It is a school named after a Christian Lebanese poet who promoted peace and published his most famous work while living in New York. But life at the city’s Khalil Gibran International Academy has been far from peaceful _ and the place hasn’t even opened yet.
With only a few weeks remaining until the academic year starts, the Brooklyn school announced in February as the first in the city to offer instruction in Arabic and on Arab culture is already on its second location and second principal, after public furors forced the changes. An Internet search of the school turns up turns up references to “madrassa” and “jihad” from its very vocal critics, who portray it as a potential radical Islam training ground.
The latest controversy flared up earlier this month when the school’s original principal, Debbie Almontaser, failed to condemn the use of the highly charged word “intifada.”
She was replaced by acting interim principal Danielle Salzberg. However, the appointment of a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic to replace an Arab woman also garnered its share of sensational tabloid headlines, like “Taking a Jew Turn” and “School bad idea even before Hebrew-haha.”
Supporters have been taken aback by the controversy.
“I was surprised, what the people talked about it,” said Shamsi Ali, imam at the Islamic Cultural Center in Manhattan, who served on an interfaith advisory council for the school.
“In fact it is a regular public school, the only difference is they’re going to use Arabic as a medium,” he said. “It is absolutely not a religious school and no one has any intention of teaching religion.”
When the city’s Department of Education first announced the school, it was as one of 40 new schools opening this fall. But clearly, none of the others have gotten this level of attention.
Khalil Gibran is slated to start with sixth-graders and then expand with one additional class every year to end up with 500 to 600 students in grades 6-12. It joins a number of small public schools in New York City that are themed _ covering areas from the arts to social justice to Chinese language.
The school was originally going to take space in an elementary school in Brooklyn. Parents at the school objected for a number of reasons, including whether there would be enough space in the building and whether the ideological controversy would create a security risk.
The Department of Education changed the school’s location, and it is now residing in the same building as a high school and middle school in Brooklyn.
That would probably be enough controversy for any new school. But there’s more. Almontaser, a longtime public school teacher, abruptly resigned this month after coming under fire over the “Intifada NYC” T-shirts.
The uproar started after an article connected Almontaser to Arab Women Active in Art and Media, a group that produced shirts imprinted with the words “Intifada NYC.” The group used office space shared by an organization that counts Almontaser among its board members.
The word “intifada” has come to represent the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Almontaser got caught in the controversy when she tried to explain the origins of the word rather than condemn its usage outright.
Almontaser was soon replaced by Salzberg, of the New Visions for Public Schools nonprofit, which has been involved in the creation of the school.
Almontaser did not respond to an e-mail request for comment. The Department of Education declined to make Salzberg or any of the teachers at the school available for comment, but has reiterated its support for the school. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also added his voice to the support of Salzberg and the school.
Salzberg “has a lot of experience in starting schools and in working within the system and handling the most difficult tasks that we come up with in the schools,” Bloomberg said. “And, you know, you don’t have to speak Arabic in order to run a school. You have to make sure that you have the resources, have the right teachers, they get the right training.”
The school has attracted several opponents, including an organization called “Stop the Madrassa” that would rather the school not open at all. The group calls the school “badly managed and inflammatory.”
Members say the city has not been upfront about details of the curriculum and the content of the textbooks, and they believe the school will have a hard time keeping Islam out of the classroom.
This week, Salzberg met with some of the 44 students who have enrolled so far at the school, most of them not Arabic-speakers or even Arab. At least one parent was unfazed by the controversy _ and had in fact not even heard about it.
Yolanda Exis said she was just glad her 12-year-old son Allan Aluder could take advantage of being in a smaller school and hoped that would translate into more individual attention.
“I think the size of the classroom is most important,” she said.
The interest in Arabic is Aluder’s, who said, “I just want to learn the language.”
It’s a goal his mother, a native of the Caribbean, supports. “I think being bilingual is fantastic,” she said.
