Charter school's religious activities focus of state investigation

Tim Nelson, Minnesota Public Radio
April 10, 2008



State education officials say they're investigating claims that a publicly-funded Inver Grove Heights charter school is offering religious instruction to students in violation of the law.

St. Paul, Minn. — 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 Bloomington woman who taught at the school last month says she believes the school is offering religious instruction to its students.

***

The Minnesota Department of Education said Tuesday it was conducting a review of Getz's allegations.

***

The substitute teacher may indeed have seen students praying, he said. But the students had been released early from school for religious instruction, as occasionally happens in other public schools, he said.

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 on Wednesday, Zaman said.

The threats had prompted him to invite Inver Grove Heights police to Tarik ibn Zayad Academy to assess the security of his school, he said.

Click here for the original article.