September 1, 2026
STAY INFORMED – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS TO CONSIDER – STORIES MAKING NEWS
A classmate told a Jewish ninth grader at a California high school that he hopes the boy’s “entire family burns in hell” and that Hamas kills them all. Administrators dismissed the student’s complaint. At another high school in the same district, a teaching assistant advised a Jewish girl to conceal her Star of David necklace or she would “get what she deserved.”
Six families of students in the Sequoia Union High School District reported more than a dozen incidents through California’s formal complaint process. The district found nothing to correct. The families sued and won what attorneys call the most comprehensive set of reforms a public school district ever accepted. These include incorporating an antisemitism lesson in every world history class and annual staff training. An outside attorney must approve any lesson plan on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Both teachers named in the suit signed the settlement – and yet still work for the district.
While campus protests following Oct. 7, 2023, have largely abated, antisemitic incidents at K-12 schools continue to fester at an alarming rate – up 400% compared to 2020, according to a recent ADL report. A university student can file a complaint, hire a lawyer or call a reporter while a child is far more likely to be bullied into silence. They are often too young to fight back.
‘When the Teacher Sets the Tone’
The vast majority of teachers and administrators strive to make their students feel safe while also providing them with a quality education. At the same time, for an increasing number of Jewish students in K-12 schools, the adult in the room is often the source of the harassment – or permit it to continue.
Every school grade was included in multiple claims of a February lawsuit filed against the state of California, brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs:
A parent who joined the lawsuit, Mike Rosenthal, described a teacher permitted to display anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and anti-American materials in class. “When the teacher sets that tone, it signaled to students that hostility toward Jewish identity was acceptable – and that is exactly what happened as other students joined in. No child should ever be put in a position where they feel they must hide who they are in order to feel safe.”
A Jewish student from Scarsdale High School in NY told the school board “I came here to learn. Adults, not students, need to recognize the warning signs before an incident becomes public.”
‘We Will Do Our Best’
A Jewish eighth grader in Boulder, Colorado was harassed mercilessly over two years. He was called antisemitic slurs, chased in a game by his classmates named “Jew touch tag” and even spat on. The district investigated and confirmed he was being bullied because he is Jewish. Eight months after that finding, a classmate tied a computer charging cable into a lasso, threw it around the boy’s neck and pulled him backward out of his chair while calling him an antisemitic slur. The teacher heard the slur but did not report the incident.
Police issued a juvenile summons for assault and the district suspended the attacker for the rest of the week. Throughout the two years of harassment, the Jewish boy’s parents included the superintendent on multiple urgent emails but received no reply. When they asked the principal to separate their son from two students with documented records of bullying him, she answered, “We will do our best.” The ADL filed a federal civil rights complaint on the boy’s behalf in June.
In August, the Boulder superintendent apologized publicly for failing to protect their Jewish students and proposed writing antisemitism explicitly into district policy and disciplining employees who fail to report incidents. He also proposed that the district remove the offender from the school, not the victim. The board has yet to vote on the proposals.
Jewish families elsewhere are no longer fighting alone. The ADL, Brandeis Center and StandWithUs run a legal helpline that connects parents to lawyers at no cost. A Massachusetts family called the helpline after their district offered to move their son into independent study while the students harassing him stayed in class. The three organizations filed a federal civil rights complaint on his behalf – and the district agreed to act.
‘My Union Has Made Me Feel Isolated’
For Jewish teachers, the hostility does not stop at the classroom door.
A Jewish teacher who attended multiple union events said his “union leadership actively works against Jews and Zionists, promoting extremely biased and nasty anti-Israel curriculum.” Organizers handed out flyers praising the Iran-backed Hamas massacres of Oct. 7 and honoring the terrorists who carried them out. His wife was physically intimidated at an event, and “she was also attacked publicly by union leadership online.” Their account is one of many shared by the ADL in a new report.
What a union tells its members, often shows up in the classroom. The Massachusetts Teachers Association included posters promoting terrorism against Israel among classroom visuals it offered teachers soon after Oct. 7 – and removed the material only after political and public criticism.
Some Jewish teachers have suffered backlash for raising objections. A teacher of 26 years said that for the first time in her career, she has been “acutely aware of my Jewish identity at work because my union has made me feel isolated, bothered and perpetuated a hostile environment where antisemitism has flourished.” About 74% of Jewish union members reported they self-censor in union spaces. Members reported hiding Star of David necklaces, skipping meetings and resigning union posts. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called the findings a structural and cultural failure.
At the NEA’s July meeting, its Jewish Affairs Caucus and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs negotiated new conduct rules with union leadership, including secret balloting on contentious resolutions and immediate removal for harassment or doxxing. Delegates also voted to protect members on the basis of religion and ethnicity.
Alyson Brauning, who chairs the Jewish caucus, called the rules a step toward a safer and more inclusive meeting for all educators – but said far more work remains. Jewish members are not walking away – 85% of those surveyed said that they will remain in their union.
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This content is developed by The Focus Project in partnership with MERCAZ USA. The Focus Project distributes weekly news and talking points on timely issues concerning Israel and the Jewish people, including antisemitism, anti-Zionism and the delegitimization of Israel. It represents a consensus view across a spectrum of major American Jewish organizations. MERCAZ USA recognizes and respects the diversity of views on these issues among its readers and the community at large.
