After Mohammad Al-Shammar moved to the Toledo area, he began looking to place his daughter in the right school.
“I want a school that isn’t going to teach her how to have a boyfriend,” the Saudi Arabian and Muslim said.
What he found was a new charter school in West Toledo that he said provided “the perfect environment” - one that exudes some of the moral values dear to his culture.
With very little attention and almost no advertising, what is believed to be Ohio’s first publicly funded Arabic language-themed schools opened on Secor Road last month.
The charter schools - Central Academy of Ohio for grades six through eight and Bridge Academy of Ohio for grades kindergarten through five - are operated by an Ann Arbor company in the former site of the Toledo Islamic Academy.
Unlike the private school, leaders at the new charter schools said there is no religion taught and no prayer.
Mr. Al-Shammar, at his minivan to pick up the sixth-grade girl and her two brothers last week, said his children speak Arabic at home. He is hopeful the new school will reinforce the importance of their culture.
They are technically two schools, but they are essentially operated as one. The differences from a traditional public school or another charter school are clear.
A sign hanging on the building prominently advertises “Daily Arabic Lessons” in Arabic. Female students still giggle to each other during recess and dismissal but many wear Islamic-style head scarves. Scarves are neither required nor encouraged for non-Muslim students.
Serving a niche
Principal Mazin Heiderson, who spent two decades working for the Michigan Department of Education, says the schools’ success is rooted in the fact that other schools don’t attempt their strategies.
“We specialize in Arabic because that is the niche that we serve,” said Mr. Heiderson, who is fluent in the language. “We want high general achievement, but we also add a language element, and we want the students to actually own the language.”
Global Educational Excellence of Ann Arbor runs five Arabic-themed schools in Michigan: two in Hamtramck, one in Dearborn, one in Ypsilanti, and one in Ann Arbor.
Mohamad Issa, director of the company, said Toledo families have asked him for years to start a school in Toledo.
“We cannot believe the demand that we have in Ohio,” Mr. Issa said.
Speaking the language
Like the Toledo schools, which had 110 students enrolled on Friday, the majority of children - close to 80 percent - who attend the company’s Michigan schools have an Arabic background.
Additionally, many speak Arabic and many are Muslim.
Luay Shalabi, principal of the kindergarten-through-12th-grade Central Academy in Ann Arbor, said the Toledo schools are designed as “Xerox copies of the other schools run by the company in Michigan.”
School is dismissed at 12:30 p.m. every Friday so teachers can meet for professional development.
“They love it because teachers are a part of the process then,” Mr. Shalabi said. “In Ohio we still will exceed the minimum number of required hours.”
Amber Boyer, a seventh-grade student and non-Muslim, said the early dismissal gives her classmates time to be picked up and go to the mosque. She said she has just learned to speak the Arabic alphabet and can write her name.
The student body
Mr. Shalabi admits many of his students already know the language, but the school in Ann Arbor has attracted children from “mainstream American families,” Christians, and one Jewish family this year.
It also has students in kindergarten through high school from nearly every Arabic-speaking country.
In the 10 years since it opened, he says he has never had to deal with students using drugs oreven fighting.
During a walk through the cafeteria, one could hear several languages, including Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Kurdish, Spanish, and Somali.
“In the public schools, they expect every child to be in this melting pot, or what I call a mixed salad, with no identity of their country,” Mr. Shalabi said. “Here is it different in that they can identify with their culture and at the same time be part of the mainstream.”
On Wednesday, the school’s cafeteria included two groups of students.
Nearly two dozen boys sat apart from the other children who ate lunch.
“We are fasting for Ramadan,” said 10-year-old Ali Alsheemary, who took the time to catch up on Arabic translations. “This is Somalian Arabic, which is harder.”
Defying the critics
New York’s first publicly funded Arabic-language school opened earlier this month, defying critics who warned it could foster anti-American Islamist extremism or even just include Islamic teachings in the curricula.
Students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn - named after a 20th century Lebanese Christian poet - started their school year with a dozen security guards and police officers safeguarding the building.
