First, They Were Taught to Lie and Cheat. Then They Were Kenneled
Part two of the Roosevelt Football Scandal series’ look at the on campus “hang out” for football players known as the Kennel
When the transfers arrived, they were taught how to lie on their registration in order to cheat state eligibility rules.
Roosevelt Principal Tami Brewer was on a mission to enroll and increase the academic achievement of ethnically diverse students. Particularly “brown and black males”.
And under her leadership, Roosevelt did locate and enroll an additional 18 “brown and black males”. That much is true. Roosevelt enrolled 18 transfer football players in 2024, all of whom were retroactively declared ineligible.
Brewer had a plan for the “brown and black males” Roosevelt acquired through improper recruiting methods: Kennel them during the day and let them loose when it was time to play football.
Given the nature of what actually occurred at Roosevelt, it’s hard to believe that leaders with the high-minded ideals espoused by Brewer didn’t see what they were actually doing, or maybe they did and they didn’t care.
Roosevelt identified 18 “brown and black” males enrolled in other high schools.
Lured them into mid-year transfers to Roosevelt with false promises of scholarship offers, recruiting visibility and access to a private on campus club.
And when the new students arrived, they were taught how to lie in a manner that would defraud a federal program.
Defrauding the federal program was their coach’s strategy for evading WIAA rules.
So Roosevelt shows the brown and black males how to lie and cheat.
And then they’re sent off to a Kennel, where they’re housed apart from the student body, racking up absences, tardies and failing grades, before they’re released for football practice.
One recruit failed 5 of 6 classes and had 63 absences and 47 tardies ; another recruit had 173 absences from six classes, resulting in 3 E's and 1 F.
It’s hard to see how any of this is designed to help “brown and black students”.
This system did help an assistant football coach though.
A Benefit Available to Some
As we reported yesterday, Saul Patu had wrangled a Roosevelt booster club into paying his Kennel Sports Group a cool eighty grand a year to provide the services known as the Kennel. Which was actually just public property cordoned off for football players.
And that’s how it came to be that Principal Tami Brewer signed off on the sole source approval that authorized paying an assistant football coach $80,000 a year to house improperly recruited “brown and black males” in a segregated location known as the Kennel.
To say the least, the optics aren’t great.
But to state the obvious, the methods and outcomes in the Roosevelt recruiting scandal are a good reminder why we decided a long time ago that it is a horrible idea to sort students by race, segregate certain groups apart from the student body as a whole, and apply different rule sets to groups of students based upon their characteristics.
Systemic Administrative Failure
Yesterday, J425 reported on the “Kennel” — an on campus “club” launched in 2023 under the guise of an academic learning center designed to assist “BIPOC” students (non-white students).
The concept came from new assistant coach Saul Patu, and through his corporation, he pitched Roosevelt boosters on his idea of an on campus resources that would help the targeted audience succeed.1 For $80,000 a year, Patu’s Kennel Sports Group LLC2 (KSG) would operate the Kennel.
The boosters liked his plan, and needing only sole-source approval from Principal Brewer to go forward, the program was launched and Patu’s business was cut an $80k check.
In justifying her sole-source approval, Brewer described the Kennel as “social emotional, academic, and college counseling support services for student athletes.”
Additional documentation shows that at inception, the Kennel was described as a “community-based organization” providing academic support services to “students”.
According to Principal Brewer, the “Kennel” Sports Group is “approved” by Seattle Public Schools as a community-based organization to provide service to students. Principal Brewer stated the “Kennel” Sports Group provides after-school tutoring, homework support and customized academic support. The “Kennel” began at Roosevelt in the Fall of 2023. - Roosevelt Fact Finder Report, p.12 - WIAA.
The term “students” was quickly narrowed to “athletes”, and by 2024, athletes was narrowed to “football players”. And despite Roosevelt leaders positioning the Kennel as a resource for all students (during previous investigations), a more thorough investigation found that even in the founding documents, the intended audience was much, much narrower than “all students”
Written documentation clearly shows the ““Kennel”” was a program exclusively for student football players during the 2023-2024 school year. - Fact-Finder Report, p. 13
It’s likely a problem to create a resource at a public school and then restrict access to all but a certain type of athlete.
Adding fuel to the fire of future criminal and civil exposure, the principal stated that student access to the Kennel would be decided by a different characteristic, and the ones she cited are immutable.
She wanted to Kennel the brown and black males. You know. The ones they made lie and cheat as soon as they enrolled. The ones who wouldn’t be monitored for attendance or availed of grade checks.
The ones she was helping.
The ““Kennel”” program was part of her strategy for achieving an overall school mission of improving the academic achievement of …“brown and black male students.”
The entire Roosevelt transfer scandal takes on different meaning when viewed through the mission statement provided by Roosevelt’s lead administrator.
With a stated goal of enrolling and increasing the academic achievement of “ethnically diverse students” and “brown and black males”, Roosevelt officials then made contact with “brown and black males” (and some white kids too) up and down the I-5 corridor.
Seven recruits admitted they were actually commuting from their actual residences, some as far as 40 miles from Roosevelt. - Fact Finder Report
And where Adams, Patu or Ford located a “brown or black male”
Subscribe to read the second half of this story and receive all of our reporting direct in your mailbox and Substack all.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Journal 425 to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.