NEW YORK -- City education officials have selected a new site for a controversial public school focusing on Arab language and culture after opposition from parents stifled an earlier placement plan.
The Khalil Gibran International Academy, set to open in September, will be located at 345 Dean St., in the same building as the Brooklyn High School of the Arts and the Math & Science Exploratory School, said David Cantor, spokesman for the city Department of Education. The school will stay in that building at least two years.
“This is not a tentative decision,” Cantor said. “The school will open at this site in September.”
The academy, painted by some conservative commentators as a potential incubator for radicalism, was to share space in a building that currently houses Public School 282, an elementary school in Brooklyn. Parents had protested that plan on grounds that adding a school to the facility might diminish resources available to their children.
Named after the famed Lebanese Christian poet, the academy would be one of numerous small, themed public high schools in the nation’s largest school system. While offering the basic curriculum required by the city education department, it also would teach Arabic and integrate history and other aspects of Arab culture.
Ever since plans for the school were announced, some critics, through Web sites, letters to the editor, newspaper commentaries and other forums, have claimed it could become a hotbed of militant Islam and promote segregation. School leader Debbie Almontaser, a Yemeni-born Muslim who came to the U.S. when she was 3, also has faced withering criticism.
Almontaser, a veteran New York City educator who has been very active in interfaith efforts, has insisted that the school will promote tolerance and cultural bridge-building. She also has insisted the school will not focus on religion, and noted that a multicultural group was involved in planning for it. But critics, including conservative commentator Daniel Pipes, have said it would be difficult to separate Islam from Arab culture.
The plan is to launch the school with a sixth grade and gradually expand it through 12th grade, with one goal being to eventually teach half the classes in Arabic. Students of all backgrounds are welcome to apply.
Although P.S. 282 parent leaders insisted their concerns were space-related, questions arose about whether the ideological controversy surrounding the school could mean a security risk. Some parents also were unhappy with the idea of having older students in the same building as an elementary school.
