The House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education will hold a hearing Wednesday morning to question several school district leaders on accusations of antisemitism at their schools.
The hearing, titled “Confronting Pervasive Antisemitism in K-12 Schools,” will be chaired by Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla. The subcommittee is holding this hearing to question school district leaders from Maryland, New York and California whose districts have faced criticism for not providing safe environments for Jewish students and faculty.
“This pervasive and extreme antisemitism in K-12 schools is not only alarming—it is absolutely unacceptable,” Chairman Bean said in a statement. “This hearing will allow Committee members to hold the leaders of the most embattled school districts accountable for their failure to keep Jewish students and teachers safe.”
This comes amid hearings by the Committee on Education and the Workforce that questioned university presidents about the pervasiveness of antisemitism on higher education campuses. Those hearings impacted the decisions of the Harvard, M.I.T and University of Pennsylvania presidents to step down.
The subcommittee is expanding its focus to include K-12 school district leaders. This will be the subcommittee’s first hearing on antisemitism as it pertains to K-12 schools since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
New York schools Chancellor David C. Banks, Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel and Montgomery County Board of Education President Karla Silvestre will testify Wednesday.
“Antisemitic incidents have exploded in K-12 schools following Hamas’ horrific October 7 attack,” Bean said in a statement. “Jewish teachers, students, and faculty have been denied a safe learning environment and forced to contend with antisemitic agitators due to district leaders’ inaction.”
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit on behalf of a New York City teacher and administrator naming Banks, the New York Department of Education and other New York entities, for “failing to address persistent antisemitism against teachers.”
Northern California’s Berkeley Unified School District is facing a federal complaint from the Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League for what they wrote is a “failing to take action to end the nonstop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers.”
Montgomery County Public Schools faces two Title VI investigations into how the district has failed to handle rising antisemitism in its schools.
The House passed legislation last week that aims to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in Title VI.
A livestream feed of the hearing will be available on YouTube at 10:15 a.m. EDT.