Last October, California state education officials determined that Oakland Unified School District had an antisemitism problem it needed to deal with.
The California Department of Education has found that Oakland Unified School District created a discriminatory environment for Jewish students in several instances over the last few years. An investigative report released this month cited as problematic OUSD providing maps of the Middle East that did not include Israel, a school allowing a Palestinian flag to be flown from a school flagpole for a month, and teachers participating in a teach-in about the war in Gaza that did not include Jewish or Israeli perspectives.
The state investigation came about after a lawyer filed several complaints with OUSD for discrimination against Jewish students. Those complaints were put on the back burner despite a rule that requires the district to respond within 60 days.
The district ultimately did not issue a determination on whether the incidents constituted discrimination. [Marleen] Sacks appealed those decisions to the state, which arrived at a very different finding: that the district had created a discriminatory environment for Jewish students and staff.
The determination by state officials that OUSD had a problem was supposed to lead to remedial action to deal with it. The lawyer behind the complaints wasn't convinced it would matter.
In finding that the district allowed biased instruction with the teach-in, the state ordered that the district, over the next several months, hire a non-district trainer for high school social studies teachers and site administrators to discuss how to comply with the Education Code ban on instruction and activities that promote discrimination — in this case, focusing on the Middle East conflict. The state is also requiring training in complying with the 60-day limit for responding to complaints.
Sacks doubts it will make a difference. The district tries to present the complaints as isolated incidents, but antisemitism is districtwide, she said.
And it appears the attorney was right. Earlier this month the state of California sued OUSD for non-complaince with its recommendations. The state is now trying to get a court order to force OUSD to comply.
The lawsuit filed in early March alleges that Oakland Unified “unlawfully refused and failed to carry out the corrective actions set forth” in a Jan. 23 decision, in which the department instructed the district to issue communications to families and staff condemning antisemitism, to consult Jewish or Israeli advocacy organizations to develop mandatory professional training to prevent antisemitism and to hold educational assemblies on campuses where allegations of antisemitism were made.
The department is seeking a court order that would rule the district’s alleged noncompliance is illegal and compel the district to make the corrective changes.
OUSD may be a worse case, but it's not the only case. In fact, last month two groups filed a lawsuit against the entire state of California alleging that there is "persistent and pervasive" antisemitism in California schools.
In the Los Angeles Unified School District, at Kester Elementary School, a third-grade Jewish student was called “a racist” by her teacher and barred from performing in the talent show unless she agreed not to use her poster which included a picture of the Israeli flag. At Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, a Jewish honors student was forced to sit through his teacher’s anti-Semitic celebration of the October 7, 2023 massacre of Israelis. At Louis Armstrong Middle School, a teacher repeatedly meted out unfounded discipline to a seventh-grade Jewish student who wore a Star of David necklace and Israel-related shirts to school. Other students have called their Jewish peers anti-Semitic names and even assaulted them. In each case, school administrators failed to take meaningful action to address the anti-Semitism.
Across Northern California school districts, Jewish students and parents have faced a similar surge of anti-Semitic harassment. In Santa Clara, a Jewish girl’s classmates threatened to “jump” her and referred to her only as “Jew.” A Berkeley Unified ninth grader saw his art teacher display anti-Semitic artwork, including a Star of David with a fist punching through it. The same teacher promoted a walkout filled with chants that included, “Fuck the Jews.” When the student’s mother reported the teacher’s conduct, the school’s solution was to segregate the Jewish student in the library and health center. Students at Berkeley Unified chanted “kill the Jews,” and asked Jewish students what “their number is” (a reference to the Nazi practice of tattooing numbers on the arms of concentration camp prisoners). At Etiwanda Unified, in San Bernardino County, a middle schooler choked a Jewish student while shouting, “Shut your stupid Jew ass up.” Staff blamed the victimized student.
“The California education system is teaching the state’s children that Jewish Americans and Israelis are racists, white supremacists, oppressors, and baby-killers who should be shunned. The result is not surprising: Jewish children and children perceived as Jewish are bullied and excluded by their peers and harassed by their teachers, who silence, mock, and even segregate them if they speak out,” said Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education during two administrations. “School officials have done little or nothing at all to help these children. It is the state’s legal responsibility to defend and protect innocent children from discrimination and bigotry, not foster hate as California has been doing.”
So we'll have to see how this holds up in court. Also, we'll have to see if Oakland Unified ever decides to clean up its own mess. But at the moment both groups opposing antisemitism and California officials seem to be in agreement that the state's schools have a real problem.
