California School District Rules Teacher Accused of Antisemitism Violated Policy

A California school district which stands accused of refusing to address antisemitism has ruled that a teacher who allegedly showed her students antisemitic, discriminatory, and biased content violated policy when she screened an offensive video about the Holocaust in her classroom.

The move, taken by the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD), came without the prompting of the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, with which two Jewish civil rights groups, StandWithUs (SWU) and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), filed a complaint against the district in April.

Among other things, SWU and BAJC alleged that an SCUSD employee, Wilcox High School teacher Kauser Adenwala, screened a documentary produced in Turkey which compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust. The graphic film at one point “displays a picture of a young Jewish child who was branded with a number by the Nazis during World War II and then suddenly shows an untraceable image of children with Arabic writing on their arms,” according to the lawsuit, which alleged the teacher’s conduct violated numerous district policies and potentially state law. However, she remains employed by the district to this day.

The district subsequently investigated the incident and said in an official letter that was just sent to BAJC on July 25 and obtained by The Algemeiner that Adenwala breached the Governing Board’s policies.

“For the reasons stated above, the district determined that Ms. Adenwala showing the video in class violated Board Policy,” the district said. “She failed to exercise good judgment when showing her class a video that promoted a bias toward Jewish students.”

SCUSD added that Adenwala behaved in a manner which constituted harassment, unprofessionalism, and presumption, as she veered outside the area of her academic expertise and in doing so caused a distraction “from the education process.” She will soon be required to take “corrective actions” to remedy the hostile environment she was said to foster.

Other disturbing incidents have occurred in SCUSD schools since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, according to the April civil rights complaint.

Students have graffitied antisemitic hate speech in the bathrooms, vandalized Jewish-themed posters displayed in schools, and distributed stickers which said, “F—k Zionism,” the lawsuit detailed. Another Wilcox teacher allegedly berated a Jewish student, arguing that her name is not derived from Hebrew but Arabic. No known action has been taken against the instructor.

At Peterson Middle School, the complaint said, a group of students taunted a Jewish peer with slurs. They uttered similar rhetoric on social media as well, in full view of the local community. Forced to address what had become a hostile climate after Jewish parents filed more complaints with district officials, SCUSD did not acknowledge the antisemitic nature of the incidents, opting instead to send “a generalized communication to families about bullying, harassment, and hate speech.”

“It is both shocking and heartbreaking that it has come to this,” BAJC lawyer David Rosenberg-Wohl said after the complaint was filed. “After 1.5 years of continuous attempts to constructively address the situation to no avail, SCUSD Jewish students feel abandoned, leaving us no choice but to file this official complaint.”

Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to the latest data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.

The problem has led to civil rights complaints and lawsuits.

In September 2023, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the SAUSD for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.

One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

“While an increasing number of schools recognize that their Jewish students are being targeted both for their religious belief and due to their ancestral connection to Israel, and are taking necessary steps to address both classic and contemporary forms of antisemitism, some shamefully continue to turn a blind eye,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus said in March. “The law and federal government recognize Jews share a common faith and they are a people with a shared history and heritage rooted in the land of Israel. Schools that continue to ignore either aspect of Jewish identity are becoming dangerous breeding grounds for escalating anti-Jewish bigotry, and they must be held accountable.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.