Pat Cruickshank\u2019s<\/a> decision to deny the waiver and allow his daughter, a 15-year-old sophomore at The Branson School in Ross, to compete without restrictions in the spring track season, which begins in February. She was already required to sit out half of the fall tennis season.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat we thought would be a fairly routine transfer turned out not to be so,\u201d said Bart Schachter, who filed the suit anonymously through his attorney and requested that his daughter\u2019s name not be used. \u201cThat is the greatest hardship endured in this whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schachter\u2019s daughter, who competes at the varsity level in both sports, enrolled at the private college preparatory academy in the Presidio Heights neighborhood as a freshman for the 2024-25 school year and, he said, \u201cpretty quickly\u201d began to experience a string of antisemitic incidents.<\/p>\n
Schachter brought the issues to administrators at UHS and later provided the documentation to the NCS in the hardship application. When the section contacted the school to verify the information, however, administrators disputed the characterization of the allegations, and the application was denied.<\/p>\n
In a correspondence to the family provided to this news organization, Cruickshank wrote that the girl was denied the \u201cstudent safety hardship waiver based upon no documentation from UHS of any student safety incidents while enrolled there.\u201d Cruickshank declined to comment, citing pending litigation.<\/p>\n
UHS Head of School Nasif Iskander\u00a0denied the allegations of antisemitism at the school to this news organization but added: \u201cWe\u2019ve never objected to the CIF granting this student a waiver to play sports at a new school. \u2026 We explicitly supported her desire to play sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of the court\u2019s decision, Schachter\u2019s daughter will have two years of eligibility remaining in both sports, but the father said, \u201cIt\u2019s emotionally challenging to show up at a new school as a transfer. You make friends through sports. It\u2019s hard to sit on the sidelines when you\u2019re a star player.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that the Schachters and other Jewish families submitted \u201cdozens\u201d of documented safety incidents to UHS over the course of the 2024-25 school year and prior. Iskander said, \u201cWe strongly disagree with the allegations \u2026 and we have robust and effective programs and policies to provide students an uplifting learning environment that is free of antisemitism and other discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schachter disagreed, telling this news organization that \u201cthe fact pattern would indicate\u201d systemic issues with antisemitism at UHS, \u201c(and) if you\u2019re asking about the root cause, that certainly plays a role. Normally we would move on and find a better pasture, but we hit this sports issue and it\u2019s not over.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one instance described in the lawsuit, Schachter\u2019s daughter was in the same class as two boys who repeatedly practiced the Nazi salute and \u201cmock(ed) the physical characteristics of Jews.\u201d A few months later, she was \u201cpressured\u201d to attend a meeting on the Israel-Palestine conflict \u201cwhere Jewish students were mocked for their perspectives \u2026 with no meaningful response from UHS administration despite complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the lawsuit, that led Jewish parents to formally submit a complaint regarding \u201cbullying and harassing environment for Jewish students\u201d at the school. The CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council also weighed in, informing UHS that it faced \u201csome of the most serious antisemitism issues reported among independent schools in the Bay Area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iskander said the school was never informed of the first incident and disputed the characterization of the public meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said we had no objection to her playing sports,\u201d Iskander reiterated, \u201cbut we really disagreed with the characterization of her experience at the school.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Schachters filed their petition under bylaw 207.B.(5)c of the California Interscholastic Federation constitution, which waives the mandatory sit-out period for transfers \u201cwhen a student is transferring as a result of a specific, documented safety incident in which the student was involved.\u201d It requires \u201csufficient documentation to satisfy that CIF Section Commissioner that the circumstances meet this criteria \u2026 including but not limited to administrative records and documentation from the former school about the specific safety incident that occurred at the former school and\/or police records (if any).\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that Cruickshank validated the petition\u2019s status under the safety-incident exception by not rejecting it outright and remarking on the \u201csensitive\u201d nature of the situation upon receiving the initial application. The Schachters offered to submit to CIF a 72-page report documenting the harassment, correspondence with school officials and the concern from the Jewish Community Relations Council. Regardless of the school\u2019s interpretation, the Schachters believe they met the requirements under the bylaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what every school would say,\u201d Schachter said. \u201cThere\u2019s no one who admits these kinds of issues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A two-sport student-athlete encountered antisemitism at University High School in San Francisco and, upon transferring to another school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[184,7,2044,33214,402,181,23,992,993,395,182,6163,11951,101,396,103,102,104,106,105,127],"class_list":["post-52361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-high-school-sports","tag-high-school-track","tag-inside-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-marin-county","tag-north-bay","tag-peninsula","tag-pm-report","tag-religion","tag-ross","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-county","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52361","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=52361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}