Jewish parents decry antisemitic vandalism, threats reported at NC middle school
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools is being asked to investigate and educate teachers and students on the history of antisemitism after three incidents of harassment and threats were reported at a middle school this year.
In November, antisemitic graffiti directed at two seventh-grade boys was found on the bathroom wall at Culbreth Middle School on two separate occasions. A third incident was reported this month when the same boys were threatened by name in a message written on the bathroom wall that said: “I’m going to make your life a living hell, watch your back.”
Jennifer Bienstock, the mother of one of the boys, said her son “was an absolute mess at the beginning,” crying and having trouble sleeping, after the harassing and threatening messages.
He then asked her for a Jewish star to wear around his neck “to show he is proud and not afraid to be Jewish,” she said.
“This time … where we want to know who did this, he says isn’t it more important to educate others than to find out this one kid who did this,” Bienstock told The News & Observer.
The other boy’s mother also spoke with The N&O but declined to be named to protect her son’s privacy. The November incidents upset him, especially when there were no consequences for the person behind the vandalism, she said. Now, he wants to switch schools.
Bienstock and other Jewish parents told the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board on Feb. 14 that those are just the latest examples of harassment, discrimination and microaggressions that they’ve documented over the last 12 years.
Discrimination claims, district policies
The list ranges from Christmas celebrations, field trips and test schedules that single out Jewish students or fail to recognize their holidays and traditions, to more overt acts of discrimination by students and teachers, they said. It includes:
▪ Swastikas, slurs and Nazi salutes by students at multiple schools
▪ Using Adolf Hitler and his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” respectively, as an example of “a smart mathematician who made poor choices” and an example of a type of essay in classes at Frank Porter Graham Elementary and Carrboro High School.
▪ Asking a Jewish student last year at Chapel Hill High School to defend forgiveness for Nazis in an English class debate.
▪ Smith Middle School seventh-grade teachers who compared the isolation of remote pandemic classes in 2020 to life in a concentration camp and said Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II “were just as bad as concentration camps but they don’t get the attention that the Holocaust does.”
▪ Telling a ninth-grade class at Chapel Hill High School in 2021 that “anti-Semitism doesn’t actually exist because Jews control the banks and Hollywood, so they’re doing fine.”
“Our families have been warning the schools for years that doing nothing and allowing these incidents to go unchecked serves to endorse antisemitic behavior,” PTA President Jill Simon told the board. “All of CHCCS is complicit in the direct threats that are happening at Culbreth.”
The district’s “Community Code of Character, Conduct and Support” specifically prohibits harassment, verbal threats and discrimination based on a person’s race, disability, ethnic group, gender, national origin, religion and weight. It also prohibits swastikas and other symbols of hate, and defines antisemitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic or racial group.”
“Hate crime” is defined as speech or actions that involve violence or threats of violence, and can involve the school resource officer.
Staff is required to report alleged harassment or bullying, and the school principal or their representative must immediately investigate those claims and report any findings and/or disciplinary steps to the victim and perpetrator, according to district policy. Actions or speech that harass someone based on sex, race, color, national origin, disability or religion are also referred to a civil rights coordinator.
Rising antisemitism, solutions
Antisemitic incidents in the United States reached their highest level in more than 40 years in 2021, when there were 2,717 incidents documented, the Anti-Defamation League reports. The number was up 34% from 2020, when there were 2,026 incidents, it said.
Most were for harassment — up 43% since 2020 — followed by vandalism, which rose 14%, it said. About 18% of the incidents were linked to right-wing extremists or groups. An interactive map showed North Carolina had 26 known antisemitic incidents in 2022.
In December, President Joe Biden announced a new task force would plan a national strategy for fighting antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bias and discrimination. The group is being led by Domestic Policy Council and National Security Council staff.
That same month, someone hacked the intercom system at Enloe High School in Wake County and made antisemitic remarks. The N&O also reported incidents in Raleigh last year in which antisemitic graffiti was painted on a bridge and fliers were left in Raleigh neighborhoods. Antisemitic messages were reported in Apex and Moore County.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro incidents were reported to the ADL, individual schools and district officials, the parents said. They have asked the district to bring in experts to train teachers and students in the history of antisemitism, and how to identify and deal with it.
“We believe that they need actual skills in how to teach the teachers so that teachers know then how to share this with the students,” Bienstock said. “Our overwhelming feeling in all of our three incidents and issues is that these things are happening in our community.”
As for her son, Bienstock said school officials apologized to her for what happened and reviewed security footage from a camera near the bathroom, but did not identify a suspect. In January, she and her husband met with Superintendent Nyah Hamlett and district equity officials.
“We feel that our three incidents are just the most recent example of this school district covering up anti-Semitic incidents, hoping that they’ll go away,” Bienstock said.
CHCCS district responds
On Thursday, district spokesman Andy Jenks told The N&O in an email that “current CHCCS leadership is unable to speak to (specific claims of antisemitism) and whether they’re being described with all available context.”
The larger point, he said, “is that we are in complete agreement that in school and our larger society there should be no place for antisemitism, bias and hate speech. We must condemn, confront and eliminate it to the best of our collective abilities.”
The district emailed a letter to parents, students and staff two days after the Feb. 14 school board meeting in which Hamlett and Rodney Trice, deputy superintendent for teaching and learning, systemic equity and engagement, cited the district’s in-house equity team. The team provides staff and principals with support, resources and training, as well as additional support when needed.
The letter also noted school-based advisory lessons and restorative practices, and included a link to additional resources on the district’s website. It encouraged parents to talk with their children and to report any future incidents to school and district officials.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools have been working for some time to address bias, hate speech and prejudice, Jenks said in his email Thursday. That includes the development last year of the “Protocol for Responding to Racial Slurs and Hate Speech,” which grew out of Hamlett’s meeting with student empathy and equity ambassadors, he said. The ambassador program was created in 2021.
“This protocol, which continues to be shared with staff and our community at large, helps us create the culture of safety and wellness that we prioritize in our schools,” Jenks said.
The district also collaborates with community partners, as well as Chapel Hill and Carrboro faith groups, who are members of the Superintendent’s Interfaith Advisory Council, formed in 2021 to bring “their observations, concerns and solutions to the attention of Dr. Hamlett and district leaders,” he said.
The council meets three to four times a year and “has impacted everything from classroom interactions to the districtwide school calendar,” including the creation of a Religious and Cultural Observances guide to raise staff awareness in planning and scheduling, he said.
This year, teacher workdays were scheduled, instead of classes, on the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Lunar New Year, and at the end of Ramadan, he said.
Parents at the school board meeting and who spoke with The N&O said it’s not enough.
“Antisemitism is real and prevalent in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools,” Simon, the Culbreth PTA president, told the board after describing how another student had told her eighth-grader during lunch that “you’re the reason I hate all Jews.”
“It is handled poorly, slowly and clumsily, and it needs to be addressed in a way that makes our children feel safe, heard and valued,” Simon said.
This story was originally published February 24, 2023 at 8:05 AM.
