California finds Oakland Unified discriminated against Jewish students 

The California Department of Education has found that Oakland Unified School District discriminated against Jewish students in several instances over the last few years. An investigative report released this month cited as problematic OUSD providing maps of the Middle East that did not include Israel, a school allowing a Palestinian flag to be flown from a school flagpole for a month, and teachers participating in a teach-in about the war in Gaza that did not include Jewish or Israeli perspectives. 

The agency also found that the district had not carried out its internal investigations into the incidents with fidelity, and it issued corrective actions that include training on bias and complaint procedures. 

The state agency undertook an investigation in response to complaints filed by Marleen Sacks, an Oakland attorney who is also suing Oakland Unified on behalf of the Oakland Jewish Alliance, a group that was formed in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, to advocate for Jewish residents. In each case, the state found, Sacks filed a complaint against OUSD for discriminating against Jewish students, and the district responded well beyond the statutory deadline for investigating such complaints. The district ultimately did not issue a determination on whether the incidents discriminated against Jewish students. Sacks appealed those decisions to the state, which arrived at a very different finding: that the district had created discriminatory environments for Jewish students. 

The complaint in one case concerns actions the district took during Arab American Heritage month over multiple years. In 2021, 2023, and 2024, the district sent out resource guides to the school community that included a map of the Middle East without the state of Israel. (The image of the map was not included in the state report.) In her complaint, according to the state report, Sacks also took issue with the district’s linking to materials from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, or AROC, a Bay Area organization that advocates for Arab and Muslim communities; Sacks claimed that the group was “anti-Israel.”

Mohamed Shekh, an organizer with AROC, said the complaints conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

“They’re using accusations of antisemitism to squash any discussion of the experience of Palestinian American students or about Arab American heritage,” Shekh told The Oaklandside. “Their issue with AROC is that they accuse us of being critical and opposed to the actions of a state that is committing genocide against our community.” 

OUSD issued its investigative report on that complaint 15 months after receiving the complaint, which violates state education code that districts must complete the investigation and respond within 60 days unless there is an agreement to extend the timeline. While OUSD’s investigation found a violation of board policy regarding the presention of controversial issues, it did not come to a conclusion about whether antisemitic discrimination had taken place. The district did not submit its investigative file to the state, citing client-attorney privilege, which the state found does not relieve OUSD of its obligations to participate in the appeals process. 

In a statement to The Oaklandside, John Sasaki, OUSD’s spokesperson, confirmed that materials sent out for Arab American Heritage month in recent years had contained incorrect information, such as a map that excluded the nation of Israel. 

“That was an oversight on the part of the District team, and once the team became aware of this issue, it immediately replaced the map and issued a public apology,” the statement said. “The first time was clearly an oversight, the second time” — two years later — “showed a lack of systems in place to ensure similar mistakes would not happen again.”

New systems have been implemented to prevent those oversights from happening again, Sasaki said. 

Corrective action ordered in three cases

The education department’s strongest finding was that the incorrect maps constituted anti-Jewish discrimination. The state has required OUSD, by Dec. 20, to provide training to its investigative staff on following state procedures and provide anti-bias training to staff responsible for overseeing Arab American Heritage Month and Jewish American heritage month.

“This issue with the maps is just one of dozens of issues that we have brought to the district’s (as well as CDE’s) attention, and neither of these agencies are doing anything substantive to correct the problems,” Sacks said in a statement this week. 

In its investigation, the state report said, the district “was aware of the perception that AROC could be antisemitic,” but chose to collaborate with the group because of its relationship with students, parents, and teachers.

Shekh, the AROC organizing director, said of Sacks and the OJA, “They are conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.” He said AROC would continue to advocate for Arab American students and support teachers with resources about Arab history and experiences.

In a second case, Sacks and the Oakland Jewish Alliance took issue with Fremont High School flying the Palestinian flag for a month in 2023, shortly after Israel’s war on Gaza began. The district’s investigation concluded that allowing the flag to fly had not violated any district policies, and that the school had flown the flags of other countries in the past. Again, the OUSD investigation did not issue a finding on whether the act created a discriminatory environment for Jewish students. 

In this case, the state found that raising the Palestinian flag but not the Israeli flag could have been perceived as the school taking sides in the conflict and thus created a “discriminatory environment” for Jewish students and staff. Again, the state found that the district had blown through deadlines and failed to turn over its investigative file. The state, in this case, has required the district to provide anti-bias training to school principals, among other measures.

The third case related to the December 6, 2023, unsanctioned Palestine teach-in, when a group of a dozen teachers taught lessons in their classrooms on the war in Gaza that centered Palestinian perspectives on the conflict. OUSD’s investigation found that the teach-in did not violate the district’s policy on teaching controversial issues, but again did not issue a finding on whether it discriminated against Jewish students. The state in this case found that by not including Jewish or Israeli perspectives on the war during the teach-in, the teachers had created a discriminatory environment for Jewish students and staff. The state, in this case, has required the district to train principals and high school social studies teachers on how to teach lessons about the Middle East that are not discriminatory, with a specific focus ensuring instruction doesn’t promote antisemitism. 

A federal investigation into the teach-in is ongoing.

Sacks, the complainant, said she doesn’t think training will be enough to address the district’s patterns of failing to meet deadlines and investigate complaints. 

The findings come on the heels of Gov. Gavin Newsom signing a pair of bills strengthening the state’s systems to prevent and respond to antisemitism and discrimination, which include establishing a statewide antisemitism prevention coordinator. 

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