A group named “Stop the Madrassa Community Coalition” called for it to be closed.
The word madrassa means “school” in Arabic but is sometimes associated by some people with Islamic religious schools suspected of training militants.
Jeff Wiesenfeld, a spokesman for the group who is also a trustee for the City University of New York system, called it a “tragedy for the American people” that it was opened by New York City Public Schools.
Mr. Wiesenfeld told The Blade it would be impossible to monitor a public school to be sure it doesn’t include Islamic teaching alongside Arabic.
“Indeed, Arabic should be a part of schools, but Arabic and the culture of the Arab world, should be taught by a cultural anthropologist,” Mr. Wiesenfeld said.
A political dispute
Charles Haynes, senior scholar with the First Amendment Center in Washington and an expert on religion in schools, said the dispute in New York is more over politics than it is a constitutional issue. “I think everyone agrees we need more Arabic-speaking Americans,” Mr. Haynes said. “At issue is, are the materials educational and not devotional?”
He said Arabic is closely linked to Islam, and it is a sacred language.
“In New York, the difference is that it is a public school that is part of the public school system, but a charter school has a wider scope [and] more leeway to do what they do, and thus often less oversight,” Mr. Haynes said.
No religious studies
The New York school’s leaders and officials from the Michigan company operating the school on Secor say religion plays absolutely no part in their classrooms.
“We make it clear to parents that this is only teaching culture and teaching the language. We are not going to teach any religion,” Mr. Issa said. “We had a tough time to make some parents to accept it, but either take it or leave it. We do not teach religion.”
Mr. Shalabi said the critics of the school in New York are filled with prejudice and ignorance.
Mr. Heiderson dismissed claims that Arabic cannot be taught separate from religion.
“You don’t have to read the Bible to learn English and we wouldn’t have [students] reading the Qur’an,” he said.
Mr. Heiderson added that there is no time during the school day that is set aside for prayer, and they do not have a moment of silence.
“No one has asked, but if someone asked to be excused for prayer, we would excuse them during a nonclass time or during a study hall,” he said.
Jackie Burrell, a kindergarten teacher, said the school is clearly different, including the kind of discussion among students, but stressed that there is no organized prayer.
Diversity of cultures
Controversy in New York aside, teachers at the school in Ann Arbor said the Toledo school will likely be popular for the same reasons as their school.
“The biggest attraction is the diversity of cultures and that they are getting a mix of American culture and Middle Eastern,” said Rasheda Nemer, a teacher who attended the school herself and graduated in 2001.
Ms. Nemer said it’s important for Arabic students to be immersed in the culture of the Arab world.
“I don’t speak Arabic in my classes, but if a student comes in and says a greeting in Arabic, I will respond with one,” she said.
The traditional Arabic greeting is “assalamu alaikum,” which means “peace be with you.”
It’s heard a lot at the school - and outside the new Toledo charter schools, students can be heard using the greeting in the morning.
The faculty
Many of the teachers at all of the company’s schools, including the Toledo schools, are non-Arabic.
Lorelei Ross, formerly an assistant principal at the Catholic, all-female Notre Dame Academy high school, now teaches at the school.
She said the daily Arabic class has been the attraction for most families.
The Toledo Islamic Academy, a private school founded in 1995, had between 150 and 200 students enrolled from prekindergarten to high school at the location where the charter schools now operate.
It relocated to the former Cathedral of Praise church on West Alexis Road.
Mr. Heiderson said the new schools are aiming to attract about 225 students if it stays at the Secor location.
The school expects to receive almost $620,000 in basic state funding and $665,000 from other sources, including $300,000 in federal start-up funds.
“We don’t believe in making the classes very large or making the school very large,” he said. “The tuition that is charged by parochial schools is serious money to some families and to some immigrant families.”
He also added: “We make no bones about telling them we do not offer religious instruction.”
Contact Ignazio Messina at:
imessina@theblade.com
or 419-724-6171.
