The San Juan Unified School District, which runs 65 schools with more than 40,000 students, received almost $360,000 between 2022 and 2024 from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, according to Defending Education, a nonprofit.
CAIR, which blamed Israel for being attacked on Oct. 7, was initially listed as part of the Biden administration’s national strategy to fight Jew-hatred. The White House later removed it.
At the time, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) told JNS that CAIR “has peddled antisemitic tropes and has ties to extremist, anti-Israel groups.”
Defending Education received documents via a public records request and found that the California chapter of CAIR gave $175,602 to the K-12 school district in Northern California in the 2024 fiscal year.
CAIR’s Sacramento Valley-Central California chapter gave the district $180,000 between 2022 and 2023, according to the nonprofit. (JNS sought comment from the district.)
Casey Ryan, investigative reporter at Defending Education, told JNS that “the fact that the San Juan Unified School District has received at least $175,000 from CAIR is disgraceful.”
“This is an organization with reported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “Both Texas and Florida have designated CAIR as a terrorist organization in the past year.”
“District leadership should be ashamed of themselves for giving such a dangerous group unfettered access to their schools and students,” Ryan told JNS. “This is nothing short of a dereliction of duty.”
