Published 2/4/24 in the Washington Post; Story by Laura Meckler

In Oakland, Calif., concerns about antisemitism and school culture prompt some Jewish families to leave

In New York City, Jewish leaders, teachers and parents demanded that the schools do more to address what they see as antisemitism, staging a rally on the steps of the city’s education department. In Montgomery County, Md., a petition supporting the investigation of teachers for sharing pro-Palestinian images and messages garnered 3,500 signatures.

And in California, at least 30 Jewish families have requested transfer out of the Oakland Unified School District because of issues related to the Israel-Gaza war.

Charges of antisemitism that have coursed through college campuses since the Oct. 7 attack in Israel by Hamas are also embroiling some K-12 school districts, as the emotional toll and anger surrounding the resulting war continues to tear at communities. It was unclear how many of these cases have surfaced, but school districts across the country have grappled with how much to allow students and staff to say about the conflict, and what to do when that speech offends or even makes others feel unsafe. The U.S. Department of Education has opened 19 investigations of potential federal civil rights violations into K-12 school systemsalleging antisemitism, Islamophobia or other bias related to the conflict.

“Our concern is not so much about Israel and Gaza but about the one-sided viewpoints being pushed into the classrooms and teachers crossing the line when they go beyond teaching the facts,” said Simon Ferber, who is pulling his 6-year-old son out of the Oakland schools at year’s end. He and his wife complain that teachers have emphasized the harm to Palestinians but not harm to Israelis. They plan to move their family to Los Angeles, where they believe the climate for Jews will be more welcoming.

A spokesman for the Oakland school district declined to comment about families leaving the district, but the district superintendent has spoken out against teachers using unauthorized, pro-Palestinian material in their classrooms.

Charges of bias have also come from the opposite direction, with some alleging that schools are not allowing free expression of pro-Palestinian views.

In Montgomery County, Md., for instance, a middle school teacher was put on leavein Novemberafter she included the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in her school email signature,one of several teachers to face consequences for expressing pro-Palestinian views. Some interpret “From the river to the sea” as a call for eliminating the Jewish state.The teacher has said she was attempting to show support for Palestinians’ “peace and for their freedom.”

But as the war presses on, some Jewish families say they’re still seeing too much antisemitism language and images.

“There’s been complete neglect of this issue,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, a pro bono law firm that represents Jews in cases where antisemitism is alleged and who helped organize the rally this week in New York. “There’s a parallel to college campuses. But here we are talking about more susceptible younger children [who are] more easily affected.”

The New York rally was intended to ask school officials to do more to prevent and respond to incidents such as a loud November protest by hundreds of students after a Jewish teacher posted a photo of herself holding an “I Stand With Israel” sign.

“We Jews are not okay,” said Michelle Ahdoot, director of planning and strategy at #EndJewHatred, which co-sponsored the rally, recounting recent classroom incidents as many in the crowd held Israeli flags aloft.

Last week, New York Schools Chancellor David Banks announced a plan to combat antisemitism, Islamophobia and “all forms of hate,” including new education and training for staff and clear instructions on how to report incidents. “Let me be clear: We have zero tolerance for any form of bigotry or hate,” Banks said.

But rally organizers said that was not enough and demanded, among other things, that the schools define antisemitism to include anti-Zionism. While some argue these things are inextricably linked, others say that opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is not the same as hatred of Jews.

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which works to combat antisemitism, has been tracking incidents across the country. It is focusing on California, where it believes some schools deliver anti-Israel messages through a state-mandated ethnic studies course, said L. Rachel Lerman, vice chair and general counsel for the group. For instance, the group alleges that lessons present a history of the conflict in a biased way that puts too much of the blame on Israel for harm to the Palestinians and does not hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions. The California Legislative Jewish Caucus voiced similar concerns about some ethnic studies curriculums in a January letter to colleagues.

Lerman said she is now preparing possible litigation to address what she considers antisemitic activity in the schools. The activity, she said, amounts to a “hostile environment” and is barred by federal civil rights law.

The California Department of Education did not reply to a request for comment.

In general, U.S. public schools have operated under the premise that they need to be nonpartisan, but in recent years, educators, school boards and administrators alike have all begun to weigh in on controversial political issues, said John Rogers, an education professor at UCLA who studies education and democracy.

Many teachers, he said, see a moral urgency to call out injustice when they detect it.

“I do think that many educators have followed the news in Israel and Gaza and have been heartbroken at the dynamics that have been playing out and have wanted to do something,” he said. “Some educators have felt compelled to act politically on behalf of the issue. That’s not entirely surprising.”

