HOUSTON – Media outlets are working to portray protesters outside of a newly opened Arabic Immersion Magnet School as a group of backwoods idiots, but it didn’t stop them from getting their message across.

“Everything I ever cared to know about Islam was taught to me by Muslims on 9-11-2001,” read one of the signs carried by a protester outside of the school on students’ first day Monday, the Houston Chronicle reports.

In total, about 30 adults lined the sidewalk along the fenced perimeter of the school waving American and Israeli flags and carrying protest signs after students filed into class. The school is among several language immersion schools in the district that are aimed at preparing students for an increasingly interconnected world, district officials told the news site.

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“Houston is the energy capital of the world,” Houston Independent School District Superintendent Terry Trier told reporters yesterday. “And we need to have graduates who can communicate with people all over the world.”

HISD opened a Mandarin immersion school in 2012, and are in discussions to launch a French immersion school. About 490 students applied for 132 seats at the new Arabic immersion school, and those students were selected through a lottery process, Click2Houston.com reports.

But protesters believe the school district could put its resources to better use, first speaking out at a school board meeting in May and again Monday.

“We oppose it because we have millions of English learners,” Elizabeth Theiss told Click2Houston. “We believe they need to assimilate when they come to the United States and put a high priority on speaking English.”

The new school is comprised of students from a variety of backgrounds, and not all speak Arabic. The goal is to introduce students to Arabic as preschoolers and kindergartners by teaching half of the day’s lessons in English and the other half in Arabic. The immersion school’s first class drew students from 40 different zip codes, according to the news site.

Click2Houston reports protesters at the school Monday were met with counter protests, while media and school officials worked to promote the school and denounce opponents.

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“A protest at an Arabic immersion school in Houston sets a high bar for xenophobic Americans looking for a new low,” San Antonio Current blogger Mark Reagan wrote to go along with a picture of the school’s sign and the cutline “The protesters are an embarrassment to decent Texans everywhere.”

HISD chief of staff Jason Spencer also sent out tweets mocking the protesters.

“Question 4 #HISD Arabic school protesters: Are you also protesting US military, CIA and Christian mission groups for teaching the language?” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle pointed out that there have been no protests against other language immersion schools, and that alleged “claims that the school catered mostly to Arabic-speaking immigrant families are false, said Principal Kate Adams.”

Adams said the school represents “the diversity of Houston” with blacks, Hispanics and whites comprising the majority of students.

Arabic is the second-most common language other than English spoken by HISD students last school year, with more than 925 speaking Arabic at home. That’s far less than the district’s 59,700 Spanish speaking students and slightly more than its 445 Vietnamese speaking families, the Chronicle reports.

The news site reports that 23,200 people speak Arabic in the greater Houston region.