14
COM
EDUCATION
What happened to the
Controversial Arabic-themed NYC public school settling at new
premises; few Arab American students
BY: RACHEL MILLARD
When the Khalil Gibran Inter-
national Academy (KGIA)
opened its doors two years ago,
the Arabic themed school seemed
as if it wouldn’t make it beyond
its first year.
The principal, Debbie Al-
montaser, was asked to resign
after making controversial com-
ments and parents complained
that there was inadequate funding,
very little communications be-
tween them and teachers, and that
the school was beset with disci-
pline problems.
Now well into its second year,
the school appears to be moving
past its difficulties and is setting
on achieving its mission: to teach
a segment of New York City stu-
dents a slice of Arabic life and
culture, in addition to the so-
called three Rs – reading, writing
and arithmetic.
School officials declined to
comment for this article, despite
repeated requests for an interview.
Melody Mayer, a spokeswoman
for the Department of Education,
said they would not comment be-
cause it would “open the flood-
gates to more media attention.”
Furthermore, an impending law-
suit from Almontaser, who is
suing the DOE after she left the
school, impeded Mayer from
making comment.
Almontaser stepped down as
the school’s principal in a
firestorm of controversy in Au-
gust 2007 after an article in The
New York Post stated that she had
“downplayed the significance” of
T-shirts bearing the slogan “In-
tifada NYC.” Almontaser said
that The Post had distorted her
words and that she had been
forced to resign by the mayor’s
office.
Recently, Aramica met with
Danielle Jefferis, KGIA program
manager for the Arab American
Family Support Center – KGIA’s
lead community partner – who
works at the school full time and
closely with its students and fam-
ilies. Jefferis talked about how the
school has settled down since last
year and how it is adjusting to its
new location on Navy Street,
where the school shares the prem-
ises with P.S. 287.
The school, which was criti-
cized for not having enough Ara-
bic language classes, now
employs two full-time native Ara-
bic speakers and students have
one full period of Modern Stan-
dard Arabic language first thing
every morning, with one lesson in
Arabic culture per week. KGIA is
the only dual-language public
school in New York City to offer
Arabic-language instruction. In
other respects, it follows the DOE
curriculum.
As the
school
expands to
high school
level and
needs more
facilities,
its location
will be
reassessed
and might
be moved,
yet again.
And while last year the school
was beset by a lack of facilities, a
donation made early this semes-
ter from one of the school’s sup-
port organizations has equipped
the school with a computer lab
designed for language learners
with voice-recording software
and word processing software,
which can manage Arabic fonts.
One widely circulated rumor
about the school was that the
DOE was no longer committed to
supporting it beyond the 8th
grade. But Mayer, the DOE
spokeswoman, denied the rumors
and said that the school plans to
add one grade every year. As the
school expands to high school
level and needs more facilities, its
location will be reassessed and
might be moved, yet again. The
continued uncertainty is frustrat-
ing many parents who question
DOE’s support for the school.
“The DOE is making life very
difficult for parents and students
at both KGIA and P.S. 287,” said
Saba Mansour, an Arab-American
mother of two kids attending an-
other Brooklyn public school,
“There’s no way all of this dis-
ruption can ever be in the best in-
terests of students.”
For some educators, the early
problems the school faced are
much more meaningful than just
the symptoms of a challenging
system. Edwin Mayorga, a mem-
ber of the New York Collective of
Radical Educators, a social justice
teachers’ organization which has
worked closely with the KGIA,
said he viewed the DOE’s actions
towards the KGIA as an indica-
tion of the poor acceptance of
Arab and Muslim communities in
NYC public life.
“This represents a concrete ex-
ample of Arab and Muslims try-
ing to create space and being
denied,” he told Aramica, linking
this case to what he sees as other
examples of discrimination in
civic life against Arab and Mus-
lim Americans and other immi-
grant groups, such as in policing
and immigrants’ rights.
“There is a question here,” he
said, “over which communities
have power and legitimacy, are
addressed and supported, and
which communities are marginal-
ized.”
So far the KGIA has notably
few native Arabic students. Of a
student body of about 60 – it is
under-enrolled by 50 percent –
only four of these are native Ara-
bic speakers, according to Jef-
feries.
Why are so few children from
Arabic-speaking families enrolled
at a school which was envisioned
as a place for Arabic students to
be the best representatives of their
culture to their non-Arab peers?
And why are so few Arabic chil-
dren at a school that many Arab-
American parents would have
called for, as a place where the
teachers spoke their language and
their culture was recognized?
Some members of the com-
munity fear that the original, neg-
ative publicity tying the school to
terrorism and Islamic madrassahs
EDITION 136 • JANUARY 11 - 21, 2009 | WWW.ARAMICA.
KGIA?
discouraged Arab-American par-
ents from sending their kids there
at all, sabotaging the school’s suc-
cess among the Arab-American
community from the outset.
“I definitely think the contro-
versy of the school was an obsta-
cle to parents sending their kids
there,” says Linda Sarsour, acting
director of the Arab American As-
sociation of New York and the
mother of four young children.
“I think the school has been under
so much scrutiny that they have to
put together some kind of mar-
keting strategy to entice parents
and prove to them why they
There is a belief among
Arab-American Christians
that this school teaches the
Islamic faith in addition to
Arabic.
should send their students there,”
she said, adding that the school’s
remote location made it very dif-
ficult for students to get there. In
an effort to encourage greater at-
tendance from the Arab-Ameri-
can community, the school has
recently started advertising a po-
tential special bus service to bring
students from the densely Arab-
American populated neighbor-
hood of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to
the school’s premises in the Navy
Yard.
“Any sensible parent would be
concerned about enrolling their
child in a school facing the vigor-
ous opposition that KGIA did on
its opening day,” said Dave Hall,
a musician and active member of
the Downtown Brooklyn Arab-
American community, who has
been invited to serve on a forth-
coming community advisory
board at the school.
Others suggested that the
school’s Arabic theme could in
fact be a disadvantage, with par-
ents not wanting their kids to be
isolated from an U.S. upbringing.
“I agree that an Arabic-lan-
guage school can be a good
bridge between the generations,
so that second or third generation
immigrants can learn about their
heritage,” said Marie Eleham, a
mother of two who moved from
Syria 10 years ago, before her
children were born. “But I would
not send my daughter there; it’s
as if we are enlarging the gap be-
tween her and her home, making
her feel an immigrant as her par-
ents have felt since they came to
this country. She should feel at
home here: this is, after all,
where she was born and raised.”
She also highlighted a mis-
conception about the school that
might prevent other mothers
from sending their kids there.
“There is a belief among Arab-
American Christians that this
school teaches the Islamic faith in
addition to Arabic,” said Eleham,
who is a Christian. “I don’t know
the detail of the story of the
school, but I heard that its previ-
ous principal was a fanatic,” she
added.
As a NYC public school, there
is no religious education on the
curriculum at KGIA. If Islam is
mentioned by name, it is only in
the context of teaching about Ara-
bic culture and history.
“I imagine that many immi-
grant Arab parents want their chil-
dren to assimilate and be among
American kids,” agreed Mr. Hall,
“but I'd like to suggest to Arab
parents that the education their
children will get at KGIA is equal
to that of the best American pub-
lic schools, with the added bonus
of a strong Arabic-language pro-
gram, which will serve them and
their adopted country for their
whole professional lives.”
This article was written as part
of an education reporting fellow-
ship granted by New York Com-
munity Media Alliance.