Excerpt:
Brooklyn College Professor Ken Estey's course on "Brooklyn and Its Religions" places a large emphasis on how leaders and citizens from different religious and cultural backgrounds work together to improve the borough. Brooklyn educator Debbie Almontaser, founding principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, recently addressed Prof. Estey's class at the college about the struggle she endured to create the academy.
Almontaser first told her attentive audience how excited she was to meet with them, and that she loved the ideology of the class. "We should have one in every borough, every state and every country in the world." Laughter and approval greeted this statement.
Khalil Gibran International Academy was intended as a secular school for multi-ethnic children citywide, Almontaser explained. It would be the only U.S. public school with Arabic taught in a dual-language program.