A Virginia investigative report alleged persistent antisemitic incidents at an Arlington high school with inadequate administrative response, according to a national news outlet.
The Free Press reported on a 39-page summary of evidence it said former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares issued in October, citing antisemitic incidents among students at Yorktown High School.
The story reported investigators at the attorney general’s office established “reasonable cause” to believe Arlington Public Schools violated anti-discrimination laws, claims that the school district has allegedly denied.
“APS is aware of the article published regarding Yorktown High School,” Christina Arpante, interim assistant superintendent of school and community relations, wrote in a statement to Washington Jewish Week. “APS takes allegations of discrimination, harassment and antisemitism seriously and is committed to providing safe, welcoming and inclusive learning environments for every student.”
Arpante added that APS “has no additional information” to provide on this matter as of Aug. 14.
The Aug. 11 story, “This High School Wouldn’t Fix Its Antisemitism Problem,” described instances of antisemitic slurs, jokes, gestures and threats directed at Jewish students in recent school years.
“One male Jewish student reported being repeatedly targeted because he wore a kippah, which a female classmate tried to pull off his head,” according to the article. “After a male student called him an antisemitic slur, he began covering his kippah with a baseball cap.
“A female Jewish student said that she was chased because she was Jewish, and other Jewish students described seeing Nazi salutes, hearing Holocaust jokes, and being told that they belonged in a gas chamber or that ‘Hitler should have finished the job,’” the article continued.
The Free Press reported although school officials warned that harassment of Jewish students would not be tolerated, Yorktown’s principal and other school leaders “almost never followed through with any punishment.”
The result was a “systemic failure” to rectify the larger issue of antisemitism affecting Jewish students, the report said, concluding that APS was “deliberately indifferent to a discriminatory hostile environment against Jewish students at Yorktown High School.”
Investigators in the Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights also determined that there was “reasonable cause” to believe that APS violated state and federal antidiscrimination laws by neglecting to adequately respond to said “hostile environment” at Yorktown.
Incidents targeting Jewish students at Yorktown after Oct. 7, 2023, were also highlighted.
“After Hamas attacked Israel, Jewish students at Yorktown were mocked for their faith and blamed for the resulting war,” the story said.
One affected student said she reported the incidents to no avail.
“There was no follow-up,” the student told The Free Press. “No one came to see me.”
Guila Franklin Siegel, the chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said the JCRC has worked for years with Jewish students and families, administrators, principals and teachers, Miyares’ office and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law to address “persistent antisemitism” in APS.
“To our frustration and disappointment, we have too often encountered resistance or non-responsiveness from school district leadership,” Franklin Siegel wrote in a post on LinkedIn.
The one meaningful step has been allowing JCRC to bring its peer-to-peer antibias program, Student to Student, to four of Arlington’s five high schools.
“However, much more needs to be done to effect lasting, meaningful culture change throughout APS,” Franklin Siegel wrote. “The JCRC will keep fighting to protect Arlington’s Jewish students and teachers and to hold all local school districts accountable for continued antisemitism in K-12 settings.”
zbell@midatlanticmedia.com
