‘Screaming and Crying' Greet Arab School Plan
Park Slope parents are up in arms over a Department of Education proposal to insert a new small school focusing on Arabic language and culture inside the same building as their children's elementary school.
Department officials faced what is becoming a familiar uproar over new small schools when they announced a proposal to locate the Khalil Gibran International Academy, one of the more than 200 small high schools created by the Bloomberg administration, inside P.S. 282, the Park Slope school.
Parents at the Halsey School in Queens, P.S. 93 in the Bronx, and P.S. 36 on the Upper West Side also complained loudly when the department proposed to put additional schools in their buildings. Parents at P.S. 36 and 93 succeeded in convincing the department to take the other schools elsewhere. The Halsey School is still waiting for a decision in its case.
The department said yesterday that instead of P.S. 36, it is proposing to temporarily place a math and science magnet school affiliated with Columbia University into M 125, a nearby elementary school that already shares space with a charter school.
Fearing that their children will lose art, music, and science classrooms and a library if Khalil Gibran moves into the Park Slope school's top floor, parents reacted by "screaming and crying," a parent who attended the meeting with department officials Monday night in the school's auditorium, Jennifer Bacon-Fossati, said. She said parents were also concerned about the safety of their younger children, who may have to share bathrooms with the older students.
"There was a lot of emotions, there was a lot of anger, and there were really no answers from our visitors," she said.
One of the main frustrations echoed by parents at all of the four schools has been the department's failure to discuss their plans before making announcements.
"It was very tense," the elementary school's PTA president, Xiomara Fraser, said. "There was a lot of high frustration because the parents were not included in any of the discussions."
A department spokeswoman, Melody Meyer, said the proposal to put Khalil Gibran in the Park Slope school wasn't the department's final decision, however.
"We wish that every school in the city could have its own building, but resources rarely allow for this. School location decisions are ultimately ours, but we listen to communities' concerns and we do our best to accommodate them as we try to make the best decisions for our students and our educators," she said. "We have created many supports for co-located schools and some of the schools already sharing space have developed programs that benefit all students in the school building."
Another parent, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her child's safety, said she feared that the school's focus on Arabic culture and language may draw a backlash from right-wing groups that could threaten the building's students.
"There are concerns of the kind of criticism this school could face," she said.
Borrowing a strategy used by angry parents at the other three schools, a parent group from the Park Slope school is planning a protest for Friday morning, the day school administrators and department officials are planning a walk-through to look at the available space in the school.
