Liam Conner
Leaders of some of the nation’s largest public school districts face questions from a House panel Wednesday about incidents of anti-Semitism in their schools.
A Republican-led House education subcommittee called on Berkeley Unified Schools Superintendent Ford Morthel of California, New York City School Chancellor David Banks and Montgomery County School Board President Karla Silvestre , of Maryland, to testify.
“Anti-Semitic incidents exploded in elementary and middle schools after Hamas’ horrific action October 7 attack. Jewish teachers, students, and faculty have been denied a safe learning environment and forced to confront anti-Semitic agitators due to the inaction of district leaders,” said Rep. Aaron Bean, a Florida Republican who chairs the Education and Workforce subcommittee of the Chamber for elementary and secondary education, he told CBS News.
A senior aide to the committee told CBS News that the panel did not issue subpoenas but asked school district leaders to appear voluntarily.
In a written statement shared with CBS News, the Berkeley United School District said Morthel “did not seek” to testify but accepted an invitation to appear.
A spokeswoman for Berkeley schools said, “We strive every day to ensure our classrooms are respectful, humanizing and joyful places for all of our students, where they are welcomed, seen, valued and heard. We will continue to center our students and take care of each other during this time.”
Each of the three school districts has a large number of Jewish students. They each faced complaints about the handling of alleged incidents of anti-Semitism.
The Anti-Defamation League and the Louis Brandeis Center, The Free Beacon notedfiled a complaint against the Berkeley school system, alleging that some children suffered “severe and persistent harassment and discrimination based on their Jewish ethnicity, shared ancestry, and national origin, and whose reports to administrators were ignored for months.”
The Zionist Organization of America recently filed a civil rights complaint against Montgomery County Public Schools, claiming it failed to adequately address anti-Semitic incidents at its schools. The school district did not respond to a request for comment about Silvestre or the board president’s planned testimony.
The Montgomery County Public School District’s publicly published policies on religious diversity say: “Each student is entitled to his or her religious beliefs and practices, free from discrimination, intimidation or harassment.”
New York City also faces a civil rights complaint from the Brandeis Center that it “fails to address persistent anti-Semitism against teachers.” When asked about his chancellor’s planned testimony, the New York Public Schools spokesperson referred CBS News to comments made by Banks at a public event earlier this month.
“Exclusion and intimidation go against everything public education stands for,” Banks said. “We cannot allow acts of hate, whether physical or through anti-Semitic rhetoric.”
“Doing so causes more pain and builds even more walls,” Banks added. “We must collectively oppose this.”
Scott MacFarlane
