Crowding Outcry May Follow Arabic School to New Site
The cries of overcrowding that prevented an Arabic language public school from opening within a Brooklyn elementary school may follow it to the new location announced yesterday by the Department of Education.
The Khalil Gibran International Academy's tentative new home is within a Brooklyn high school. An outcry from parents of students at P.S. 282 in Park Slope prevented the school from opening in their children's building this September.
Some students and parents expressed concerns yesterday over whether the new building in South Brooklyn — shared with two other schools, the Brooklyn High School of the Arts and a middle school, the Math and Science Exploratory School — will have enough room to hold the Arabic-themed school.
"It's very crowded," a senior at the high school, Crissie Riddick, 18, said. "I don't think they should put another school in there with us."
Khalil Gibran is slated to share the building for only two years. It will begin with a sixth-grade class of about 60 students starting in September and add a grade a year until it includes the 12th grade.
A department spokeswoman, Melody Meyer, said it was "confident that the three schools can share space effectively."
A parent of a sixth-grader at the middle school, Terry Griess, who helps run a theater group in the building, said he wasn't worried about crowding. "Things seem crowded, but it's a huge building," he said.
As for the school's theme — Arabic language with a focus on Middle Eastern studies — parents and educators said they believed it would be embraced by the students and the surrounding community, which they said has a high concentration of Middle Eastern residents. Some critics have expressed concern the school could promote extremist views.
"We find that people in the arts tend to be more accepting of people that are a little different," the principal of Brooklyn High School of the Arts, Robert Finley, said. "We anticipate no problems."
Mr. Finley added that as a veteran of the small-school movement in the city, he is especially sympathetic to the school.
"This is an example of another opportunity for choice for kids in this city," he said. "If we can promote that, I'm for it."
