Islamic charter school may have violated California regulations

Church & State, Feb 2002

PEOPLE & EVENTS

A publicly funded charter school in California is under investigation for teaching Islam to students, the San Francisco Chronicle has reported.

Silicon Valley Academy in Sunnyvale is part of a network of 14 public charter schools in the state run under the umbrella of Gateway Charter School in Fresno. Gateway is chartered through the Fresno Unified School District, which means that under state law oversight of all of its branches falls to officials in that city.

Fresno education officials have admitted that oversight of far-off schools has been lax.

"We inspect these schools as soon as we find out about them, and so far all we've found is good teaching," said Jill Marmolejo, district spokeswoman. "But it's difficult because there's a lot of travel, and we have 95 schools of our own to worry about."

A surprise inspection by the Chronicle indicated that Silicon Valley Academy was operating as a religious school. There were Korans in the principal's office, along with a children's version of the Muslim scriptures titled My Little Qu'ran. Students reported, that they prayed in class with teachers and studied the tenets of Islam. Parents picking up children after school told the paper they believed the school was religious.

The Chronicle also reported that the school's website promised to provide moral instruction based on dedication to Allah. The principal, Mazhar Jamil, told the newspaper the site was outdated and would be re-done.

The investigation uncovered other irregularities at the school. Under state law, charters are not allowed to charge tuition, yet Silicon Valley's website listed tuition fees of $350 to $400 per month.

Gateway severed ties with the Islamic school after the Chronicle published the results of its investigation. Gateway denied that any public money ever went to the Islamic academy, but the newspaper noted that the firm had received more than $1 million for all of the students at its charters and that without an audit it would be impossible to determine where the money went.

Delaine Eastin, California schools chief, said she would withhold state funds to Gateway unless the mess were cleaned up.

"There needs to be more control, especially if a public school is doing something illegal, like teaching religion or charging tuition," Eastin said. "The idea of charter schools was not to create the McDonald's Happy Meal approach to education. The legislature set up a limit to how many charter schools could operate in the state, but what good is that if one charter school multiplies and becomes 14?"

Meanwhile, some state legislators are saying that California's charter law was never intended to allow groups chartered through one school district to open institutions in other parts of the state and have vowed to tighten up the law.

The Chronicle reported that the revelations about religious content at Silicon Valley Academy are only the latest in a list of problems confronting Gateway. The school network is $1.3 million in debt, and students at the school performed below grade level on standardized tests given last year.