In Oakland, a district of about 34,000 students east of San Francisco, controversy was sparked in October, when the Oakland Education Association, which represents the district’s teachers, posted on social media a statement condemning “the genocidal and apartheid state of Israel.”

The union apparently deleted the post following criticism online that it was one-sided and, in the words of one Jewish parent writing on X, “blatant antisemitism.” In a new post on Facebook, the union said that it “unequivocally condemns anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” but it also shared the text of a resolution that some Jewish parents found nearly as offensive.

The resolution condemned Israel’s “75 year long illegal military occupation of Palestine,” and repeating that Israel was “an apartheid state” whose leaders “have espoused genocidal rhetoric.”

A faction of the union encouraged members to teach this point of view in the classroom, providing materials for a pro-Palestinian “teach-in” in December, which was unauthorized by the district. Material included, for instance, an alphabet book for elementary students called “P is for Palestine,” that includes, “I is for Intifada, Intifada is Arabic for rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or a grown-up!”

An elementary school teacher who helped organize the teach-in said the plan grew from activists asking themselves, “What is our power as workers?” She said the answer was “using our collective strength to bring these issues to our students.” The teacher argued that it was justified to teach unsanctioned material because the material given to them did not include enough of the Palestinian perspective.

She estimated that 70 to 100 teachers participated (out of about 2,300), although secretly because they feared disciplinary action if caught. She said no one had been disciplined. She spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of facing discipline from the district.

Not all teachers unions have taken the same tack. An October statement by Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, which Oakland’s union is part of, was more evenhanded in condemning events in Israel and Gaza and spoke of a “dangerous rise in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim bigotry and violence.”

Officials from the Oakland Education Association did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Oakland Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell voiced her concerns about the union’s actions in an open letter to the community. “Our schools are sanctuaries for learning, and I am deeply disappointed by the harmful and divisive materials being circulated and promoted as factual,” she said. She said the district has “remained unwavering in our stance against antisemitic, anti-Israeli, Islamophobic, or anti-Palestinian prejudice or discrimination,” and added: “We are aware of some recent incidents that may have cast doubt on the District’s commitment to this fundamental expectation.”

Nonetheless, the debate has been deeply unsettling to some Jewish parents in Oakland. Shira Avoth said the walls of her seventh-grade son’s English classroom were papered with posters calling Israel’s actions genocide and generally “vilifying” its conduct in the war. One poster, she said, called for Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea.”

After Avoth complained, her son was removed from the class. “He didn’t feel safe there,” she said. He then “sat in limbo or in the office” during class time. Subsequently, she said, the teacher was removed but Avoth does not know whether he will be allowed to return.

Avoth plans to request a transfer to another district for next school year but has not yet decided if she will use it. “If we’re going to allow curriculum that is attempting to indoctrinate children and vilify my son’s heritage, we’re going to leave,” she said.

She is part of a large group of Jewish parents who have gathered in a WhatsApp text group where members offer affirmation to one another and trade stories of classroom incidents. She described finding the group, a few weeks after the Oct. 7 massacre, as “indescribable relief.”

For Simon Ferber, the father preparing to leave Oakland for Los Angeles, it has all been deeply unsettling. He grew up near Oakland and was excited about settling down there,where he was confident his liberal values of inclusion, diversity and belonging would be embraced. But he felt that Jews don’t receive the same support as other minorities.

“It’s felt isolating and as if the support we thought we would have — or expected — has dropped out from under us,” Ferber said.

In a neighboring district, Berkeley Unified, there are similar complaints, although no sign of mass departure from the schools.

Ilana Pearlman, who has children in the first and ninth grades in Berkeley, said anti-Israel posters with a photo of a little girl’s bloody face were affixed to utility poles surrounding her daughter’s elementary school but administrators did not seem to take her concerns about this seriously. At the high school, she said, a walkout and rally in support of the Palestinians was promoted by her son’s art teacher.

In class, she said, the art teacher repeatedly showed what she believes to be “antisemitic images,” such as a drawing of a fist punching through a Jewish Star of David and the word “Palestine” in large letters.

“My son felt uncomfortable,” Pearlman said. She said five Jewish students including her son left the class but the teacher was allowed to continue teaching. “All of our complaints go into a giant black hole,” she said.

She complained that the school culture allows for scant nuance in difficult situations like this war, where violence has been inflicted on both sides and where the events were preceded by a long history with pain on all sides. “In Berkeley, you can only be an oppressor or the oppressed,” she said.

The art teacher declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for the Berkeley district also declined to comment on the art teacher but said the district encourages students to immediately report any incidents to administrators or others “so that they can be promptly and thoroughly addressed.” In a statement, Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel said that she had increased engagement with the community in the months since the war began and that the district has a clear stance “against all forms of hate.”