The Oakland Unified School District admits discriminating against Jews but isn’t taking meaningful action, according to the Oakland Jewish Alliance.
“The numerous pro-Palestinian postings in district classrooms and school grounds, as well as the pro-Palestinian teaching that lacked multiple perspectives, communicating only a pro-Palestinian ideology resulted in a discriminatory environment for district students, staff and families,” per a Dec. 12 report from the district, which educates nearly 34,000 students in 82 schools.
The report found that the district failed to prevent such incidents and that “numerous families” left the district, citing a “discriminatory environment and fear of antisemitism.”
The district released the report to the group, which is described as a nonprofit and which had filed complaints about the incidents. The Jewish News of Northern California obtained the report.
Marleen Sacks, an attorney for the nonprofit, which lists no information about staff or membership on its website, told JNS that “for the first time, the district is acknowledging that it discriminated against Jews and Israelis.”
Sacks added that the district is “not willing to take any meaningful action to actually address the discrimination that they found.” (JNS sought comment from the district.)
“What good is a finding that these kinds of practices create discrimination when the district is unwilling to address the discrimination?” she said.
The report states that the district will train its leaders, teachers and administrators to handle such incidents better.
The district found “sufficient evidence of teachers teaching non-district approved, pro-Palestinian materials to students,” which included “a multi-day lesson on colonialism” that “favored a Palestinian perspective.”
It has not engaged in any “concrete action” to stop teachers from engaging in “indoctrination,” according to Sacks. “At the end of the day, they’re still not willing to do anything to address it,” she said.
She also said that the report is “extremely deficient” and that the district did not probe all of the nonprofit’s complaints. “That appears to have been an intentional strategy, and they have made up a variety of excuses for not conducting investigations into many of our allegations,” she said.
A lawsuit in which the nonprofit alleges that the district didn’t adequately probe alleged Jew-hatred and didn’t comply with state public records law is ongoing.
