Concerned taxpayers filed a lawsuit against the Newton School Committee in Newton, MA for the alleged anti-Israel indoctrination of their students. As of the end of August, the School Board has avoided a lawsuit, at least for the time being. Education Without Indoctrination (EWI), who filed suit, claimed that there were “multiple violations of the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law stemming from the school committee’s handling of a burgeoning scandal over anti-Semitic lessons and the promotion of Islamic religious beliefs as objective facts in the public school district’s history classes.” In 2016, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) exposed anti-Israel and anti-Semitic materials that were being taught in Newton high schools. Materials include the use of the Arab World Studies Notebook, a biased and inaccurate textbook produced by groups funded by Saudi Arabia, and The Modern Middle East by James Gelvin, an anti-Israel BDS advocate. Additionally, students were provided with maps produced by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a doctored version of the Hamas Charter, and were asked to consider whether or not Israel had a right to exist. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) recently published a detailed report on the lessons being taught in Newton schools. It has also been discovered that one of the teachers, David Bedar, has been trained by Primary Source, an organization that is heavily funded by Qatar Foundation International. Taxpayers and parents had asked to see the materials being taught in the classrooms, but Newton Schools Superintendent David Fleishman demanded that parents pay a $4000 fee to see what their children were learning. Additionally, after learning of a FOIA request, School Committee Chair Matt Hills reportedly instructed staff not to let citizens see the offending materials. The school officials have defended the inclusion of anti-Israel materials as diversity of thought. With the hopes of ending the spread of biased propaganda in Newton schools, APT demanded public access to school curricula, an investigation into how anti-Israel propaganda is being inserted into the classroom, and sensitivity training about the right of Jewish self-determination. After filing the lawsuit on August 9th, EWI stated that “In teaching world history, Newton Public Schools (NPS) use unvetted educational materials funded by the Saudi oil company ARAMCO and the government of Qatar. As a result, Newton public school students are propagandized with materials that slander Israel and the Jewish people, and that falsify history to promote the Islamic religion in public schools … Just this past May, Newton North High School invited an anti-Semitic group to screen Palestinian propaganda films to its students. For this, NPS Superintendent David Fleishman earned a rebuke from the New England branch of the Anti-Defamation League and Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council.” Newton North Principal Henry Turner defended the curriculum, saying that “our teachers are professionals who keep their personal political beliefs separate from their teachings in the classroom. They work to ensure that students learn to separate fact from opinion, to discern between different points of view and not agree with everything they see and hear, to challenge their own thinking and that of their peers, and to develop opinions through study and the testing of ideas.” Karen Hurvitz, an attorney representing the Newton taxpayers, said, “This is whitewashing going on … It is not only anti-Jewish curriculum, it is anti-Western civilization. All the Newton residents are asking for is that the curriculum be objective and fact-based and not propaganda.” Hurvitz said, “For months now, dozens of Newton citizens have come before the school committee to complain about the non-objective, anti-Jewish, and Islamic religious lessons, as well as about Superintendent David Fleishman, who has refused to stop it being taught. Yet the names of all these citizens and summaries of what they said were deliberately omitted from the school committee meeting minutes month after month.” Hurvitz added, “All that secrecy has now crossed into illegality.” The exclusion of these details would violate Massachusetts’s Open Meeting Law, which “requires that most meetings of public bodies be held in public, and it establishes rules that public bodies must follow in the creation and maintenance of records relating to those meetings.” A hearing was held on August 21st at Middlesex Superior Court to evaluate the open meeting law violations. The school committee agreed to add the comments back into the meeting minutes, thereby avoiding a lawsuit for now. According to the Jewish Journal, EWI will be reviewing the documents. A court hearing was held on September 12 to determine if the school committee has met the requirements of the Open Meeting Law.