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.
The proliferation and cumulative effect of the
slurs, drawings and bullying led three Jewish families last year to sue the
district and its administrators in federal court; they seek damages and an end
to what they call pervasive anti-Semitism and indifference by school officials.
The district — centered in Pine Bush, west of
Newburgh, and serving 5,600 children from Orange, Sullivan and Ulster Counties
— is vigorously contesting the suit. But a review of sworn depositions of
current and former school officials shows that some have acknowledged there had
been a problem, although they denied it was widespread and said they had
responded appropriately with discipline and other measures.
“There are anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred
that we need to address,” John Boyle, Crispell Middle School’s principal, said
in a deposition in April.
In 2011, when one parent complained about continued
harassment of her daughter and another Jewish girl, Pine Bush’s superintendent
from 2008 to 2013, Philip G. Steinberg, wrote in an email, “I have said I will
meet with your daughters and I will, but your expectations for changing inbred
prejudice may be a bit unrealistic.”
Mr. Steinberg, who, along with two other
administrators named as defendants, is Jewish, described the lawsuit in recent
interviews as a “money grab.” He contended that the plaintiffs had
“embellished” some allegations.
Nonetheless, reports of anti-Semitism have
persisted, with at least two recent complaints made to the Jewish Federation of
Greater Orange County.
The New York Times has reviewed about 3,500 pages of
deposition testimony by parents, children and school administrators, which were
provided by the families’ lawyers on the condition that the identities of the
children, some of whom are still enrolled, be protected.
The children, in their depositions, accuse at least
35 students, who are identified by their initials, of carrying out anti-Semitic
acts; other offenders are identified less specifically.
Whatever the number of students involved in such
activity, its impact was felt by the Jewish children, said Ilann M. Maazel, a
lawyer for the families. “There were multiple children who just did not feel
safe going to school day after day,” he said.
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