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Whistle blown: Fraud allegations over elite basketball program at Seattle public school with $22,000 tuition

caption: Alan T. Sugiyama High School at South Lake in Seattle, pictured on Jan. 30, 2025.
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Alan T. Sugiyama High School at South Lake in Seattle, pictured on Jan. 30, 2025.
KUOW Photo/Ivan Paley

It was a strange request, especially coming from the principal, and it came early in Karen Byeman’s time as guidance counselor at a small alternative high school in Seattle:

Could she find a way to prevent some seniors from graduating?

The basketball coaches were asking, too.

“It just kept going back and forth,” Byeman said. “I would say, ‘No, we can’t. Once they are done [with high school], they’re done.’ And they’d be like, ‘Well, let’s think about it.’ It was becoming kind of uncomfortable.”

It was 2023, and the seniors were part of a new, elite basketball program, Great Futures Prep, a partnership between Seattle Public Schools and the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County.

It was based at Alan T. Sugiyama High School in Rainier Beach, which focuses on students at risk of dropping out, including teen parents. The school helps students catch up on credits and find career paths, like music production and horticulture.

The basketball program was its latest venture – and, an investigation would later find, it was in violation of district policies.

“We’ll be offering our young people another pathway,” said Joe Powell, principal of Sugiyama High School, in a promotional video for Great Futures Prep. “In today's day and age, in order to complete high school, you have to have had some form of pathway that you committed to while you're within school.”

At home one evening, Byeman found a family handbook on the Great Futures Prep website. She was shocked to learn that students in this public school basketball program were being charged tuition: families were quoted $22,000 by the Boys & Girls Clubs, records show.

“I felt like I was in the middle of a really weird – I think, illegal – situation,” Byeman said. “How can these parents pay all this money, but the kids go to school here for free?”

Sports prep programs, typically based at private schools, are part of a growing industry aimed at helping teens vie for college athletic scholarships.

The Great Futures website promised students a “national game schedule, elite level competition, and maximum exposure.” Their days would be highly structured: They’d attend Sugiyama High School, with basketball coaching in the morning and afternoons at the Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Club; weight training; nutritionist-designed meals; and help getting noticed and recruited by colleges.

Sports prep schools often let students prolong their high school athletic careers – and college recruitment opportunities – by moving their graduation date back a year, a practice called “reclassifying.”

Concerned, Byeman quit her job and alerted Seattle School District, which launched an investigation into Great Futures Prep in February, 2024.

The district also placed Powell and a teacher who coached basketball for the program on administrative leave.

“Seattle Public Schools immediately suspended” the partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, and later terminated it, said Sophia Charchuk, district spokesperson, by email.

Brent Jones, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, did not respond to interview requests for this story.

The student athletes in Great Futures Prep were recruited from towns across Washington, the investigation found, and in several cases, internationally – the team website roster included students from New Zealand, Canada, and Senegal.

Nearly all the students had enrolled in the district as homeless students “as a means of subverting the deadline for nonresident student enrollment,” the investigator found, because the federal McKinney-Vento law allows homeless families flexibility in when and where they enroll in school.

None of the students were actually homeless, the investigation found.

"Claiming McKinney-Vento status would be inconsistent with what is known about the Great Futures Prep players’ situations, given that their families were each paying a substantial fee to Boys & Girls Clubs of King County in order for them to participate,” the investigator wrote – between $5,000 and $14,000 after scholarships.

None of the families who participated in the program responded to interview requests for this story.

Principal Joe Powell told the investigator that he was unaware that students had falsely claimed homelessness, and was not involved in recruiting or enrolling teens for the program. However, the investigation found that Powell had his secretary give new Great Futures students McKinney-Vento questionnaires to fill out.

Dominique Brooks, a Boys & Girls Clubs employee who managed the program at the school and served as head coach, instructed families to claim homelessness, the investigation found. “While Mr. Brooks denied being involved in enrolling students or having them claim McKinney-Vento status, records make clear he was involved in this scheme,” said the investigation report.

Families gave the district mailing addresses that belonged to either Brooks, the Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Club, or its employees, the investigator found.

In reality, some students lived in nearby cities and commuted to Sugiyama High; others stayed with teammates or “host families,” including local adults associated with youth basketball.

