State education officials are suing the Oakland Unified School District over claims that it has failed to address persistent antisemitism on its campuses.<\/p>\n
In a lawsuit filed March 9, the California Department of Education said OUSD \u201cunlawfully refused and failed to carry out the corrective actions\u201d to curb antisemitism, as ordered by CDE officials in January.<\/p>\n
The suit follows an appeal by Oakland-based attorney Marleen Sacks, whose complaints about antisemitism at several schools led to an OUSD investigation.<\/p>\n
Despite finding validity in several of those complaints and \u201calthough OUSD acknowledged discrimination against Jewish or Israeli persons, OUSD\u2019s self-imposed corrective actions did not provide a fully appropriate remedy,\u201d according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Alameda County Superior Court.<\/p>\n
To address this, state education officials ordered OUSD to implement various types of training for district and school site staff focused on anti-discrimination, with a particular emphasis on antisemitism.<\/p>\n
The district was also ordered to send letters to all families and staff condemning antisemitism and addressing \u201cthe District-wide actions that the District is taking to prevent and remedy it,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for OUSD and CDE declined to comment, citing policies that forbid officials from talking about active litigation.<\/p>\n
Assemblies ordered to teach about Holocaust<\/p>\n
State officials also required American Indian Model Schools, Thornhill Elementary School, Montera Middle School and Oakland Technical High School to hold assemblies addressing \u201cthe Holocaust, what a swastika represents, and the harm that graffiti involving such imagery and other anti-Semitic imagery may cause,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The complaints about antisemitism at OUSD surfaced largely following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and that country\u2019s subsequent invasion of Gaza.<\/p>\n
Many of the complaints focused on the use of pro-Palestinian posters, flags, class lessons and other materials and activities, including student walkouts and \u201cteach-ins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some focused on antisemitic graffiti discovered at various campuses and, according to the suit, state officials subsequently found discrimination in three separate cases \u2014 one involving a teacher at Montera Middle School who posted and distributed pro-Palestinian and antisemitic material, one in which the Oakland Tech student newspaper published a pro-Palestinian and antisemitic article, and one involving a \u201cwalkout\u201d by students and some staff at Westlake Middle School, that was planned by staff, to protest the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit also accuses OUSD of failing to address complaints of discrimination within the 60 days required by state law and for failing to turn over its investigation reports to state education officials.<\/p>\n
The suit is seeking a court order requiring the district to comply with CDE\u2019s requirements and to award the CDE court costs and attorneys\u2019 fees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State education officials are suing the Oakland Unified School District over claims that it has failed to address…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,21725,3629,3636,3007,1312,13469,15,93,4306,4004,3784,340,842,37488,1846,143,145,144,3272,8212,22334,1997],"class_list":["post-224551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-alameda-county-superior-court","tag-antisemitism","tag-california-department-of-education","tag-civil-rights","tag-courts","tag-discrimination","tag-education","tag-featured","tag-featured-news","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-jewish","tag-lawsuit","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-unified-school-district","tag-ousd","tag-public-schools","tag-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}