Brooklyn Eagle : “Leader of Arab Women’s Group Honored at Borough Hall Dinner”

9-29-08

by Brooklyn Eagle

BROOKLYN — After being targeted by the media in an attempt to shut down New York’s first Arabic dual-language public school, and after a year of fighting the appropriation of their “Intifada NYC” T-shirt, Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media’s founding director Mona Eldahry was honored by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz at an annual Ramadan event.

“Because of AWAAM, my daughter is comfortable speaking to adults and expressing herself in public,” says Naima Remmak.

Brooklyn Borough Hall’s 5th Annual Iftar dinner at Borough Hall Courtroom this past Wednesday honored a handful of Muslim community leaders during the holy month of Ramadan.

“Positive recognition from an elected official in this time of growing anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment is an important gesture of affirmation and solidarity,” says AWAAM Media Mentor Roopa Singh. “With this citation, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and the Iftar Committee are sending a positive message to our embattled communities, the message that we should continue to strive for fair media coverage and equal access to education, public safety and civic institutions.”  Read more..

Press Release: September 22

FOUNDER OF ARAB WOMEN’S ORGANIZATION HONORED BY BROOKLYN BOROUGH PRESIDENT MARTY MARKOWITZ

Mona Eldahry receives Citation for her Leadership in Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), Lead Member of Communities in Support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (CISKGIA) At Brooklyn Borough Hall’s 5th Annual Iftar Dinner.

Brooklyn, SEPTEMBER 24, 2008

After being targeted by the media in an attempt to shut down New York’s first Arabic dual-language public school, and after a year of fighting the appropriation of their “Intifada NYC” t-shirt, Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media’s founding director, Mona Eldahry, is honored by Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz, at annual Ramadan event.
Brooklyn Borough Hall’s 5th Annual Iftar dinner, at Borough Hall Courtroom, Wednesday (6:00pm), honors a handful of Muslim community leaders during the holy month of Ramadan. “Positive recognition from an elected official in this time of growing anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment is an important gesture of affirmation and solidarity,” says AWAAM Media Mentor, Roopa Singh. “With this citation, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and the Iftar Committee are sending a positive message to our embattled communities, the message that we should continue to strive for fair media coverage and equal access to education, public safety and civic institutions,” Singh concludes.
In August of 2007, AWAAM found itself at the receiving end of a smear campaign designed to shut down New York’s first Arabic language dual language public school. T-shirts that AWAAM had created to celebrate community empowerment were falsely associated with the founding principal of KGIA, resulting in a dual targeting of KGIA and of AWAAM. At the height of the attacks, parents were uncomfortable allowing their children to be identified in AWAAM’S media work. As a result, AWAAM cancelled a screening and a youth-organized event for the Musilm Holidays Coalition and continues to remove last names from youth media pieces. “The ability to speak out and to take action around events affecting one’s life is essential to adolescent development. AWAAM’s programs have a tremendous impact on young people at risk of developing low self-esteem and a sense of hopelessness about the ability to affect social change,” explains Kelly Sykes, Child Psychologist and Program Evaluator.
In an effort to protect AWAAM as a safe space for young women who are Arab, Muslim and from communities of color, AWAAM launched their iWord Campaign, aimed at humanizing their membership’s communities and asserting their right to use their languages and to discuss their struggles. “Because of AWAAM, my daughter is comfortable speaking to adults and expressing herself in public,” says Naima Remmak, “She has serious career aspirations, and she has a much higher level of analysis when it comes to politics and social phenomena. Arab mothers are so happy to see a program dedicated to women of minority groups.” In an effort to ensure that KGIA received the support it needed to be successful AWAAM helped to found Communities in Support of KGIA. “The work that AWAAM did with teachers and parents at KGIA last year was essential in helping us to get our stories out,” says Maysa Jarara, KGIA parent. AWAAM and CISKGIA continue to work to ensure that the Department of Education and New Visions support the school.
“This citation offers AWAAM and the communities they serve a chance to celebrate the facts about their organization: that they provide underserved communities important media training and the tools they need to tell their own stories accurately,” says Abdeen Jabara, civil rights lawyer. By empowering young women to become radio and video producers, writers of poetry, T-shirt artists, bloggers, DJs and community organizers, AWAAM shows them how they can have an active voice in the media and create positive change. Even in the face of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment, AWAAM mentors and youth continue to produce personal and socially relevant art.
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The Indypendent : “City Pushes Arab-American School to the Brink”

