Last week, the Oakland Jewish Alliance and Marleen Sacks filed a lawsuit to stop the Oakland (California) Unified School District from openly and aggressively inserting itself in the Israel-Gaza conflict by advocating for the Palestinians and aggressively indoctrinating students in hatred for Israel and the Jewish people. If the allegations are proven—and there’s lots of material in the news and on social media that backs up the allegations—the district has grossly violated its obligations to be a neutral public forum, as well as violating Jewish students’ civil rights under both state and federal law.

It’s to be hoped that the District settles quickly or, if it insists on going to trial, loses the case. It would also be a good thing were the Trump administration to hear about this because I’m sure there’s federal money to be withheld. American taxpayers should not be funding the madness that is taking place in the Oakland public schools.

The Oakland Unified School District is huge, with 35,489 students and 2,357 teachers. That means that when it takes sides in a political dispute (which public schools are not supposed to do) or starts preaching radical antisemitism (which is illegal at both the federal and state levels), thousands of absorbent, malleable young minds are being affected.

The district’s funding is doled out on a per-student basis...the greater the number of students, the more money it gets. The district has been in a budget hole lately, which has resulted in significant layoffs.

That being the case, one would think that it would not engage in activities that cause it to lose either students (and Jewish families have already pulled their kids from the schools) or government funding. According to Grok’s analysis, federal money makes up 10-15% of the district’s funding, a not-inconsequential amount. However, based on social media activity and the allegations in the lawsuit, the teachers and administrators at various schools in the district may have lacked wisdom.

Here are some of the things, per social and traditional news media, that teachers and staff have been doing ever since Hamas, a designated terrorist group, invaded Israel on October 7 and slaughtered over 1,200 civilians, trying to torture them as much as possible in the process:

And then there was the teach-in that teachers planned less than two months after October 7:

A group of Oakland teachers is calling for educators to swap out district-recommended curriculum for a teach-in Wednesday that would educate students about “the Palestinian struggle” amid the war in Gaza.

But district officials have pushed back at the effort focused on students as young as 4, saying that teachers should be teaching critical thinking, not telling students what to think.

[snip]

The lesson plans made available to teachers in a Google document for the Wednesday teach-in included a Palestinian-themed alphabet book for transitional kindergarten through third-grade students, with the letter I representing “intifada,” a word historically connected to the armed uprisings by Palestinians against Israeli occupation and control of disputed land. Another lesson for the early elementary grades encouraged students to identify what they “will chant at a Palestine protest.”

Despite the pushback, dozens of teachers went ahead with the plan.

A pro-Palestinian education association enthusiastically praised the teach-in, along with other less formalized pro-Palestinian activities in the Oakland schools. You should check out the link because, to illustrate how pro-Palestinian Oakland High is, the article includes a photo purporting to show the hallway wall covered with student-created pro-Palestinian posters.

The same essay is also illuminating insofar as it boasts about the a long-term successful push to instruct students in the Palestinian narrative and paint Israel, the world’s only Jewish nation, which occupies a minute spot of land in an entirely Muslim region of the world, as a colonialist occupier that needs to be destroyed.

Just a few months after the teach-in, Oakland teachers joined students in a walkout to protest the war in Gaza, another sign of the politicization of Oakland classrooms. Thus, if the students walk out, one can’t blame the school. However, if the teachers are part of the walkout, that strongly suggests classroom indoctrination.

It’s against this backdrop that the Oakland Jewish Alliance and Marleen L. Sacks filed the suit against the school district seeking injunctive relief to stop what are manifestly illegal political activities. It would be nice if the ultimate injunctive relief (and I think Sacks will prevail because, in my humble estimation, the school district doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on) included remedial instruction for district students who have been marinated in antisemitic hatred for a year-and-a-half. (Actually, for longer than that, if the pro-Palestinian organization is to be believed.)

Also, I sincerely hope that the Trump administration learns of what’s happening in the district and stops the flow of American taxpayer money to the district until it cleans up its act.

This is Ms. Sacks’ press release detailing the allegations in the lawsuit:

A lawsuit has been filed today [April 4] in Alameda County Superior Court charging Oakland Unified School District with repeatedly failing to properly investigate allegations of antisemitism and allegations that teachers, administrators and others have been openly indoctrinating students.  The lawsuit also alleges that the District has created a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli families and staff, resulting in over 30 families leaving the District, among other harms.  Lastly, the lawsuit alleges repeated failure to comply with the California Public Records Act by failing to provide the plaintiffs with documents related to the ongoing antisemitism and indoctrination.  The lawsuit was filed by the Oakland Jewish Alliance, a local nonprofit, and Marleen Sacks, an Oakland attorney.

California law, as well as District policy, mandates that discrimination complaints known as “Uniform Complaints,” be investigated within 60 days.  The original “Uniform Complaint” at issue in the lawsuit was filed in November, 2023, and addendums to the complaint were submitted over the next several months.  Nearly a year and a half later, due to the District’s tolerance for antisemitism, the District still has not completed the investigations, and for some of the complaints, has yet to even assign an investigator.

The lawsuit references multiple and serious issues that have been occurring throughout various schools, all of which were included in the previously filed complaints. These issues include:

• Teachers organized an unauthorized “teach-in” on December 6, 2023, during which over 100 teachers abused their authority and used District time to teach unauthorized and unapproved antisemitic and anti-Zionist curriculum to indoctrinate students into their political agenda.
• A Palestinian flag replaced the United States and California flag at Fremont High School, apparently for weeks.
• District administrators have used District email platforms to send out pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel propaganda.
• A District manager posted on social media calling Zionists “hateful heartless beings, who thrive on the death and destruction of Black and Brown bodies.”
• Multiple District employees led a group of 130 students during school hours on an unauthorized pro-Palestine walkout.
• Elementary school children were forced by the administration to watch a propaganda video during a Native American Heritage assembly about how Israel stole the land of “Palestine.”
• Teachers have been exempted from other duties by the administration by agreeing to participate in a May 1 pro-Palestine walkout.
• The front page of a student newspaper published on a District website contained an anti-Israel hit piece disguised as a “news” article.
• Teachers, administrators and other staff members have been using District classrooms, hallway walls, administrative offices, and other means to regularly and repeatedly indoctrinate students.  They have been using posters, flags and curriculum, in antisemitic and anti-Zionist propaganda, creating an ongoing hostile environment for students, parents and staff.

“The District has had more than enough time to investigate the issues we have raised.  If they were truly interested in addressing the problem of indoctrination and antisemitism, the investigations would have been completed long ago, the offenders would have been disciplined or fired, and a program would have been put in place to neutralize the damage that has been done.  But the District has taken none of these actions.   Instead, they have delayed and dilly dallied and have denied us access to clearly public documents such as curriculum, claiming that such documents are too sensitive and controversial for ‘public consumption.’  How can the District justify withholding curriculum that is being used in the classroom?  It is outrageous,” Sacks said.

One example of curriculum recently obtained includes a video made by an Oakland teacher of his fifth graders reciting what he had learned, looking into the camera and saying: “Another major thing that I've learned is that the Jews, the people who took over basically just stole the Palestinians land….”  Sacks noted, “This is pure Jew hating indoctrination that is going on in Oakland schools.  The District is well aware that these things are going on, and instead of addressing it, they are either endorsing it, or covering it up.”

The lawsuit seeks court intervention to compel the District to complete the investigations in a fair, thorough, unbiased and timely manner, to produce the public records that have been requested, and to cease the indoctrination and antisemitism.

Press contact:  Marleen L. Sacks

 (925) 247-8328;   Marleen@lawofficeofmarleensacks.com

Image: X screen grab.