The superintendent of Berkeley Unified Faculty District on Wednesday rejected accusations that the district’s Okay-12 school rooms have turn into breeding grounds for antisemitism throughout a congressional listening to the place she and different faculty leaders had been grilled about perceived bias in opposition to Jewish college students.
Berkeley Supt. Enikia Ford Morthel joined Karla Silvestre, president of the Montgomery County Board of Training in Maryland, and David Banks, chancellor of New York Metropolis public faculties — two different left-leaning jurisdictions — to area focused questions from a Republican-led subcommittee of the U.S. Home Committee on Training and the Workforce. The listening to was titled “Confronting Pervasive Antisemitism in Okay-12 Faculties.”
Ford Morthel mentioned her district had acquired formal complaints of antisemitism stemming from 9 incidents and harassed that district leaders have responded shortly to the accusations and launched investigations.
“Our infants generally say hurtful issues. We’re conscious that every one children make errors. We all know that our employees will not be proof against missteps both, and we don’t ignore them once they happen,” Ford Morthel mentioned. “Nevertheless, antisemitism just isn’t pervasive in Berkeley Unified Faculty District.”
The listening to follows seven months of emotional nationwide division spawned by Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 assault on Israeli border cities and Israel’s conflict on Gaza that has adopted. Professional-Palestinian protesters have roiled faculty campuses from Columbia to UCLA, shut down highways and bridges and launched campaigns calling on President Biden to halt monetary and navy assist for Israel.
However in Okay-12 public faculties, the place academics are topic to stricter limits on free speech than faculty professors, disagreement over how — and whether or not — the battle must be addressed in school rooms have progressed into searing claims from some Jewish dad and mom that their youngsters now not really feel secure in school.
A federal civil rights criticism filed in February by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Heart for Human Rights Underneath Legislation allege college students in Berkeley faculties have confronted “extreme and protracted harassment and discrimination.” The criticism accuses Berkeley leaders of failing to stop “viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli college students.”
The U.S. Division of Training has opened a federal investigation into the criticism.
“You’ve been accused of doing nothing and turning a blind eye,” Rep. Aaron Bean, a Florida Republican and chair of the subcommittee, instructed the three Okay-12 leaders in his opening assertion.
Bean shortly fired off questions asking whether or not they consider Israel has a proper to exist and that the Oct. 7 assaults had been an act of terrorism. He requested in the event that they consider the phrase “from the river to the ocean,” a slogan extensively chanted in pro-Palestinian protests that many Jewish folks take into account a name for the expulsion and genocide of Israeli Jews, is antisemitic.
The varsity leaders repeated their help for Jewish college students and reiterated that hate and antisemitism wouldn’t be tolerated.
The listening to was much like one in December, the place the presidents of Harvard, the College of Pennsylvania and MIT had been accused of mounting a tepid response to antisemitism on their campuses. The presidents of Penn and Harvard later stepped down.
Berkeley just isn’t the one Bay Space district to face accusations of permitting antisemitism to fester in school rooms.
The academics union representing Oakland academics endorsed a pro-Palestinian “train in” in December and offered educators with lesson plans that some Jewish households understand as anti-Israel and discriminatory. Dozens of Jewish households have filed requests to switch out of the district.
In San Francisco faculties, households have raised considerations about anti-Israel content material being shared in school rooms and pupil walkouts promoted by a pro-Palestinian group working within the district.
Throughout her testimony, Ford Morthel mentioned Berkeley academics and directors work to make sure “each little one is seen, valued and educated,” and acknowledge that some members of their faculty neighborhood have been personally affected by the violence.
“As educators, too typically we’re known as upon to handle heart-wrenching occasions that happen far past the partitions of our school rooms,” she mentioned. “Our younger college students with ties to both Israel or Gaza, some deeply traumatized by the horror they see and listen to, sit facet by facet in our Berkeley school rooms. They’re buddies.”
Tyler Gregory, chief government of the Jewish Group Relations Council Bay Space, mentioned he hoped the listening to helped make clear the “shortcomings” of the district’s response to antisemitism.
“There’s a transparent crimson line when Jewish college students and households don’t really feel secure going to high school as a result of they’re being focused for his or her identification and their beliefs,” Gregory mentioned. “And we don’t really feel that the district is taking that state of affairs significantly.”
Gregory mentioned Jewish households within the Bay Space have grown more and more involved with lesson plans, pupil walkouts, pro-Palestinian audio system being introduced into the classroom and different incidents they argue present a bias in opposition to Israel.
“We’re seeing one narrative taught and never the opposite. That’s neither wholesome nor conducive to a secure surroundings for Jewish college students, identical to a pro-Israel lens that erases Palestinians wouldn’t be secure for Arab and Palestinian college students,” he mentioned.
Ilana Pearlman, a Jewish mother of a Berkeley highschool pupil, mentioned her household had a largely nice expertise within the district earlier than Oct. 7. However after the Hamas assault, “all the things simply turned on its head,” Pearlman mentioned.
“The whole lot grew to become political. Each classroom, flags went up, indicators went up,” Pearlman mentioned. “The one acceptable option to be Jewish in Berkeley faculties proper now could be to be an anti-Zionist.”
College students and fogeys who help a cease-fire in Gaza and Palestinian liberation word that their coalition contains many Jewish households.
“These claims are supposed to undermine our anti-war motion as an entire,” mentioned Muhammad Delgado, a Berkeley Excessive Faculty senior and co-president of the Muslim Pupil Assn. “And so they’re additionally being launched by a handful of oldsters that don’t actually appear to symbolize the entire of Berkeley.”
Molly Sampson, whose Palestinian youngsters attend Berkeley faculties, mentioned she’s alarmed that academics are being censored for educating the historical past of the battle. She argued that the Jewish households elevating considerations symbolize “such a micro-element of opinion in our neighborhood.”
Sampson mentioned the neighborhood stands behind Ford Morthel.
“I do know that she goes to be superb, as a result of she has the reality on her facet,” Sampson mentioned. “She actually has the help of Berkeley behind her.”