Today's New York Times has a front-page story detailing allegations of ghastly anti-Semitic behavior in a rural upstate New York school district. Three Jewish families have filed a federal civil rights suit against the Pine Brush Central School District, based roughly 90 minutes north of New York City, alleging that school officials knew about disgusting anti-Semitic behavior and did little to nothing to stop it.
The swastikas, the students recalled, seemed to be everywhere: on walls, desks, lockers, textbooks, computer screens, a playground slide — even on a student’s face.
A picture of President Obama, with a swastika drawn on his forehead, remained on the wall of an eighth-grade social studies classroom for about a month after a student informed her teacher, the student said.
For some Jewish students in the Pine Bush Central School District in New York State, attending public school has been nothing short of a nightmare. They tell of hearing anti-Semitic epithets and nicknames, and horrific jokes about the Holocaust.
They have reported being pelted with coins, told to retrieve money thrown into garbage receptacles, shoved and even beaten. They say that on school buses in this rural part of the state, located about 90 minutes north of New York City and once home to a local Ku Klux Klan chapter president, students have chanted “white power” and made Nazi salutes with their arms.
Some of the experiences are, to put it mildly, nauseating. In 2008, a fifth-grader identified only as T. E. she told her mother that two boys in her fifth-grade class made drawings that made her feel uncomfortable. When her mother asked her to draw what she had seen, it turned out to be a swastika. According to the mother, the principal simply blew it off. In April 2010, T. E., now in sixth grade, came home in tears after seeing kids on her bus giving Nazi salutes and hearing them talk about how best to celebrate Hitler's birthday--which was on April 20, the 13-year anniversary of the Columbine massacre. The harassment continued unabated, to the point that T. E. was forced to withdraw from school in 2012; she's been homeschooled since.
Another girl, O. C., recalled hearing a sixth grader openly say he was "killing Jews." She also said that someone drew a swastika on a friend's head, and that she heard a steady diet of anti-Semitic slurs all through middle school. Her brother, D. C., now in college that he saw so many swastikas in the bathrooms that he finally decided reporting them wasn't worth the effort. He also said that the hate was so pervasive that he got to the point of hiding his Jewish identity. Another student, D. R., says that he was taunted and beaten on a middle-school ski trip after the other kids found out he was Jewish. He's now a junior at Pine Bush High School, and says he's seen fellow students goose-stepping and high-fiving each other with Nazi salutes.
The school district claims that it has responded adequately to incidents of anti-Semitic bullying. But the parents say that when they complained to school officials, no one ever told them that other families had complained. They were also told that the problem was being addressed when it really wasn't being addressed at all. They also report at least one incident where one of their kids was actually disciplined for defending himself against anti-Semitic taunts. D. R.'s older brother, A. R., was accosted by another student who grabbed him and taunted him about the Holocaust. When A. R. tried to defend himself, he was disciplined. When his father was told that the school had zero tolerance for fighting, the father asked, "How about a zero-tolerance policy on anti-Semitism?" Small wonder their lawyer says that there were times the kids didn't feel safe going to school.
The response from the community is almost as troubling. One student interviewed dismissed it as a case of kids being kids. Seconds later, a guy rolled up and said that Jews "don't belong in our town."
One would have thought that the parents would have gotten a sympathetic response from former superintendent Philip Steinberg. He's Jewish himself, and recalls having to change schools due to anti-Semitism when he was a kid. However, when he met with one of the parents involved in the suit, he told them that their hopes of curbing prejudice from other students "may be a bit unrealistic." He also blew off the suit as a "money grab," and before then wondered why the parents would choose to live in an area with no synagogues if being Jewish was so important to them.
According to the Old Grey Lady, this area was once home to a fairly active Ku Klux Klan chapter. Sounds to me like the bedsheet mentality is still very much evident here.