Exempt from common core?
The father of four daughters, Qadeer Qazi is one man in a family of all girls.
Now he runs a school full of them.
In August, Qazi opened Qalam Collegiate Academy — the first all-girls school in Richardson.
Initially, there were nine students and six teachers at the sixth- through 10th-grade academy. That’s since expanded to 17 students and eight teachers.
“Having an all-girls school is nothing new to Dallas, but it’s new to this area,” said Qazi, noting prominent Dallas-based all-girls schools such as The Hockaday School and Ursuline Academy of Dallas. “Girls are geniuses, but they need the right environment.”
The academy is among at least six Islamic schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including Richardson-based IANT Quranic Academy. Qalam Collegiate Academy, however, is the city’s only all-girls school. In the Middle East, schools and universities separated by gender are a cultural norm, Qazi said.
The school is a mile west of Dallas Central Mosque, which Qazi and his family attend.
Housed in an office building on West Buckingham Road, a sign stenciled on the door is one of the only outside markers to the Islamic school.
Inside, a long hallway leads to seven classrooms, two of which are reserved for religious practices. There’s a large front room for salat, an Islamic practice for praying five times daily.
In the back, students — dressed in black abaya robes with white scarves over their heads — kneel on rugs around five small podiums to memorize the Quran.
“In our religion, when you’re doing the holy book, it’s more respectful to sit on the floor. It’s humbling,” said Dhuha Qazi, a 10th-grader at the academy. The second-oldest daughter of Qadeer Qazi, she was home-schooled for two years before the academy opened.