Minnesota investigates charter school’s alleged religious activities

Tarik ibn Zayad Academy is one of only a handful of public schools in Minnesota that focuses on Middle Eastern culture. More than 300 students attend the school. Girls wear headscarves and the school shares a site with a mosque and the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. Now, a woman who taught at the school last month says she believes the school is offering religious instruction to its students. It looked like a religious figure was leading a group of students in a prayer during the school day, and later leading study of the Koran in a classroom on the day she worked at the school, Amanda Getz says. That would be a violation of state law that publicly funded schools must be non-sectarian. The Minnesota Department of Education said Tuesday it was conducting a review of Getz's allegations. The school was issued a written warning by state officials in 2004, requiring the school to remove publicly posted religious materials. The letter also said the academy appeared to have set aside a large space exclusively for religious purposes, which is also prohibited. But Asad Zaman, the founder of the school, maintains it is in full compliance with state and federal law regarding religious instructions. Zaman noted that the substitute teacher didn't speak Arabic, and he said she may have misinterpreted any number of cultural practices as religious instruction. “This is part of the problem with relying on the word of someone who has been in the school all of six hours,” Zaman said. His school has become the subject of a series of threatening communications after the substitute teacher's allegations were made public in the newspaper, Zaman said.

Source: Minnesota Public Radio, 4/10/08, By Tim Nelson

[Editor’s Note: Information on charter schools that focus on Arabic or Hebrew is available at the first link below. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports at the second link on a proposal to convert seven Catholic schools in the District of Columbia to charter schools.]
NSBA School Law pages on Florida Hebrew-language school
Washington Post, 4/11/2008, By Theola Labbé