September 12, 2008

Alex Kane

In the summer of 2007, Muhammed Fakir Shahada was looking for a New York City middle school for his daughter Serena, who was about to enter the sixth grade. After attending a fair for new middle schools that summer, Fakir, who wanted his 12-year-old daughter to learn Arabic, which most of his family speaks, settled on the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), the city’s first dual-language Arabic public school, then located in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

many parents “are already pulling our children out of the school or are thinking of not returning next year” and noting that discipline problems among students caused by a poor learning environment “continue to go unaddressed.”

By the end of the school year, Fakir regretted his decision. “I kept telling my kid that [the school year] was going to get better, but it got worse,” he says. A year later, Fakir has pulled his daughter from KGIA, and this September Serena began seventh grade at a different school.

Designed to be a beacon of multiculturalism, KGIA was surrounded by controversy from its inception (see below). Parents, students and educators say that inadequate classroom resources, an unresponsive school administration, lack of support from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and teacher firings pushed the school to the brink of failure.  Read more…

New York Post: “NEW WOES FOR ARAB ACADEMY”

New home – more problems?

By TIM PERONE and YOAV GONEN

September 3, 2008 --

Despite adding another grade, enrollment at the controversial Arab-themed public school in Brooklyn that was saddled with leadership and discipline issues last year has grown by just 30 students, The Post has learned.

Although the Khalil Gibran International Academy’s move from Park Slope to a building in DUMBO led some parents to pull their kids out, others said it was the roller-coaster school year that sealed the deal.

“At this point, I’ve disassociated myself with the school. I want nothing to do with the school,” said Muhammed Fakir, whose daughter Serena attended the sixth grade last year.

He said many of the parents who yanked their kids cited discord with school Principal Holly Anne Reichert.  Read more…

Brooklyn Eagle : “New Building, Same Old Controversy for Brooklyn Arabic School”

DOE Disputes Charges by Group Trying To Bring Back Ex-Principal

9/3/08

by Mary Frost

FORT GREENE — To say that the Arabic-themed Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), a dual-language grade 6-12 public school in Brooklyn, had a bumpy first school year would be a massive understatement.

Founded with the aim of providing the city’s children with a foundation in Arabic language and culture, the little school and its students soon became a ping pong ball in a game played by forces beyond its control.

the Department of Education “reneged on its original commitment to continuing KGIA as a 6th to 12th grade program and has not made a commitment beyond grades 6 through 8.”

Attacks by conservative groups, multiple location changes accompanied by parent protests, the resignation of the founding principal, a continuing lawsuit, discipline problems and charges of inept handling by the city’s Department of Education (DOE) are just a few of the highlights of the school’s first year.  Read more…

Same The Village Voice : “Time Next Year: Post Slams Arabic School with Recycled Source”

Posted by Roy Edroso

September 3, 2008

The New York Post reports that the Khalil Gibran International Academy isn’t doing so well. It has a total of just 90 students. Some might find this a welcome change from public school overcrowding, but the Post fault the previous “roller-coaster school year” and parents’ “discord with school Principal Holly Anne Reichert,” who took over after KGIA’s “former principal, Debbie Almontaser, resigned under pressure after failing to condemn ‘Intifada NYC’ T-shirts distributed by an organization with links to her.”

That controversy, readers may remember, was largely stirred by a massive Post press campaign against Almontaser.

The Post was kinder to Reichert when she began her term by blasting her predecessor, but later went after Reichert and the school, citing in January “a learning environment that some parents characterized as ‘chaotic,’” a charge with one named source, Muhammed Fakir, whose daughter Serena attended. A Post editorial repeated the parents-say-chaotic charge.  Read more…

Press Release: Sept. 2

ON FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, A REDUCED KHALIL GIBRAN FACES CHALLENGES:

Lack of Commitment by DOE, Complete Turnover of Founding Teachers and Questions of Leadership

NEW YORK — This week, New York City’s first dual language Arabic school, Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), opens without its full Arabic language instruction, effective leadership, or any of its five original teachers or its social worker.

