Education officials are defending a Brooklyn principal facing calls for her resignation over allegations of lax punishment when dealing with antisemitic behavior among students at Origins High School.
Teachers and safety staff at the Sheepshead Bay school went public over the weekend with claims that students paraded through the halls in October chanting “Kill the Jews!” In the months that followed, students made death threats to a Jewish teacher’s family and drew swastikas throughout the school, three staff members told CBS New York.
The staffers, joined by local elected officials and advocates, have accused the principal and broader school system of letting hate go unchecked.
But city officials pushed back Tuesday, saying the claims of what happened at Origins have been exaggerated.
“The cause of combating antisemitism is not served by people exaggerating or putting out false claims,” the public schools’ first deputy chancellor, Dan Weisberg, said in a briefing at City Hall on Tuesday. “The central claim that was in the initial article about the situation at Origins about students rampaging through the hallway, many of them chanting antisemitic slogans, we can find no evidence of that — none, zero — including from educators who were in the hallways on that day.”
“Not helpful to demonize and paint with a broad brush students at an incredibly diverse school, to demonize a principal who’s trying to do the right thing,” he told reporters.
Weisberg confirmed that students at Origins have said “inappropriate things to teachers,” but said the principal, Dara Kammerman, reacted “decisively.” Students who broke the code of conduct faced discipline, he said. Kammerman carved out time to talk about “difficult issues,” and enlisted the Museum of Jewish Heritage to teach the history of antisemitism and Jewish history.
“We have to make sure we’re educating our kids, but that’s exactly what is going on,” Weisberg said. “We continue to investigate; we’ll follow up on any incident.”
At the same time, Mayor Adams said he does not want “anyone to think that we are being dismissive of the real fear that people are feeling.”
“We’re not saying that people don’t have justification for being afraid. What they’re feeling is real, just like any other group that have gone through that, and we have to fix that problem, ” Adams said.
A lawyer for the Origins staffers said there is proof to back the allegations, including video of the hallway protest. He said that is just one of “dozens and dozens of instances of antisemitism.”
“Even in this time of heightened antisemitism, I am shocked at the level of depravity on display here,” said Mark Goldfeder, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, “and at the administration’s callous, indefensible tolerance of it.”
“Antisemitism, like all forms of hate, is not intuitive, it must be learned. Apparently, it is being taught at Origins, and that is simply unacceptable,” said Goldfeder, who confirmed the Brandeis Center is “actively preparing” to bring potential litigation.
Since Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel in October, some Jewish families and teachers have reported feeling unsafe in the city’s public schools, including a Hillcrest High School teacher who was targeted by students because she attended a pro-Israel rally days after Oct. 7.
Others have accused local public schools of not doing enough to protect pro-Palestinian activists during Israel’s military counteroffensive, including a Palestinian-American math teacher whose face and social media posts were displayed on a digital billboard last month outside his school.
While Weisberg, the first deputy chancellor, defended the principal’s attempt to not just penalize her way out of problems at the high school, some are calling for discipline. The campus safety manager reportedly filed 15 complaints with his higherups but no action was taken to his knowledge, he told CBS New York.
“When it comes to antisemitism,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, who spoke at a protest at Origins over the weekend, “it seems that people are allowed to get away with it.”
In a major speech this winter, Schools Chancellor David Banks announced that all principals are undergoing a training on how to apply the discipline code. He said that it was critical for schools to find a balance between “tangible consequences” and chances for students to learn from their mistakes.
