What’s all this I hear about a new middle school and high school going into the building that houses PS 282, a local elementary school on Sixth Avenue and Lincoln Place?
Two parents at PS 282 wrote a letter to Chancellor Klein and sent it to me. I don’t know the whole story but I got a very weird feeling from the email I was sent.
The Kalil Gibran International Academy will be a school for arabic middle and high schoolers (100 pupils). Debbie Alontaser, who was listed on the Park Slope 100, is slated to be principal. Here’s a description of the school in today’s New York Sun:
A new public secondary school that is to include Middle Eastern
studies in its curriculum will focus on culture, not the region’s
political conflicts, Department of Education officials said yesterday.
"The school will not be a vehicle for political ideology," a Department
of Education spokesman, David Cantor, said of the Khalil Gibran
International Academy, due to open this September in Brooklyn.As for the sorts of topics the school will cover, the CEO of the
Office of New Schools, Garth Harries, gave as an example a math lesson
plan that would mention that an Arabic mathematician invented the
concept of zero. "It’s going to follow Department of Education
regulations," the director of the Arab-American Family Support Center,
Lena Alhusseini, who helped design the school, said. "It’s going to be
exactly like all the schools in the city, the same curriculum."
I am alarmed that at the bottom of this parent’s email to Cancellor Klein, the authors included links to the Militant Islam Monitor, which is vehemently opposing the creation of this school on the crazy grounds that it has a Jihadi agenda.
While I have heard that the PTA opposes a new school being "stuffed into" their long-standing elementary school, including links like Miltant Islam Monitor is incendiary and so off the topic — it really makes me wonder. What is the issue here, really? Is this racism or just a parent’s concerns about the future of their school. Here’s is the the email two parents sent to Chancellor Klein.
Dear Chancellor Klein,
This evening we were given, along with almost the entire PS282
community, some alarming news. What was most alarming to us however
was not the intention that you and New Visions have to open the
Khalil Gibran International Academy within our walls, it's the
arrogance with which it was done. This was the first communication
to anyone, except our principal who held back the news until the math
tests were over, and it was presented to us as if we have no choice.
When we asked Robert Hughes, president of New Visions, if he had
looked at the population of the school that he is about to invade
(yes, the parents feel it is an invasion) he told us that he hadn't
but that he had looked at the building's capacity. Both the breakdown
of the school's population and the building's capacity are on the
same report easily accessible on the DOE website!
Please know that the parents are mobilizing and organizing a protest
that will not end until this plan has been rethought. We will
contact every news outlet in the city and in the country.
Our son is in the third grade LEAD program, he and his classmates
have the highest test scores of the school, he is one of few non-
african americans in his class. He is fluently bilingual and bi-
cultural and we want him to keep an open mind, and it is for this
that we chose PS282 over other neighborhood schools, public and
private. We will not keep him in the school if he loses one piece of
the curriculum that he is presently offered or the space for that to
take place in, nor will we keep him in an educational environment
that "is an abdication of the basic principle behind public education
to set up separate schools to teach uncritically one history and one
culture."
Although the news has been public only for a short time, please read
below what a quick google search comes up with about your new
school. Why do you want to put this kind of pressure on a small,
neighborhood school in the midst of growing with such great potential?
Sincerely,
Jennifer Bacon Fossati and Filippo Fossati
parents of Paolo Fossati, class 3-209, PS282
I find it interesting that the Fossatis backpedal in their response to the blog after writing their letter to the Dept of Education.
Apparently, the Fossatis, despite naming their son with an Italian name, are unaware that the very slurs the MIM website contain are no different (and perhaps more virulent) than the ones Italians received when they started immigrating here more than 100 years ago.
Yes, there were problems with Italians coming to America — can you say racketeering? But did the overwhelming majority make this a better society? Were the Italians in the U.S. a threat to the country during either WWI or WWII? Did people likely conclude otherwise at that time? Were almost all of them Roman Catholic, which believe it or not was once not a very popular religion here as this country was founded by Protestants?
Your insensitivity and lack of awareness and compassion make me ashamed to be Italian-American (whose grandfather by the way left Italy because of governmental action against his family, then enlisted in the English Army — the Americans were just as prejudiced and small-minded then — to fight in World War I).
Mentioning the MIM website is ridiculous. If a Yeshiva was being opened here, anyone could find hundreds of websites, starting with the KKK, mentioning how terrible it is to have “Jews” congregating in one area.