International students who enroll in Seattle Public Schools must pay the district $19,000 in tuition per school year. Even though Principal Powell was aware that several students in Great Futures were recruited from other countries, the district never charged them international student tuition, the investigation found.

The families made Great Futures tuition payments directly to the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County, according to Charchuk, Seattle School District spokesperson. Asked whether the district had made efforts to recoup tuition money from the organization, Charchuk did not respond.

Laurie Black, the CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of King County at the time of Great Futures Prep, told KUOW that the payments families made covered students’ travel expenses to games across the country.

Seattle Public Schools did not investigate what Powell’s supervisors at the district knew about Great Futures Prep, Charchuk said, because it “was a standard community partnership agreement that said nothing about running a basketball program.” She said nothing about the agreement had caused concern.

On June 5, days before the investigation report was published, Powell signed a settlement agreement with the district.

“In exchange for Mr. Powell’s resignation, Seattle Public Schools made no policy findings against Mr. Powell,” Charchuk said.

Nearly eight months after he agreed to resign, Powell still receives his approximately $199,000 salary and benefits from the district, including his annual raise – under the terms of the June settlement agreement, he was allowed to return to paid administrative leave until January 31, 2025.

“The separation agreement ended Mr. Powell’s employment before the end date of his contract, on mutually agreeable terms,” Charchuk said.

Powell did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Lori Bae, the CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, declined interview requests, and responded to emailed questions via a public relations firm.

“In the 2023-2024 school year, Boys & Girls Clubs of King County in partnership with Seattle Public Schools developed a pilot program called Great Futures Prep to support teens in achieving a successful high school experience through culturally responsive educational and athletic programs designed to empower and inspire youth,” Bae said by email.

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“While the program achieved its goal, Boys & Girls Clubs of King County discontinued the Great Futures Prep program in March 2024 and dismissed the employee who was hired to manage it,” Bae said, adding that her organization “takes great pride in the team we hire, and we take any allegations of employee misconduct seriously.”

One of those allegations was forgery.

After Karen Byeman quit as guidance counselor at Sugiyama High, she was forwarded an email purportedly from her, saying she had sent an international student visa to the wrong address.

“I scrolled down, and I’m like, ‘What in the world? I did not write this,’” Byeman said. “You know when your body just kind of inflames?” She recognized the beginning and end of the email as the farewell she had sent to her colleagues when she quit.

The district investigation found that Dominique Brooks “doctored Ms. Byeman’s resignation email to include false information” to make Byeman appear responsible for the missing student visa.

Brooks had posed as the guidance counselor in numerous other recruitment emails to families, as well, according to the investigation report.

Brooks also tried unsuccessfully to obtain a $14,000 payment to the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County from an international student’s college savings plan by claiming that Great Futures Prep was a post-secondary school, and that Brooks was a registrar, the investigation found.

“Because no payment from his family could ultimately be secured, [REDACTED] was kicked out,” the investigator wrote.

Brooks did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In an email last week to KUOW, a Seattle Public Schools spokesperson said that the district reported the findings to police last December, six months after the investigation concluded.

However, a Seattle Police Department spokesperson said the police report was made several days ago, at 9 p.m. on Sunday, as this story neared publication.

When police arrived at Seattle Public Schools headquarters, the district employee “stated he had not been part of any of the investigation and had simply been told by the district's legal advisors to call Seattle Police to file a police report.”

Laurie Black, who helped create Great Futures Prep in her time as CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, said the program achieved its goals despite lasting only one school year.

Black said she only learned of the district investigation into the forgeries and students fraudulently enrolled as homeless after the Boys & Girls Clubs decided to discontinue the program.

Otherwise, she considered Great Futures a successful endeavor.

“I was excited about the district actually being flexible to try something new,” Black said. “To not be so rigid, being able to flex and try something new, and then when it didn’t work, move forward.”

As for the students from Great Futures Prep, several now play college basketball at schools across the country.

Others are on the roster at Elite Futures Prep, an Issaquah basketball program that lists Dominique Brooks on its coaching staff.

Contact reporter Ann Dornfeld at 206-486-6505 or adornfeld@kuow.org

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