Bay Area high school districts cited, must provide anti-bias training to teachers

Following investigations, the California Department of Education has verified incidents of antisemitism in two neighboring San Jose-area school districts. In separate decisions, the department ordered both the Campbell Union High School District and Santa Clara Unified to provide anti-discrimination training, and in the case of Santa Clara Unified, training in students’ rights against retaliation.

In the most recent case, the department ruled on April 4 that lessons in an ethnic studies course at Branham High in Campbell Union discriminated against Jewish students.

A parent and Bay Area Jewish Coalition Education and Advocacy filed a complaint and appealed to the department after the district dismissed it. They complained that two teachers in an Ethnic Literature class they had designed presented content regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict that could encourage antisemitism.

Not identified by name in the state report, Teacher A acknowledged doing a lesson on the conflict in a “community circle” that was not included in the curriculum. As part of the theme on colonialism, students discussed whether Israel is a settler colonial state, although the students heard only one side. It included a video from a rabbi wearing a Palestinian flag that said  “A Jew is not a Zionist” and a reading from Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

“In order for the information to be unbiased, there would have needed to be a video that reflected a pro-Israel perspective. This would have encouraged students to create authentic answers regarding the questions provided in the lesson,” the state report said.

The second instance of bias pertained to a student project on “Genocide of Palestinians. The report found that Teacher B didn’t question the students on their report during a class presentation and then posted the presentation to a social media site of class projects.

“The legal issue is whether the teacher responded adequately so as to ensure a non-discriminatory and balanced learning environment,” the report said.  The failure to comment  on the slide presentation” could have been interpreted by the student audience as approval of the presented thesis.”

The district, which can ask the department to reconsider the decision, did not respond to a request for a comment.

The district must provide at least an hour-long anti-bias training for all English language arts and social studies teachers by the start of the next school year.

“We are seeing discrimination against Jews in classrooms throughout the state and hope this precedent will lead to schools taking a more nuanced approach that doesn’t harm Jewish students,” said Miller Saltzman, Ethnic Studies Coalition Director for the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California.

Santa Clara Unified decisions

The department issued separate rulings on Jan. 24 in which it verified allegations of bias on two separate incidents that occurred after the October slaughter by Hamas of 1,200 Israelis which led to reprisals and the invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army, with deaths of thousands of Palestinians. 

One involved a clear violation of the district’s policy on handling controversial issues, although that was outside of the department’s jurisdiction. A teacher assigned students projects on genocide and modeled the conflict in Gaza as an example for the class. It contained a one-sided, politically charged perspective that described Israeli actions against Gazans that “amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution”  and used other inflammatory language.

The district’s own internal investigation acknowledged the teacher’s presentation was “poorly timed,” “controversial” and “politically charged.” The department went further on appeal, stating it violated the Education Code’s protection against discrimination and intimidation on the basis of ethnicity, religion and nationality.

In the second incident, in February 2024, a teacher confronted a Jewish student who was a member of the Jewish Culture Club about a speaker from Israel the club had invited. In front of other students, the teacher tried to persuade the student to disinvite the speaker, whose controversial talk, the teacher said, would provoke antisemitism  and reflect badly on the student.

Although the district’s own investigation concluded that the teacher’s “conduct was objectively offensive considering the power imbalance between [the Teacher and the Student]” and the student’s identification of Jewish, the district ruled there was no clear discrimination or harassment. On appeal,  the state concluded otherwise, noting that under state law, schools should  “promote tolerance and sensitivity” and “minimize and eliminate hostile environments.”

The unnamed student filed the complaint and the appeal. In its ruling, the department required the district to train all high school staff on students’ right to be free of discrimination, harassment and intimidation base on race, ethnicity, religion and nationality.

The District shall also “continue to take appropriate actions to protect (the student) from retaliation for bringing the Complaint/Appeal,” the ruling said.