Bob Tyra, a project director for the department, said the impact of
an incomplete transcript should not stop a student from college or
other opportunities for higher education after high school.
"Every student with this has a story," he said. "And [guidance
counselors] are working it out to the best advantage of the student,
while adhering to education code and all applicable regulations."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
