Public school teachers in the district, the ninth largest in the United States, have held meetings expressing their desire to use education to place political pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza, published a slew of anti-Israel social media posts, and circulated documents containing resources published by pro-Hamas groups, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner. Concerned parents had previously reported the School District of Philadelphia to the Department of Education over concerns that antisemitism had infected the city’s educational institutions. In late December, the department found that the school district had not been meeting its legal obligation to evaluate or respond to claims of discrimination. 

Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, spurred by the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas, has been a flashpoint in Philadelphia’s public schools pitting rival community groups against each other in a bid for influence over education in America’s sixth-largest city. Teachers have been at the forefront of this struggle. 

In December 2023, shortly after Hamas launched its attack, a coalition of Philadelphia teachers dubbed the “Racial Justice Organizing Committee” announced it would be holding an “educator for Palestine” teacher training in January 2024. During this event, educators responded to questions written on large posters by attaching sticky notes to them, according to pictures of the event obtained by the Washington Examiner. 

“What is our focus?” one poster read. Among the responses were “put pressure on our political leaders to call for a ceasefire and end of the occupation,” “mobilizing educators to be vocal in schools and teach students to resist oppression and injustice,” “plugging into existing action and political groups to put pressure on political leaders,” and agitating within schools to get more support for political education about Gaza. Multiple responses mentioned preparing students to engage in pro-Palestinian activism as a goal for their teaching. 

Teachers who attended the event opposed presenting “both sides” of the conflict, according to a photo of one of the posters.

“When one person pokes someone’s arm and the other person punches them in the face 10 times, who is really the one doing the wrong thing?” one teacher wrote. Hamas’s attack on Israel, which the educator compared to poking someone’s arm, claimed the lives of roughly 1,200 people and involved the rape and kidnapping of women and children. 

Other teachers advocating against neutrality wrote that “‘unbias’ is a white supremacy tactic/approach” and “I can’t respect or uplift a perspective or a ‘side’ when it is predicated on erasing a whole people.”

Multiple teachers wrote statements denying that Hamas is responsible for most human rights abuses in Gaza. 

“It’s beyond disturbing,” the parent of a Jewish student enrolled in the district told the Washington Examiner. “And that wasn’t just, you know, an incident in a vacuum.”

Over two dozen Philadelphia area K-12 teachers ultimately attended the Racial Justice Organizing Committee’s event, according to a social media post. 

On top of holding the teacher training, the Racial Justice Organizing Committee also distributed a list of resources to teachers with information about the war in Gaza. One such resource was a reading list curated by the Palestinian Youth Movement. 

The Palestinian Youth Movement offered support for Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 terrorist attacks.

“As the walls of the torturous Zionist occupation begin to fall, we remind the world of the meaning of Palestinian sumud, or steadfastness … every Martyr that falls, another will rise,” the group posted on social media on the day of the attack. It proceeded to organize pro-Palestinian rallies as Hamas was attacking Israel. More recently, the group has engaged in activism of dubious legality, including disseminating literature instructing protestors to attack police officers and breaking into the Watergate Hotel to dump maggots and other insects in meeting rooms being used by Israeli diplomats. 

The document also recommended that teachers draw from a group called “Dream Defenders,” which has openly praised the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and has blockaded bridges as a form of protest. 

Beyond trainings and resource guides, anti-Israel bias has seeped into the classrooms.

Instances range from relatively minor, evidenced by a document obtained by the Washington Examiner showing that a middle school teacher crossed Israel off the map for a geography assignment, or a school-sponsored bake sale featuring pro-Palestinian flyers, to more influential, such as a training for new teachers on how to teach history from a distinct employee with an extensive history of anti-Israel social media posts.

Ismael Jimenez, who serves as the director of social studies curriculum at the School District of Philadelphia, held a training for newly hired teachers in the district where he argued history should be taught from the perspective of the oppressed resisting oppressors and that non-white scholars should be prioritized when assigning texts. Additionally, he told newly hired teachers that maps often have a political agenda, citing disputed maps of Israel and Palestine as examples of this.

Jimenez has a history of displaying bias against Israel. 

