As resistance in Brooklyn to a public school focused on Arabic language and culture persists, a U.S. soldier has emerged as its unlikely champion.
Army Sgt. Patrick Kowalchuk, 28, who has completed two tours in Iraq, intended only to support Khalil Gibran International Academy’s principal when he wrote her an e-mail early this month.
But it soon evolved into a public-relations tool.
“American society desperately needs this bridge to Arabic language and culture, and I am glad there are visionary and courageous people like yourself who are laying down the framework,” Kowalchuk wrote to the principal, Debbie Almontaser.
Almontaser recently read the e-mail, with Kowlachuk’s permission, at a meeting of 100 parents of kids at Brooklyn HS of the Arts and Math and Science Exploratory School.
The Boerum Hill schools are already housed in the building that will become home to the new academy for the next two years – and the parents overwhelmingly argued that the plan would disrupt their kids’ programs.
Kowalchuk told The Post parents must embrace the academy.
“If it were given a chance to prove itself, it could,” he said by phone from Fort Carson, Colo., where he teaches Arabic to soldiers in his unit.
Kowalchuk said his Arabic proved invaluable in Iraq. He recalled befriending an old fruit farmer who had had no verbal contact with U.S. troops.
“We sat there eating apples and apricots and just talking. There aren’t many people who can connect with Iraqis on that level,” Kowalchuk said. “I became a person with a name to the folks I was speaking to, as opposed to just a presence.”
In his e-mail to Almontaser, Kowalchuk offered to teach at the school. Almontaser will meet with him when he’s discharged this fall, he said.
Similar arguments from parents at PS 282 in Park Slope, the initial site for the school, forced the Department of Education to consider a new venue.