Jeez.
The kindergarten and pre-K students experienced an early civics lesson Monday morning when they entered Houston Independent School District’s new Arabic Immersion Magnet School for the first day of class.
At least a dozen protestors, some wearing red, white and blue, stood along the fenced perimeter of the campus, just north of the Heights neighborhood, and waved American and Israeli flags. They alleged the public school – one of the first of its kind in the United States, where students will learn in Arabic and English – was promoting radical Islam and rejecting assimilation into American culture.
The demonstration rattled parents on what was already a nerve-wracking day, but with four police officers monitoring the campus, the protestors dwindled after about two hours without incident. HISD leaders continued their inaugural festivities as planned.
“Houston is the energy capital of the world,” Superintendent Terry Grier said during a media tour of the newly renovated campus at 28th St. and Shepherd.
“We need to have graduates who can communicate with people all over the world.”
Grier, who made his first public appearance since having knee surgery three weeks ago, has pushed an expansion of dual-language programs in the nation’s seventh-largest school district. HISD opened a Mandarin immersion school in 2012 without controversy, and now has more than 50 Spanish dual-language campuses. Grier has said he wants to open a Hindi school, and discussions about a French program have taken place.
No citizens protested at the HISD board meeting in November when trustees unanimously approved the Arabic school, but about a dozen critics addressed the board in May and have taken to the Internet to complain.
I got nothing. Go read Jef Rouner, he speaks for me. And if you have the inclination and read this in time, there will be a “demonstration of love and welcome at the school this morning. See that link for what it’s about, and here for more.
Yes, idiots who have nothing better to do than scare children. I heard about it on NPR yesterday and the woman protestor who they spoke to is always writing homophobic, Islamaphobic screeds to The Leader, a local weekly paper for the near northside neighborhoods. She is a piece of work, so I can only imagine the rest of her cohorts were as well. There is a photo at Jeff Rouner’s link of late middle-aged, elderly ladies setting up to protest, so I guess they have time on their hands.
Ironic that the protesters chose to fly a foreign flag. Hey, folks: this is America. Fly the American flag. Perhaps we should ask those protesters to declare their loyalty to America, forsaking all other countries?