Jewish students on a Carmel Unified School District campus suffered widespread anti-Semitic harassment over a three-year period, with swastika graffiti repeated in bathrooms and on desks, references to Hitler and verbal threats against Jews, a federal civil rights investigation has been set up.
The incidents “potentially exposed hundreds of students to anti-Semitic imagery,” creating a “hostile environment” that the district failed to eliminate, Department of Education investigators wrote to the district in a 13-year letter on Friday. page of the letter, which outlines the violations and remedies.
Although the district does not admit it violated the law, school officials reached an agreement with the department’s Office of Civil Rights to address the campus’s compliance with Title VI — a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin, including common origin. ancestry) discrimination. The district will take 10 actions, including revising policies for reporting and responding to harassment complaints and training administrators to investigate and document complaints.
“I am fully committed to creating a safe environment for all students because schools need to be places of growth and learning, not places of trauma,” Carmel Unified Police Sgt. Sharon Ofek said in a statement. “As a Jewish American, I fully support this important initiative to ensure that anti-Semitism is completely eradicated from classrooms, culture, and the overall learning environment. To the victims who are being investigated by OCR as a result of unfortunate experiences, please know that you are not Alone, I will always be here to support you.
The Carmel Unified case is one of about 32 public investigations into national origin-based discrimination in California schools, according to a Department of Education database.
The investigation began in 2022, according to the database, when an unnamed female student claimed the district discriminated against Jewish students by not responding “in a timely and effective manner” to reports of an unidentified school painting a swastika. The student also said the district retaliated against her after she alleged discrimination, although investigators did not find enough evidence to substantiate that claim.
Investigators found nine incidents involving swastikas and one incident involving the N-word in 2021 and 2022. The district said it was unable to find records for the 2022-23 school year due to high staff turnover.
Although district officials investigated several of the incidents and sought disciplinary action, they were unable to prevent such incidents from happening again. They also failed to recognize and attempt to defuse the hostile environment these events created for Jewish students, the letter said.
On multiple occasions where swastika graffiti appeared in bathrooms, staff examined handwriting samples, campus security recordings and monitored the bathrooms before and after class, but were unable to find the person responsible.
Investigators found swastikas also found on desks, rulers and on one student’s skin. One student was suspended.
The federal report said that while administrators visited classrooms to discuss hate speech, graffiti and the consequences of such actions, they did not discuss swastikas or the meaning behind them. The school also could not prove that it provided counseling to witnesses or victims of the harassment.
“All we received was an unhelpful five-minute tirade in class,” one student said in public comments at a 2022 Board of Education meeting. “The five-minute tirade is just to say that hate speech is happening and the consequences will be suspension and possibly firing.”
By then, the school had formed an anti-hate speech task force made up of students, faculty, and administrators. They held at least 10 meetings, set goals for improving school climate, and sent out a race relations survey, which found that 40.49% reported when they learned of “racially motivated hateful graffiti in bathrooms, backpacks and elsewhere.” of respondents feel “uneasy”.
However, the Office for Civil Rights found no evidence that actual steps were taken to achieve these goals or change the climate on campus.
These incidents continue to occur during the 2023-24 school year. The letter said the Office for Civil Rights received reports of additional swastika graffiti and Hitler references, vandalism of movie posters and verbal threats directed at Jews by a student, but those reports were not investigated.
As part of the agreement with the Department of Education, the district will address alleged harassment incidents from 2021, revise and disseminate its harassment policies and procedures, and develop a new way to track complaints. School district officials also agreed to educate students and parents on the types of discrimination prohibited by Title VI and how to report suspected violations, conduct a school climate investigation into anti-Semitism and develop a plan to address the findings.
On the administrative side, school districts must train those responsible for investigating and resolving complaints and forward those responses to the Office for Civil Rights within the next two years.
