At Kalona Elementary School, Arabic is everywhere.
Signs at the school could be read as easily by an Iowan as an Iraqi, English words underlined by the swirling script of Arabic.
Kindergartners in the rural district hear stories in the language twice a week, and even the math teacher has her students counting off in the Middle Eastern language.
But all of this may disappear after the next school year, the Arabic lessons a victim of budget cuts being felt in dozens of Iowa school districts.
Three years ago, the district with three elementary schools, a middle school and a 200-student high school received a $602,433 federal grant to start programs in languages deemed important for national security.
But next year is likely the last, according to Mark Schneider, superintendent of the Mid-Prairie School District.
The elementary program is the only one of its kind in the state, according to Suzie Swartzendruber, grant coordinator for Kalona Elementary.
Schneider said state budget shortfalls and declining revenues in the district have forced him to abandon the plan to hire a full-time Arabic instructor past next year.
The classes are now taught by Zahra Al-Attar, a Baghdad native who left Iraq in 1994.
Al-Attar, 41, said she first saw the ad for an Arabic teacher in Kalona in her mosque in Iowa City.
“I was shocked at first. I said, ‘What? They want to learn Arabic in Kalona? Why would they want to learn Arabic?’ ” she said.
“And the people here, in the beginning, most of them welcomed the grant, but there were one or two families that were worried it was going to bring the religion here, too. Though it is a small community, the people here are way more open-minded than I thought.”
Al-Attar instructs each class for two half-hour sessions every week, working with the youngest students on learning the words for basic colors, body parts and expressions. Fifth-graders are able to form short sentences and hold simple conversations. Most older students know how to at least write their names, along with a small vocabulary of common words.
The federal money granted so far has gone to pay Al-Attar’s hourly wage, about $20,000 per year. The district pays nearly the same figure to William Penn University, where Al-Attar is studying to become a certified teacher. She plans to graduate next year.
Other than that, much of the money has gone into instruction materials, many of which are not available in the United States.
The decision to discontinue the lessons isn’t easy.
“This was a commitment that we made,” Swartzendruber said. “We started this program with the federal government saying, ‘If we start this program, you will continue it.’ It doesn’t make us look good. We didn’t keep our end of the bargain.”
The students benefit in more ways than just learning another language. There are the lessons about life in another culture.
“We learned how hard it was being ruled by Saddam Hussein. It was really hard,” said fifth-grader Madison Zahradnek. “And we learned that even though people are fighting there, it’s still kind of normal, like how people live. And we got to eat food that was really good.”
Al-Attar said she spends class time nearly every week answering questions about life in Iraq.
“Whenever there is an opportunity, and I’ve been here three years, this is their favorite thing: they compare,” she said. “How people there are living, what their elementary looks like, do people eat the same things?”
As for what happens after next school year: Al-Attar will look for work teaching Arabic elsewhere in the event the program ends. The district has committed to teaching Chinese and Spanish to kindergarten-through-12th-grade students.
“I’m proud to have been a part of it,” said Jan Hochstetler, a social studies teacher who has invited Al-Attar and deployed U.S. soldiers to talk to her class about their experiences. “We’re sending less-sheltered students on to middle school and high school.”
