State finds 'anti-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' sentiment at Oakland Unified is antisemitic

Top Takeaways

• California’s Department of Education ruled that complaints of discrimination in the district were valid. 
• Pro-Palestinian groups say the complaints conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. 
• Oakland Unified has committed to staff training on antisemitism and bias.

In three separate rulings, the California Department of Education has determined that the Oakland Unified School District created a “discriminatory environment” against Jewish students and staff, contradicting the district’s findings.

In rulings issued in late October, the CDE also criticized the district for taking more than a year, longer than the 60 days allowed, to respond to Jewish families’ complaints of antisemitism, and also for violating state law by declining to turn over reports of its investigations that could have shed light on the district’s conclusions.

Additional unresolved complaints citing antisemitism have been filed by Oakland attorney Marleen Sacks, who has represented Jewish families in the district. She filed the complaints as a concerned member of the community.

“There are anti-Israel discussions, assemblies, pro-Palestine posters, maps hanging in teachers’ classrooms, in district hallways, in school hallways, in administrative offices,” she said. “There are certain schools where it’s just awash in pro-Palestine propaganda, which is not appropriate. The district is a hostile environment for Jews and Israelis.”

In its first response to the complaints released Wednesday, Oakland Unified stated that, as a result of the California Department of Education’s findings, “we will begin additional trainings in December in response to antisemitism specifically, and addressing hatred more broadly.”

“We are in the process of implementing corrective actions identified by both OUSD and the CDE in an intentional and effective manner so that both implicated and non-implicated OUSD staff receive the required training to educate and inform on antisemitism, bias, and the impact of providing only one viewpoint in our classrooms and campuses,” the statement said.

The initial Oakland Unified complaints covered incidents that occurred weeks following the Oct. 7, 2023, killing of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas and the kidnapping of about 250. Initial reprisals by the Israeli army two years later have led to nearly 70,000 deaths of civilians and combatants, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The CDE’s decisions reflect the strains Jewish families and students in the 34,000-student district say they’re facing amid the activism of pro-Palestinian teachers and students.

One complaint objected to the flying of the Palestinian flag on a school flagpole at Fremont High School in mid-October 2023. The district found that the principal reported no objections from students or parents and that the school had flown other flags, including the Transgender Pride and flags of Latin American nations, in the past. However, the state investigation said the district failed to examine whether flying exclusively the Palestinian flag at that tense time could be perceived as favoring one point of view. The state concluded it contributed to a discriminatory environment for Jewish students.

The other complaint characterized an unauthorized teach-in on Palestine, led by a dozen teachers, as biased “indoctrination” that excluded an Israeli perspective of the conflict. The district investigation pointed to “reasonable steps” it took to address the teach-in, including urging its employees to present non-biased viewpoints and stating in communications that “Under no circumstances should any students or staff feel uncomfortable or singled out because of who they are and how the conflict is impacting them.” 

But the district also acknowledged that some of the materials created by outside groups violated the district’s policy on teaching controversial subjects and cast Palestinians as victims and Israelis as oppressors.

The state investigation found that, as with the flagpole incident, the district’s inquiry didn’t directly respond to the complaint’s allegation that the teach-in constituted discrimination or intimidation against Jewish students and staff. The state’s investigation, noting that the teach-in excluded an Israeli perspective on the Palestinian conflict, supported the claim.

Also, in October, the CDE issued its finding in the appeal of a third complaint, filed in 2024, that the district discriminated against Jews by sending home, in a packet of materials celebrating Arab American Heritage Month, a map of the Middle East that substituted Palestine for the state of Israel in three out of the previous four years.

More complaints in the pipeline

Sacks filed all three complaints, and more are coming. She has filed a total of 25 against the district, citing Free Palestine posters in various school classrooms, additional teach-ins, a May Day walkout, and “disruptive conduct” at an antisemitism training session. The complaints are in various stages of review, and some are before the state Department of Education on appeal.

Sacks said at least two dozen Jewish parents have transferred their children to other districts or sent their kids to private school because of the antisemitic environment in Oakland Unified.

Other students and staff “are hiding their Jewishness,” Sacks said. “They don’t mention that their parents are Israeli, to be told, ‘How could you possibly support a genocide?’ So it just basically silences discussion. It silences dissent, and it’s intimidating.”

But pro-Palestinian groups like the Arab Resources and Organizing Center in San Francisco, which supplied some materials for the teach-in, criticized the complainants as the ones trying to suppress dissent by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

“Palestinian students and their supporters have long faced attacks and accusations of being called antisemitic simply for voicing their support for the freedom of Palestinians,” said Mohamed Shehk, organizing director for the Arab center. “The fact that a teach-in and even a Palestinian flag representing a people would be considered antisemitic is racist, honestly, because it shows that Palestinians uplifting their identity is deemed as a threat to certain people that don’t want Palestinians to have dignity or rights.”

Will the state’s remedies work?

In finding that the district allowed biased instruction with the teach-in, the state ordered that the district, over the next several months, hire a non-district trainer for high school social studies teachers and site administrators to discuss how to comply with the Education Code ban on instruction and activities that promote discrimination — in this case, focusing on the Middle East conflict. The state is also requiring training in complying with the 60-day limit for responding to complaints.

Sacks doubts it will make a difference. The district tries to present the complaints as isolated incidents, but antisemitism is districtwide, she said. Had the district wanted to end it, it would have monitored classrooms during the teach-in, disciplined those who imposed their own beliefs, and interviewed some of the Jewish families that pursued interdistrict transfers, she said.

Another Palestinian advocacy organization, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, filed a lawsuit this week, making the same argument as Shehk for an injunction to derail Assembly Bill 715, a controversial law that takes effect in January, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month. It is intended to protect all students, but specifically Jewish students, from discrimination. The plaintiffs, who also include LA Educators for Justice in Palestine, said the law would violate the First Amendment by chilling discussion and ideas critical of the state of Israel (see related article).

Particularly relevant to the Oakland complaints, AB 715 includes a provision intended to prod districts to resolve discrimination complaints sooner. It would allow complainants to take an appeal directly to the California Department of Education when a district fails to meet the 60-day response deadline.

The law also creates an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, separate from the Department of Education, who would act as an ombudsman reporting on and documenting incidents of antisemitism. The person would have the power to require school districts to develop improvement plans to address bias at school sites.

“Antisemitism is dangerous, antithetical to California values, and must not be tolerated in any California classroom, regardless of whether Jewish pupils are present in that classroom,” the preamble to the bill said.