Montgomery County Public Schools reported 600 hate-bias incidents between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 academic years, marking a 137% increase, according to a Sept. 10 school board meeting.

The number of reported hate-bias incidents rose from 253 incidents in 2024-25 to 600 in the 2025-26 school year.

MCPS claims that it investigates all allegations of hate bias that occur on school property, on a school bus or at a school-sponsored activity or event, or “substantially disrupt the orderly operation of a school learning environment,” according to the website.

Hate-bias incidents include hate speech, use of a slur, displaying hateful or racist symbols, flags or drawings, mocking a disability or telling offensive “jokes” about someone’s identity.

It’s part of a larger trend: Maryland ranked fifth in antisemitic incidents in K-12 schools in 2025, with Montgomery County accounting for 84% of those incidents, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Guila Franklin Siegel, the chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said she is not surprised by MCPS’ reported 600 incidents.

“No one who’s involved in this work would be surprised by this number,” she told Washington Jewish Week.

Franklin Siegel said the 600 figure is “probably” an underestimate, given that students, caregivers and teachers may choose not to report when they’ve been impacted by a bias incident.

“It strains credulity to think that MCPS or any local school district would be immune from the horrific explosion in antisemitism that we’re seeing in our broader society,” Franklin Siegel said.

District officials said this increase in reported incidents could be a result of all MCPS staff being trained in hate-bias reporting.

“By us completing more training, you may see more issues identified because people are trained,” MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor told the school board on Sept. 10. “So an uptick in hate-bias reporting may be an outcome of additional people being trained.”

Franklin Siegel said she finds this explanation “hard to believe.”

“The truth is that we’re living in … a crisis of hate at large targeting multiple minority groups,” she explained, adding that Jewish people are currently “premier targets.”

Abby Newburger, the program director of the MoCo Teens Against Antisemitism Fellowship, said both can be true.

“The number is not as surprising as one might think,” she said of the data. “[Also,] teachers have been trained about the Jewish community and what antisemitism looks like. I also think that the increase [in reported anti-bias incidents] is because more and more people are being educated and trained in how to appropriately witness, report and notice when things are antisemitic.”

Franklin Siegel, who has decades of experience in Jewish community relations and public policy, isn’t hopeful that these numbers will improve meaningfully.

“Right now, the system seems a bit stuck, and waiting for this horrible moment to pass is not the answer,” she said. “We are in a situation where we have a school district, a county that is 10% Jewish, that still does not provide substantive, effective training for administrators and teachers to help them better understand Jewish identity, antisemitism and Zionism.”

Training teachers on hate-bias reporting is a good start, Franklin Siegel said, but staff trainings must also go into the specifics regarding Jewish identity and antisemitism. “There’s a difference between compliance and true equity,” she added.

During the 2025-26 school year, JCRC provided such training to every middle and high school social studies teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools, Franklin Siegel said.

“At the very least, social studies teachers, English teachers, mental health professionals within the system, administrators, all these professionals need to be trained so that they are ready to respond,” Franklin Siegel said.

An example of a purported lack of training came at the start of the 2026–27 school year: an MCPS teacher was told to remove the pride flag in her classroom by the Bethesda school’s administration, on the basis that it constituted a “political statement.” After back-and-forth with the principal, the teacher was ultimately allowed to display the flag.

“What occurred to me was that, in all likelihood, that mistake was attributable to lack of training, lack of understanding of school district policy, lack of understanding about what constitutes a political statement and what doesn’t,” Franklin Siegel said.“It’s unfair to expect administrators and teachers to have all of this knowledge and skill. They need to be given training and the resources to do their jobs well.”

MCPS spokesperson Christopher Cram did not respond to a request for comment Sept. 17.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com