{"id":2005,"date":"2019-01-19T22:11:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T19:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=2005"},"modified":"2019-02-22T04:33:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T01:33:04","slug":"the-dearborn-academy-educators-address-misconceptions-about-charter-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/the-dearborn-academy-educators-address-misconceptions-about-charter-schools\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<h6><strong>Dr. Dib Saab, the treasurer of the Dearborn Academy, used to think charter schools are about money. But after 22 years of experience at Detroit Public Schools, he says that\u2019s a \u201cmisconception\u201d.<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Saab says the Dearborn Academy is not only accountable to the states, students and parents, but also towards the authorizers &#8211; in the Dearborn Academy\u2019s case, that\u2019s Central Michigan University.<\/strong><\/h6>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Yemeni American News \/ Dearborn<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Dearborn Academy: Educators address \u2018misconceptions\u2019 about charter schools\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S1jsAapQTH8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike for example, Central Michigan University observes and checks every single progress report, money and everything,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if the school didn\u2019t achieve the minimum of a standard goal of the state, they show the weakness.\u201d<br \/>\nSaab added that the reports details potential shortcomings and makes them clear, raising the standards of accountability.<br \/>\nHe said if there are persistent problems in the school that does not improve in two or three years, the authorizers can withhold the authorization.<br \/>\n<strong>The academy\u2019s treasurer added<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cWe hire the audit company who\u2019s doing the auditing every year and you know it cost us about $12,000 just to make sure we are on the right track with spending with everything,\u201d Saab added. \u201cI didn\u2019t see any kind of business or open Charter School to make money, as like open grocery store. No. It\u2019s not.\u201d<br \/>\nSaab said fulfilling the school\u2019s mission is a long-term process that could take years.<br \/>\n\u201cWhat we do is monitoring and checking our mission if we are working on the right track of our mission, which is providing the best opportunity to our multicultural population,\u201d he told the Yemeni American News.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Diverse student population<\/strong><br \/>\nThe school principal Afrin Alavi also stressed the importance of diversity at the Dearborn Academy, saying that the students who come from multi-ethnic backgrounds are what makes the school unique.<br \/>\n\u201cThe kids love you to death&#8230; they will never do anything to upset you,\u201d Alavi said. \u201cThey will make sure that you\u2019re not disappointed in them and when they make a choice that\u2019s not the best choice, they\u2019re pretty good at facing up to it and apologizing. I just need to give them a look and they know that they have done something wrong and we will forward.\u201d<br \/>\nAlavi dismissed the notion that charter schools hire less qualified teachers, stressing that having a teaching certificate does not necessarily make a teacher automatically qualified.<br \/>\n\u201cThe qualified teacher might not have their teacher certificate &#8211; not to say that our teachers don\u2019t &#8211; but they might not have\u00a0their teaching certificate, and they\u2019re super, super qualified to be in the classroom and working with kids,\u201d she said.<br \/>\nAlavi said people who are skeptical about charter schools would bilingual visit the Dearborn Academy.<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m going to ask them to come in and spend the day with us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe will change their mind very quickly. I have had professors that have come into the building and left here saying you\u2019ve changed my mind about what charter schools are about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018Welcoming\u2019<\/strong><br \/>\nMelissa Lathrup, the Dearborn Academy\u2019s curriculum coordinator, said she chose the school because of its diversity that celebrates all cultures.<br \/>\n<strong>She echoed Alavi in praising the students. <\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cOur students population is very welcoming to celebrating and honoring different cultures. So that\u2019s something that makes us a very unique charter school,\u201d she said.<br \/>\n\u201cSo we are very close with our students and our families. We are a family here at TDA. We\u2019re not just a staff or a school. We would like to see definitely more parent involvement that\u2019s something that we wish would happen more, but we are very welcoming and want our parents involved on our students lives.