School administrators are only paying “lip service” to the urgent problem of antisemitism in K-12 education, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) said during House subcommittee hearing aimed at confronting anti-Jewish hate in schools.
Representatives from the Berkeley Unified School District in California, New York City Public Schools, and Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland testified before the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, to explain why districts have sometimes failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitic incidents in the months following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Hundreds of antisemitic incidents have occurred in the three liberal districts since October, including student-led protests and walkouts; anti-Jewish instruction on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and harassment of Jewish students, teachers, and administrators.
Committee members pressed administrators on why district responses to antisemitism have sometimes been lackluster. In some cases, Stefanik said, the districts seem to be giving “lip service, but a lack of enforcement and a lack of accountability.”
At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, for example, hundreds of students protested and threatened a Jewish teacher in November after learning that the teacher attended a pro-Israel rally. The teacher escaped and hid until police broke up the protest. Hillcrest’s principal Scott Milczewski was removed from his post following the protest, which New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks pointed to on Wednesday as an example of administrators facing consequences for antisemitism on their watch.
“We don’t always get it right,” Banks said. “Part of the reason it happened at Hillcrest High School is what I considered a lack of proper supervision in that school. That’s why the principal was removed from the school.”
Milczewski, however, was reassigned to the central office at New York’s Department of Education.
“How can Jewish students feel safe at New York City Public Schools when you can’t even manage to terminate the principal of Open-Season-on-Jews High School?” Rep. Brandon Williams (R., N.Y.) asked Banks. “How can Jewish students go to school knowing that he is still on your payroll? Your payroll, sir!”
Although each administrator testified that antisemitism has no place in public schools, and that their respective districts enforce disciplinary measures to ensure that Jewish students are safe, a panel of representatives from each of the districts who spoke before the hearing disagreed.
Ilana Pearlman, a Jewish mother with children in the Berkeley school system, said that she felt more comfortable speaking to thousands of people than she did speaking at a school board meeting where she was mocked and jeered for “simply sharing the stories of antisemitism impacting my children and other children in our schools.”
“We have been undermined in horrible ways because our school district has told us, when whenever we say [a school walkout] happened, or [when students] said ‘kill the Jews’ in a school walkout, they have actively chosen to not believe us, which means they’re calling our children liars,” Pearlman said. “I’m speaking up not just for my kids who are incredibly resilient and strong, but for all kids in America who maybe aren’t able to speak out the way that I have the opportunity to do right now.”
“What I’m tired of is seeing adult leaders, superintendents, intended school board members centering themselves as the victims in this horrific antisemitism that we’re seeing in schools, especially at a time when our Berkeley family and friends in Israel have been slaughtered and kidnapped,” Pearlman added, referencing Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American citizen born in Berkeley who is a Hamas hostage in Gaza.
Brooke Meshel, a Jewish high school teacher at Montgomery County Public Schools, said she previously volunteered to sponsor her high school’s Muslim Student Association club, to “bridge our two cultures to create a sense of community and create a strong stance against hatred in all forms.” But after October 7, she said, students orchestrated a pro-Palestinian walkout, during which some students shouted “Bring back Hitler!” and “Kill the Jews!” Meshel said that when she reported the comments — a violation of the district’s hate-speech policy — to her principal, her request for the district to send a e-mail to parents condemning the comments, was denied.
Instead, the school accused Meshel of sharing classified details about the incident with the press.
“I was harassed at school,” Meshel said. “Walking into the building I would be pointed and ridiculed by teachers, by students, by their parents. I had become known as a countywide bigot, all because I just simply recorded hate speech that our school and our county does not condone.”
Meshel said she didn’t have anything to do with sharing information published by the media. “But no one believed me. No one,” she said.
When asked by the committee what efforts Montgomery County Public Schools takes to combat anti-semitism, Karla Silvestre, president of the education board, lauded the county’s hate-crime commission. Montgomery County’s hate-crime commission, however, came under heavy fire last year for appointing Zainab Chaudry, the Maryland director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, to its ranks.
Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District, acknowledged that both adults and students, whom she referred to as “babies,” have “made mistakes,” but she said that “antisemitism is not pervasive in the Berkeley Unified School District.”
Banks recognized the rise of antisemitic incidents in his district as well, but warned the committee against focusing on one type of hate. Banks also chastised the committee’s intent.
“This convening, for too many Americans in education, feels like the ultimate gotcha moment,” Banks said. “It doesn’t sound like people who are actually trying to solve for something that, I believe, we should be doing everything we can solve for.”
All three district representatives said they used “disciplinary action” against staff who participated in or fueled antisemitism in schools. Dissatisfied with the districts for disciplining, but not firing antisemitic instructors, Rep. Burgess Owens (R., Utah) said that “we want results.”
“I’m hearing nice words, really nice words here: teaching, redirecting, directing,” Owens said. “What I’m missing is discipline, and I’m missing the word ‘fired.’”