The Department of Education’s  (DOE’s ) process of abandoning KGIA’s original mission
began last year when the Mayor, along with the Department of Education and New Visions for
Public Schools, a partner agency that develops small new schools, forced the founding
principal to resign from her position because of a racist anti-Arab smear campaign organized by right-wing interest groups.

Recently, the Department of Education reneged on its original commitment to continuing KGIA as a 6th – 12th grade program and has not made a commitment beyond grades 6 through 8.  This change dramatically weakens the mission of the academy and makes it impossible for it to be a successful dual language program. The school’s plan had been structured around a rigorous 6th through 12th grade academic program encompassing cross cultural understanding and strong Arabic language skills.

The number of required hours of Arabic instruction has also been reduced significantly. The Department of Education recently cut the school’s Arabic language program from five to three days per week, removing a fundamental branch of the school’s curriculum. The language immersion program had originally been designed to provide daily Arabic instruction in order to equip students with fluency in a second language.

Although the school had been formerly situated near the Atlantic/Pacific train stop in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, this Tuesday it will open at 50 Navy Street at the edge of Fort Greene, far from the borough’s Arab-American community and subway stations. The city decided to move the school without parent
consultation or involvement. Not until after the school year ended were KGIA parents finally able to
voice this and other concerns in a meeting with the DOE and New Visions, though their concerns were dismissed.

In a public letter sent by KGIA parents to the Mayor and Schools Chancellor, parents said the newly appointed principal to KGIA was not exhibiting leadership or commitment to the school’s mission and was excluding parents from the decision making process: “Under the current leadership, we have little faith that this will ever be the school we want for our children. We are calling on the Department of Education to provide our school with better resources and leadership to educate our children. We want the school we were promised—the one envisioned and created by founding principal Debbie Almontaser. Our children deserve no less than that,” the letter said.

Since May, all five of the school’s teachers and its social worker have left or been pushed out. The DOE has failed in providing support to the school, its staff or parents, creating an unstable learning environment for students.

Parents Withdraw Children

An inaccessible location for KGIA students paired with neglected parent concerns and little commitment to the school’s original vision and mission has led to many parents withdrawing their children from the program. In a statement made during the school year, Muhammed Shahadat, whose child went to KGIA this past year, said: ”One of the reasons I had sent my child to KGIA was because I wanted her to go to a school where parents had a voice. Before the school opened, we were told that parents would be welcome to visit their children’s classrooms.”  However, parents were not allowed into classrooms, and at least one parent who spoke out about issues within the school was prohibited by security from entering the facility.

KGIA opened last September with its founding principal Debbie Almontaser pushed out of the picture. The DOE forced Ms. Almontaser to resign after a series of religious and ethnically-charged attacks by right wing fringe groups and the New York Post. The school has since undergone two replacement principals, neither of whom are closely involved with the communities they are serving.

Following Ms. Almontaser’s forced resignation, the school underwent a principal selection process that excluded Almontaser and two other qualified Arab-American candidates from interviewing for the position.

What has happened at KGIA is a clear example of the impact that Mayoral control of NYC schools has had in marginalizing parents, educators and community members from decision-making that affects their children.

Since Ms. Almontaser was ousted, a coalition of Brooklyn and Manhattan-based organizations formed in response to the DOE’s biased policies. “The DOE and its partners at New Visions may have expected that people would be outraged for a short time and that everything would go back to normal. But with this kind of injustice, it’s essential to continue demanding accountability,” said Adem Carroll, a member of the Muslim Consultative Network, one of the sponsoring groups of the Coalition in Support of KGIA. Hundreds of signatures have been gathered on several petitions defending the school and the former Principal (see www.kgia.wordpress.com).

Along with Mr. Carroll’s organization, members of the coalition include Brooklyn for Peace, Center for Immigrant Families, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition and Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, along with many parents, teachers and community members.

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“For those of us working in the field of education, the treatment of Debbie Almontaser represents a threat not only to our rights as educators and citizens in a democratic society; it is also an attack on the small-schools movement and on the push for diversity and equity within our system of public education. Will bigotry be allowed to decide which public schools can exist and who can lead them?”

(Letter to Mayor and Chancellor signed by leading educators across the country, including Lisa Delpit, Michelle Fine, Maxine Greene, Paula Hajar, Susan Klonsky, Mike Klonsky, Carol Lee, Deborah Meier, Pedro Noguera and many others.)

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