“Israel is a terrorist state,” the school official posted to Facebook in 2020. In a 2022 post, he accused Israel of engaging in eugenics, citing reports that Ethiopian immigrants had been given birth control shots without consent. Investigations into those reports proved inconclusive. 

Jimenez’s orientation class has not been the only professional training to touch on issues like these. In November, the school district drew criticism from Jewish members of the community after screenshots leaked of a professional development event titled “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Brief History of Palestine and the Creation of Israel: Contextualizing the Current Conflict and Genocide.”

The course’s description stated that Israel was carrying out a genocide against Palestinians. Following the controversy, the district told the Broad + Liberty, a local news outlet, that the training had been removed from its website. 

Anti-Israel rhetoric and activism from teachers in the School District of Philadelphia has filtered down to students, with pro-Palestinian educators attempting to monopolize board of education meetings with the aim of further injecting their opinions on the ongoing conflict into their classrooms.

One of the most prominent examples of teachers allowing their views to occurred in February 2024 when Northeast High School showed a portion of a student video podcast where the hosts discussed “parallels between the experiences of enslaved African Americans and the ongoing situation in Palestine and Israel” during its Black History Month assembly. The video was selected by teacher Keziah Ridgeway, who assigned the project.

The video was initially slated to be played at a second assembly, however, following complaints from a Jewish teacher and Jewish community group that the video was antisemitic and cast Jews as oppressors, it was pulled. To protest this, Ridgeway’s students took the stage at a different gathering.

“How are you uncomfortable about that but not about the oppression and genocide [Palestinians] are facing?” one of the students asked. 

Ridgeway, who was suspended after allegedly making threatening messages targeted Jewish members of her community, also has a history of posting anti-Israel imagery on her social media accounts. Ridgeway was far from the only teacher to have an anti-Israel social media presence. Philadelphia history teacher Hannah Gann shared posts endorsing Hamas’ “resistance,” educator Norman Shaw MacQueen made a post accusing Zionists of genocide, and teacher Andrew Saltz downplayed the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks just days after they occurred.

Jewish parents with students enrolled in the district told the Washington Examiner that they were “shocked” by Ridgeway’s alleged threats.

“We, I think, perhaps naively thought that there was a limit to the extremism of these teachers, and that sort of, you know, assured us that there wasn’t,” one parent said. “The silence on behalf of the district is allowing teachers to become more and more, you know, bold about how far they’re willing to go.”

Parents the Washington Examiner spoke with said that, if the district had been more proactive in addressing instances of biases from its teachers, the situation with Ridgeway may not have escalated to the level of alleged threats.

“It’s mind boggling at best to say that … we can cite a lot of other minority groups who have gone through hate, who have experienced hate, yet for some reason, the lessons that we are supposed to have learned as they apply to other groups don’t seem to apply to Jewish people,” one parent said.

Some high-level administrators have even encouraged anti-Israel student activism. Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts vice principal Kimberly Bird, for instance, allowed students to walk out of class to protest Israel’s conduct in Gaza, according to an email obtained by the Washington Examiner.

“The School District of Philadelphia strives to create welcoming and inclusive environments that allow our students to feel safe and heard,” a spokesperson for the district told the Washington Examiner. “The District takes all complaints of bullying, harassment, and discrimination seriously, including allegations of Antisemitism and Islamophobia. In an effort to provide school communities with opportunities to be heard and engage with District leaders collectively, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has intentionally been providing learning spaces and hosting forums”

The spokesperson stated that the district entered into a voluntary agreement following the Department of Education investigation to improve its commitment to anti-discrimination.

Steve Rosenberg, a Philadelphia-based businessman who previously served as the interim CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, told the Washington Examiner that the district’s settlement with the Department of Education will have little effect.

“All it does, if you actually read through it, is it says they have to check their policies and make
sure they’re adhering to everything,” Rosenberg said. “The only way it’s going to change is with real lawfare, with real settlements that have real substantial damages, both monetarily and with real substance of change around curriculum.”

Jewish parents with students enrolled in the school district told the Washington Examiner that they have sent more than 50 emails to district administrators with concerns about antisemitism but have received no response.