If you read the news, you would know that Arabs are not a monolithic people. Brooklyn (including Park Slope) is home to Arab Jews (Oh, my!), Arab Christians, secular Arabs, Muslims (who can be just as secular as anyone else). You probably don’t even recognize them when you are scurrying around bringing Paolo to his next cultural awareness meeting.
If you have an issue about how the school space may be assigned, that is fine. But don’t cloak it by saying how wonderful your child is and how the public school system will lose if little Paolo goes elsewhere and highlight the fact that he is one of the few white kids in school. It’s that type of phoniess that makes everyone else in the City roll their eyes and chuckle when people talk about Park Slope.
After seeing the nonsense written by Fossatis, the local newspapers, and certain others, the thought that Park Slope is progressive or liberal is simply a fabrication.
“Our son is in the third grade LEAD program, he and his classmates
have the highest test scores of the school, he is one of few non-
african americans in his class [because he is white].” “He is fluently bilingual and bi-cultural and we want him to keep an open mind, and it is for this that we chose PS282 over other neighborhood schools, public and private [but we only want him to be to nice safe-sounding cultures such as European, Caribbean or American.}”
Not so hidden behind your Park Slope liberal multicultural veneer is a snide racism and alarmism. You contradict yourselves within the same email to Chancellor Klein – you state “we want him to keep an open mind”, and then later say “nor will we keep him in an educational environment that is an abdication of the basic principle behind public education to set up separate schools to teach uncritically one history and one culture.”
You want him to keep an open mind? Start by opening your own minds. It’s sad that your son is being raised by two closed-minded fakers – he would benefit much more to be raised by parents other than you.
And the Italian half of your couple-dom would make most Italians I know ashamed, many of whom support and embrace Arabic culture and history.
Why don’t you write another letter to Chancellor Klein and the media stating you fully support the idea of an Arabic-English high school but just not in your “backyard”, instead of trashing the entire school on the front page of the Brooklyn Paper, being read by people all over Brooklyn.
Tina
The The Kalil Gibran International Academy is an excellent idea and a great model for the thousands of Yemeni, Syrian, Lebanese, etc. kids in Brooklyn and beyond. The opposition to this school is truly an embarrassment and a sign that xenophobia still exists in New York City, first home to countless immigrants.
Councilman Yassky is WAY OFF BASE in leading the opposition and shows the same mistrust of others that led right to Treblinka half a century ago.
The time is right for this school!
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle carries the story in today’s paper (not on the web site).
I think it also “lowers the tone of the debate” to send a letter that essentially says that your child is more valuable to the school because he’s smart and not black.
Dear Louise Crawford,
We are sorry if you have misunderstood the meaning of what we were writing, or maybe we didn’t express ourselves well.
Our letter was written as a personal missive and the meaning that you attribute to it is misleading.
As has already been quoted regarding this blog, “The potential controversy about the school adds a potentially destructive further layer of complication to the situation. It’s clear that the Khalil Gibran International Academy will face opposition by MIM and like-minded ideologues wherever it goes.”
This is the reason why the extreme radical article was included; only to show the worst of what outside feelings are already being voiced about the proposed addition to our school.
We would be happy to have both arabic language and middle east studies added to our current curriculum. Children should have the opportunity to learn about Aristotele as well as Ibn Rushd and of Plato as well as Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn; they should know were our mathematic and astrological systems come from and read the most beautiful poems by arab poets such as Omar Khayyám. Certainly this field of study has been largely ignored in American childhood public education.
Our children have a beautiful school with enough space to enable them in their learning that would be reduced substantially by the new installment. If you attended the PTA meeting you would probably agree that the group of presenters did not appear to have given any consideration to the effects it would have on the current school population. In fact they admitted that they had only looked at the “square foot per child” ratio of the building and were unprepared to address any issues of sharing between 5 yr old children and teenagers of school facilities like the cafeteria and bathrooms. Not to mention security issues.
If the promoters of the Khalill Gibran International Academy are given entry to our school so will their critics, and we think that by reporting what you could easily find with a simple google search, shows how low could be the tone of the debate. Whether or not you or we want it, this is the pressure that we are talking about and one element that our community, by default, will have to confront.
In addition to the loss of space and other physical adjustments, we as a community have to be aware of the kind of pressure this new school could put on our children.
thank you for taking the time and giving space on your blog for this discussion and allowing us to clarify our opinions, again we apologize if our intentions were misleading or misunderstood.
best regards