\u201d<br \/>\nLathrup said she does not see a great difference between charter and public schools, as both sets of educational institutions works towards a common goal &#8211; teaching students.<br \/>\n\u201cThe one thing that we\u2019re very grateful at this charter is that we have a lot of support. So we have a school psychologist. We have a social worker. We have a very deep ESL (English as a second language) program. So that\u2019s something that we are very grateful for,\u201d she said.<br \/>\nLathrup added that charter and private should be on the \u201cthe same team\u201d.<br \/>\nESL teacher Tahani Alhaddi said she cherishes \u201cthe sense of family the focus on students and their improvement and progress\u201d at the Dearborn Academy.<br \/>\nShe said working with students who are not fluent in English strengthen the ties with their parents.<br \/>\n\u201cWe do build a really strong relationship with the families, and I think due to the fact that they do understand that their kids struggling in schools because of the language and they look at me as the venue or the one to-go-to to help them out,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do construct a really good relationship.\u201d<br \/>\nAlhaddi said the school caters to the needs of the students.<br \/>\n\u201cI think we are more flexible when it comes to the curriculum itself and resources and, we do focus on students more,\u201d she said.<br \/>\n\u201cI do believe the location of the school &#8211; because it is on the borderline of Dearborn and Detroit and &#8211; it\u2019s collecting students from all over which is I consider a plus and the mix is good. That diversity is good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Choice<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Waseem Younis, the president of the American Institutional Management Services (AIMS), which manages the Dearborn Academy, also stressed focusing on what the students, saying that charter schools have \u201ca little bit more autonomy\u201d.<br \/>\n\u201cWe do things a little bit more different, so we can focus on things that we feel that our population would like to see and would like to be part of,\u201d he said.<br \/>\n\u201cFor those that oppose charter schools, the only thing that I tell them is to walk into Charter Schools and see how they are being ran, and they\u2019re not that much different than traditional schools. A lot of great things are happening.\u201d<br \/>\nHe added that The Dearborn Academy offers \u201cchoice\u201d outside the geographical limitations of the public system.<br \/>\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have boundaries on where you live,\u201d Younis said. \u201cThere is equity and all, so that\u2019s the biggest takeaway because a lot of times you know Dearborn Public Schools is such a great district,but if you live outside of their district lines you can\u2019t attend.<br \/>\n\u201cIf you live in the south end of Dearborn, you can\u2019t attend a school in west Dearborn that you think is better so that\u2019s why sometimes there are some limitations with Traditional Public Schools.\u201d<br \/>\nHe emphasized, however, that all educators are in the profession together for the students.<br \/>\n\u201cWe\u2019re all in this together to the point where we\u2019re trying to educate our future, America\u2019s future, so we\u2019re trying to create global citizens where they can contribute to society.\u201d<br \/>\nYounis said he was too old to attend the Dearborn Academy after his father founded it more than 20 years ago, but his three siblings did attend through Eighth Grade.<br \/>\n\u201cThe oldest she finished her master\u2019s and is currently in law school. Then the next one, my younger sister, is going to \u00a0med school, and my brother is finishing up his Bachelor\u2019s \u00a0and is considering to go to law school\u2026 my dad invested in the community, invested in the school and you know he believed so much in it that he sent his own kids there,\u201d he said.<br \/>\nLuz Celina Herra, a parent with three children at the Dearborn Academy, praised the school\u2019s inclusivity, saying that parents receive all communication from the school in Arabic, Spanish and English.<br \/>\n\u201cI tried to find out different schools, but I saw it is a good \u00a0school, and because it\u2019s reliable, comfortable, and secure for my kids. This is what I\u2019m looking for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<div class='clear '><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Dib Saab, the treasurer of the Dearborn Academy, used to think charter schools are about money. But after 22 years of experience at Detroit Public Schools, he says that\u2019s a \u201cmisconception\u201d. Saab says the Dearborn Academy is not only accountable to the states, students and parents, but also towards the authorizers &#8211; in the [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2019,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions\/2019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}