New York City Mayor Eric Adams ordered increased oversight of communications at the city’s education department on Thursday, after a second newsletter with antisemitic content was sent out this week to public school staff.
City Hall announced that all newsletters and citywide messages from the New York City Department of Education must now undergo an enhanced review process, including legal review and leadership sign-off, according to a memo the mayor’s office sent to JNS.
“Political speech, which has no place in official New York City Public Schools media, was inserted into divisional publications,” per the memo. “These incidents undermine our credibility and the trust our community places in us.”
Earlier this week, a Department of Education newsletter sent to hundreds of “master teachers” across the city’s 1,800 schools claimed that Israel is committing a “genocide in Gaza” and called for student voices to be centered in response to “global injustices,” wrote the New York Post.
On April 3, the city’s Office of Student Pathways Newsletter, a monthly publication distributed to students and parents in the city’s public school system, included a link to a “toolkit” that encouraged students to boycott pro-Israel organizations and advocate for “Palestine” on social media.
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, told JNS that the newsletter sent out this week reflects a broader failure to protect Jewish students since Oct. 7.
“One tragic untold story since Oct. 7 is Jewish students feel abandoned and unprotected by those responsible for building a school community that is supposed to make those students feel safe and welcome,” he told JNS.
Adams told JNS on Thursday that the newly instituted protocols will ensure that “no politically one-sided rhetoric ever appears again in any official communication sent from our schools.”
“Let me be clear. Schools are where our children should feel safest, which is why neither antisemitism nor any other form of hate has any place in New York City Public Schools,” Adams said. “As the home of the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel, we must ensure our Jewish students, families and educators feel welcomed, not targeted.”
Melissa Aviles-Ramos, chancellor of New York City Public Schools, apologized for the antisemitic newsletter on Thursday.
“It is egregious and deeply disappointing that despite our efforts to streamline communication protocols in this massive system, politically one-sided materials that are deeply offensive to the Jewish community were once again shared with educators,” she stated.
