Extra security for NYC Arabic school

An Arabic-themed public school will open next week with extra security after months of protest by some who say it will be a training ground for radical Islam.

Enrollment is nearly full at the 60-student Khalil Gibran International Academy, which will require its students to take Arabic as a foreign language, said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer on Wednesday.

Sixth-graders will be the first to attend the school, which will add a grade each year to end up with 500 to 600 students in grades 6-12. It joins a number of small public schools in the city that have themes, covering areas from the arts to social justice to Chinese language.

The school, named after a Christian Lebanese poet who promoted peace, is the first in the city to offer instruction in Arabic and on Arab culture.

"We need more Arabic speakers in this country, and that's part of the reason this school is being opened," Meyer said. Two of the five teachers hired at the school graduated from universities with federally funded programs aimed at boosting the number of schools in the U.S. teaching Arabic, she said.

Since the school was announced in February, critics have attacked the school as a potential training ground for radicals. Because of protests, it has had to move to a new building and its principal resigned.

An organization called the Friends of Gibran Council, which claims its mission is to advance the philosophy of Gibran, also formed this year in part to prevent the school from "hijacking the name of this great artist," a spokesman said Wednesday.

It was originally going to take space in an elementary school in Brooklyn. Parents at the school objected for a number of reasons, including whether the ideological controversy would create a security risk.

The Department of Education moved the school to operate within a high school and middle school in Brooklyn.

Khalil Gibran's first principal, Debbie Almontaser, left earlier this month amid criticism for her affiliation with a group that had T-Shirts with the word "intifada," an Arabic term commonly used to refer to the Palestinian uprising against Israel. She was replaced by acting interim principal Danielle Salzberg, a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic.

Meyer said there are no special plans for the first day of school, but education officials are taking into account the controversy and will provide extra security.