This story has been updated.
A new charter school in San Antonio has become a bastion of diversity and multiculturalism since it opened, with a combination of location and word-of-mouth recommendations making it a preferred school for members of the Afghan community in the Medical Center area, who make up half of the school’s enrollment of about 200 students.
On a typical day at Compass Rose Dream, a K-6 school, children wearing a colorful variety of traditional clothing such as hijabs and long perahan tunbans — a tunic shirt and pants — mingle with students wearing polos and jeans as they learn in a variety of languages and play kickball on a field outside.
A smattering of English, Spanish and Pashto, one of the native languages of Afghanistan, can be heard on the playground, with friends helping each other translate with varying levels of language proficiency.
One native-English-speaking girl helped show two of her friends how to play an instrument called the ocarina, with one translating for the other, who was having trouble understanding.
Compass Rose Dream opened in 2022 with a focus on preparing students for the medical field. It quickly began enrolling children from Afghanistan, which came under the rule of the Taliban in 2021 after U.S. troops exited the country.
The move sent waves of refugees to San Antonio, totaling nearly 4,000, according to official estimates, as Afghan families that worked with the U.S. and other Western allies fled for their lives in fear of being harmed or killed in retribution for their associations. Many of those refugees have settled in the South Texas Medical Center area.
Ismail Ja Khosti, who spent a decade translating for the U.S. Army, was visiting family in the country when the Taliban seized control.
“There was a direct threat to my life,” he said in December while sitting at a round table at the school’s new campus.
Without any U.S. presence, Khosti took a job with the United Nations for safety and later secured an evacuation for himself and his family in March 2023. While he had a good job, he was concerned about the education of his daughters, who were banned from education when the Taliban took control.
“I have five daughters, and the Taliban ban girls from schools,” he said. “So, as a result, I decided that I will bring my girls here and enroll them.”
With students arriving in the United States in similar situations, the school’s founding principal, Felipe Butanda, said there was a cultural learning curve, as girls tried to grasp the concept of participating in school and becoming professionals.
“I remember having those incidents where girls would be in the middle of the class and they would just get up and leave,” he said. “They didn’t understand why they were there.”
When one of Butanda’s supervisors, Compass Rose Chief of Schools Ryane Burke, stopped by to visit the school one day, one girl looked in awe and asked the principal if she was really his boss.
“‘Yes,’ I told her,” he recalled while in his office. “She is my boss.”
To help address the confusion, the school has organized field trips and brought in successful women who come from Afghanistan to inspire and motivate female students, Butanda said, adding that by exposing them to role models and showcasing the power of education, the school aims to break cultural barriers and empower girls to strive for their dreams.
That is just one of many unique lessons the school has adopted, according to Paul Morrissey, the founder and CEO of Compass Rose.
“In thinking about this larger population of families from Afghanistan. It was clear to us pretty early on that we were going to need someone who both knew the language …and knew the culture, because with the refugee students, many have been in schools before. … But there are more than a few here who have never set foot in the school before,” Morrissey said.
The school turned to community members, like Khosti, who found the school through a friend and was impressed by its diversity and openness when he visited.
Khosti, who was hired as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, is one of the newer employees on campus hired as part of the school’s efforts to effectively serve a population unlike any of the other six campuses the charter school has across the city, which is majority Hispanic.
A year and a half after opening, the school has become a unique blend of cultures, with students from various backgrounds helping teach each other about cultural differences and sharing in the imagination of being children.
While in a temporary campus the first year, many students rallied around kickball, with students from various backgrounds coming together to create a team that won against schools across the Compass Rose charter network, including middle and high schools.
The cafeteria has adjusted to include more Halal options, and teachers have become accustomed to learning from students as they work to build a campus community.
During recess on a recent Thursday afternoon, for example, one teacher asked students how to say the color blue in Pashto — the traditional language of Afghanistan — so she could use it to help teach students in her class.
Wende Reed, whose son is a kindergartner at the school, said he is learning about the culture, clothing, names and even words in Pashto.
“They all have that commonality, you know, they all like to play their games that they make up, that if you’re over the age of 6 make no sense. But, you know, they like to play it,” she said. “They’re strengthening those bonds based on their commonalities, while also realizing that they are different.”
At a recent event, students were playing Lotería, a traditional Mexican game, while others were learning about Henna, a type of traditional body painting, with cultural significance in the Middle East.
One day, Reed said her son came home showing her moves from a Bollywood dance he learned in class.
“I’m raising children who are not just going to be children of Texas, they are children and citizens of the world,” she said. “So having them here, where there are so many children with experiences different than theirs, is just going to set them up for the future to already have that connection to other cultures, other backgrounds.”
Students from Afghanistan also notice the vast diversity in the school.
Ahmad Said Omar, 13, said his school in Afghanistan was all students from the same country.
Speaking with Khosti’s assistance as a translator, Omar said that he has been in the country for about a year and a half.
“At home there is only Afghan students, but here we have a lot of other people and students as well. We have a big diversity,” he said.
The type of schooling is also different, he said, with more practical elements in addition to theory, while in Afghanistan, he mainly was learning theory.
Learning English has been the most significant barrier for Omar and other students. Still, in just 15 months, he has retained much of the language.
“Now I can understand and talk English,” he said, adding that he helps translate for his father during appointments.
Omar has made good friends with students from America and those who immigrated from Afghanistan. When he grows up, Omar is hoping to be a soccer player.
Yarely Macintosh, a sixth grader and one of the top students in the school, said she has enjoyed learning from her friends from different countries.
“I never met people from different cultures,” she said. “If I see people from different cultures, I can learn their languages, and I can also teach them how we speak, and they teach us how they speak.”
Butanda, the principal, said he had a unique perspective when pivoting to help students adjust to life in a new country.
As an immigrant, he arrived in the United States at 15 without speaking English.
“I remember graduating high school without speaking English,” he said. “I thought it was cool because I didn’t have to work that hard. But then I had to go to college, and then when I went to college, I was faced with reality … that I had to spend three years taking remedial classes that set me back on my studies. [That] made me very angry.”
Butanda said he is committed to preventing a similar fate for the students he is responsible for. But he also wants to help maintain the culture and knowledge students bring from other countries.
With students already learning from each other between classes and on the playground, Butanda said he hopes to add Pashto classes to the schedule in the coming years to fully help students embrace their culture and language as they learn English and adjust to America.
“We have a class right now for my Pashto students to learn English, and we have a Spanish class for everyone,” he said. “Moving towards next year, we want to formalize a Pashto class, so the students will have the option to go to Spanish for two years and then Pashto for two years.”
As grades are added to the school later on, Butanda hopes to incorporate more languages, including French, as well.
“My ambition is that my students will be able to graduate from high school with at least three different languages,” he said.
This story has been updated to clarify that Pashto is one of the native languages of Afghanistan.
