Jewish Families Suing Sequoia Union High School District in Silicon Valley Over Rampant Anti-Semitism

Left-wing anti-Semitism has infested California schools like UCLA and UC Davis, but the world’s oldest hatred has also taken hold on the high school level. Now some parents are fighting back in a new federal lawsuit filed earlier this month.

Six Jewish families are suing the Sequoia Union High School District in Silicon Valley over rampant anti-Seitism their kids experienced in high school as administrators stood by and allowed it to fester.  In one case, a student who complained about anti-Semitic harassment was told it was his own fault.

The lawsuit says school leaders at Woodside High School and Menlo-Atherton High School did not take repeated complaints seriously,  and describes one harrowing incident after another–including students subjected to anti-Semitic slurs, Nazi graffiti and teachers turning their classrooms into Israel bashing forums.

The lawsuit cites “egregious failures” by school administrators in their response to anti-Semitism and “indifference to it.”

The administration’s “tepid response to the Oct. 7 attacks exacerbated the already pervasive antisemitism within its schools. Jewish students faced a barrage of taunts, slurs and hateful remarks, culminating in the appearance of two giant swastikas on campus grounds,” the complaint says. “Rather than addressing the escalating incidents, SUHSD officials shifted blame onto the victims, refused to engage with concerned parents, and used superficial ‘investigations’ to whitewash legitimate concerns.”

“When SUHSD parents and students raised concerns—through emails, petitions, and formal complaints—the District responded with bureaucratic obfuscation and outright denial, demonstrating a deliberate indifference to SUHSD’s Jewish students. Emails were ignored, and meetings were canceled, without explanation,” the lawsuit says. “The District’s administrators and trustees have consistently and deliberately refused to take concrete action to stem the scourge of antisemitism on their campuses, to the detriment of Jewish SUHSD students who, subjected to harassment and ridicule from both peers and teachers, have been forced to endure an increasingly hostile learning environment

One parent is suing because her son was subjected to anti-Semitic insults and abuse by a bunch of other students. But when the boy complained administrators told him he brought the abuse on himself.

The parents are suing as guardians for their kids who attend Woodside High School and Menlo-Atherton High School. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.  It charges violations of the First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which has been interpreted to prohibit discrimination based on religion by educational institutions that receive federal funds.

The defendants include Woodside High Principal Karen Van Putten, Menlo-Atherton High School Principal Karl Losekoot, Sequoia Union Superintendent Crystal Leach, the Sequoia School Board members, and Gregory Gruszynski, a history teacher at Woodside High School who the complaint says turned his classroom into a pro-Hamas bastion browbeating a Jewish student who  disagreed with him.

The lawsuit says that Gruszynski taught “pro-Hamas propaganda under the guise of teaching 10th-grade World History.”

He displayed a “Free Palestine sticker” on his classroom wall and described Hamas as just a “political party. “

He “urged students to draw a false equivalence between Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and the State of Israel…. [and] asked students rhetorically, ‘How different is Israel from Hamas?’

Gruszynski also ridiculed an openly Jewish student in the class and  “coerced her into endorsing his biased and ahistorical views to achieve satisfactory grades on exams.”

“The girl repeatedly returned home in tears after suffering through Gruszynski’s classes,” the lawsuit says.

But when her parents complained to administrators they were given the run around by administrators who violated California law by refusing them access to all of Gruszynksi’s course materials.

The lawsuit is asking that Gruszynski be dismissed.

Another teacher of his ilk even introduced anti-Israel material into geometry lessons, the complaint says.

The lawsuit describes a series of harrowing anti-Semitic incidents that students endured with tepid responses from administrators who tried to  whitewash what occurred and even  blamed the victims.

Margarette Kesselman is a plaintiff on behalf of her son over the anti-Semitic bullying he endured as a sophomore at Menlo-Atherton High School. Several days after the Hamas October 7 attack, he was called a “kike” by a group of students who told him his family should “burn in hell” and “all Israel supporters should be killed.”

The boy filed an incident report with the school. But in response, “administrators blamed [him] for his own harassment and suggested he relocate to a different class to avoid ‘provoking’ the main antisemitic perpetrator.”

Another girl at the school was told by a teaching assistant to hide her Star of David Jewelry or she would “get what she deserved” and another teacher told a student that he could tell she was Jewish “by her nose.”

One substitute teacher upon learning a student was Jewish proceeded to make grotesque Holocaust jokes. “How do you fit 10,000 Jews in a Volkswagen?” she asked. “In the ashtray.”

Administrators continually whitewashed the anti-Semitism that was reported to them.  The most grotesque instance of this was probably after two swastikas were etched in the pavement outside  Woodside High School on November 1, 2023.

Two days later Woodside High School principal Karen Van Putten emailed the entire school community and said “extensive investigation” by administrators and the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department established that the swastikas were really just “spiritual symbol[s] from Japanese Buddhism known as Manji popularized by [animation].”

The lawsuit says the Sheriff’s Department conducted no such investigation and reached no such conclusion. This was just Van Putten repeating the line that the student  caught drawing the swastikas offered.

“In truth, the District’s purportedly “extensive” investigation was a sham, concluded in under two days, and the “confirm[ation]” was merely a rubber-stamping of the perpetrator’s own selfserving story, which SUHSD administrators quickly accepted, lest they be forced to confront the  growing tide of antisemitism within their schools. Even worse, VAN PUTTEN lied. Contrary to VAN PUTTEN’s assertion that the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department participated in the “investigation,” the Department has no record of receiving any reports about swastika incidents on or around November 1, 2023. SUHSD administrators failed to take meaningful action to protect Jewish students in the wake of this overt hostility toward Jews.”

It is really shocking that administrators entrusted with the safety of high school kids would prove so indifferent to anti-Semites preying on them.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, one of the lawyers for the Jewish families, told the California Globe that,  “Public school employees and administrators must understand and obey the law and their district’s policies and regulations that require  them to respond to antisemitism in education as they would any other form of discrimination. That requirement includes the prohibition on teachers from acting on their own personal beliefs in the classroom when those beliefs constitute antisemitism.”

She also blamed warped ethnic studies classes for infusing public schools with anti-Semitism because Jews are demonized as oppressors. “The aspect of ethnic studies that incites antisemitism, and this is categorically true of what is called “liberated” or “critical” ethnic studies is the baked-in presentation that not only are Jews deemed white and so oppressors, but that the Jewish people are presented in these courses as land-stealing, ethnic cleansing colonists in their own native Homeland,” Marcus emailed. “The blatant and maliciously false claim that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel leads to the false view that Jews have stolen the land from others and have and are continuing to commit crimes and so are deserving of hatred, displacement and even mass murder. That effort to marinate public school students in Jew Hatred and Jewish State Hatred must be fought and defeated.”

Sequoia Union High School District spokeswoman Naomi Hunger did not respond to a request for comment.

Marcus said the District’s response to the lawsuit is due on December 12th.