The Alpharetta Planning Commission was hopelessly deadlocked Thursday night over a plan to move the campus of Amana Academy, a Fulton County charter school that’s become the subject of an ugly smear campaign apparently because they teach Arabic.
School officials say they have outgrown their current location in a shopping center on Main Street in Alpharetta and thought they’d found a perfect spot for their permanent campus.
But the school has encountered surprisingly stiff opposition from some of the surrounding neighborhoods.
They’ve also become the target of an smear campaign and anonymous flyer that has disparaged the school as a “terrorist training camp” suggesting its true goal is the indoctrination of “suicide bombers.”
“Whoever wrote that was, in my opinion, a coward because they didn’t say who they were,” said Amana Academy’s Executive Director Ehab Jaleel.
Those ugly allegations didn’t resurface in a two-hour-long discussion of the merits of the school’s potential new campus located near the intersection of Windward Parkway and Edison Drive.
Most people who voiced opposition to the plan cited traffic and zoning concerns. The planning commission deadlocked on the issue -- three in favor and three opposed to the plan.
The proposal for the new campus will now be forwarded to the city council without a formal recommendation from the planning commission. The city council could consider the plan at its Aug. 22 meeting.
