Pro-Hamas activists calling themselves the United Front for Liberation lead march through Valley Plaza Mall. The ‘Ceasefire’ rally began at Wilson Park in Bakersfield, California, on Dec. 16, 2023. Photo: Jacob Lee Green via REUTERS CONNECT

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has launched a new initiative to reduce antisemitism in K-12 schools, a growing problem that has, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, prompted a slew of lawsuits and federal civil rights complaints.

Announced on Wednesday, the effort has its roots in new ADL research — produced by its Ratings & Assessment Institute and the Center to Combat Antisemitism in Education — showing a surge of antisemitic incidents on K-12 campuses in recent years. As mentioned in the organization’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, 1,162 such incidents occurred in 2023 and 860 occurred in 2024. Since 2020, antisemitic outrages at K-12 schools have increased by 434 percent.

As parts of its research, the ADL conducted surveys and focus groups to get a better sense of the problem in K-12 private/independent schools, which are the main focus of the civil rights group’s new initiative because they “operate outside of the direct oversight of public education systems, meaning they typically have greater autonomy in shaping their curricula, policies, and disciplinary procedures, which can lead to inconsistent responses to antisemitism.”

Among surveyed school parents, 25.2 percent said their children had experienced or witnessed antisemitic symbols in school since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the ADL’s newly unveiled findings. Perhaps more striking, 45.3 percent of surveyed parents reported that their children had experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and 31.7 percent said their children had “experienced or witnessed problematic school curricula or classroom content related to Jews or Israel.”

Parents are displeased with schools’ handling of the issue, the ADL said. Focus groups told its experts that schools decline to denounce antisemitism or resort to denying altogether that it is fostering a negative learning environment which causes student discomfort and precipitous declines in academic performance. In a poll, over a third of parents have said their local school’s response “was either somewhat or very inadequate.”

Moreover, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which were purportedly meant to improve race relations, abstain from recognizing antisemitism as a form of hatred meriting a focused response from administrators. The Algemeiner has previously reported that many of those programs also ignore antisemitism because they actively contribute to spreading it. Due to this, schools lack authority figures who understand antisemitism, its subtle and overt variations, leaving Jewish students with no recourse when they become victims of hate.

The ADL said on Wednesday that it will address K-12 antisemitism by expanding its offering of “parent advocacy resources,” which include forging networks of advocacy the ADL calls Jewish Leaders in Schools (JLS), counseling parents on methods for combating antisemitism in their home districts, and even providing them free legal counsel through the K-12 Antisemitism Legal Line.

“These independent schools are failing to support Jewish families. By tolerating — or in some cases, propagating — antisemitism in their classrooms, too many independent schools in cities across the country are sending a message that Jewish students are not welcome. It’s wrong. It’s hateful. And it must stop,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “ADL is partnering with parents to demand change.”

ADL vice president of advocacy, Shira Goodman, added: “School administrators and faculty have a duty to ensure safe, inclusive environments for all. ADL will fully invest in bolstering the families who are demanding that their schools meet this obligation.”

Antisemitism in K-12 schools is receiving increased attention, notably in California, after years of falling under the radar.

In April, a civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition alleged that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California allows Jewish students to be subjected to unconscionable levels of antisemitic bullying in and outside of the classroom.

The 27-page complaint, filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), describes a slew of incidents that allegedly fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel set off a wave of anti-Jewish hatred across the US. SCUSD students, it says, graffitied antisemitic hate speech in the bathrooms, vandalized Jewish-themed posters displayed in schools, and distributed stickers which said, “F—k Zionism.” All the while, district officials enabled the behavior by refusing to investigate it and blaming victims who came forward to report their experiences, according to the complaint.

“SCUSD has allowed an egregiously hostile environment to fester for its Jewish and Israeli students in violation of its federal obligations and ethical responsibility to create a safe educational space for all students,” Jenna Statfeld Harris, senior counsel and K-12 specialist at StandWithUs Saidoff Legal, said in a statement at the time. “SCUSD leadership repeatedly disregards the rights of their Jewish and Israeli students. We implore the Office for Civil Rights to step in and uphold the right of these students to an inclusive education free from hostility toward their protected identity.”

In March, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a civil rights complaint which recounted the experience of a 12-year-old Jewish girl who was allegedly assaulted on the grounds of the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino, California — being beaten with a stick, told to “shut your Jewish ass up,” and teased with jokes about Hitler. According to the court filings, one student admitted that the behavior was motivated by the victim’s being Jewish. Despite receiving several complaints about the treatment, a substantial amount of which occurred in the classroom, school officials allegedly declined to punish her tormentors.

“While an increasing number of schools recognize that their Jewish students are being targeted both for their religious beliefs 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 founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement at the time of the filing.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.