The U.S. Department of Education has begun resolving investigations launched into districts over shared ancestry discrimination allegations raised after the start of the Israel-Hamas war nearly a year ago.
The first handful of completed Title VI cases related to conduct in public schools comes after an influx of complaints in the 2024 fiscal year amid the escalating conflict.
"It's an enormous increase over the year prior," said Catherine Lhamon, who leads the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. Title VI protects students from discrimination in education programs based on national origin, race, or color, as well as discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.
The federal agency has opened 49 Title VI shared ancestry investigations into K-12 schools alone in fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1, 2023 — just days prior to the Oct 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war — and ends Sept. 30. In the 2023 fiscal year, the office opened just 15 K-12 investigations in this area.
By comparison, the office only opened 28 such investigations into both K-12 and higher education institutions over the course of four years under the Trump administration.
"So we're in a totally different universe now in terms of the number of complaints that are coming into us and the cases that we're investigating on this topic," Lhamon said.
Title VI discrimination dealt with as a personnel matter
Last week, the office closed an investigation into Michigan's Ann Arbor Public Schools — one of four shared ancestry investigations to be resolved this fiscal year addressing conduct following the Israel-Hamas war.
In its review, OCR was asked to find out whether the district discriminated against students based on their shared Muslim, Arab or Palestinian ancestry after a counselor allegedly told a student asking for water that, "I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
The OCR said in a press release Tuesday it appears the district did not determine whether the student faced a hostile environment after the incident, despite being notified "that the student himself no longer felt welcomed or safe at school and that district community members perceived the incident as reflecting an escalation of animus directed at Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab students." Instead, it tried to resolve the situation as a "personnel matter."
Lhamon said, "It's a concern for me when I see schools addressing harassing conduct that falls within the jurisdiction of federal civil rights law as a disciplinary matter or a personnel matter, instead of evaluating whether students’ civil rights have been violated and whether those students need redress from the school to ensure their equal access to education."
"When harm is done in our school community, we always take these matters seriously. We do not ignore them," Ann Arbor said in a statement to K-12 Dive. "When incidents occur, and they do because our schools are a microcosm of the world and community around us, there are some details that we cannot comment on."
Following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Ann Arbor was also one of the districts to call for a bilateral ceasefire in hopes of making the district more welcoming for Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish and Israeli students.
Education Department continues investigations
In the weeks following the latest war, the Education Department repeatedly called on school districts to address what it described as an "alarming rise" in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in schools. OCR's caseload this year, and particularly Title VI investigations into public schools following an escalation in the conflict, even prompted U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to appeal to Congress for increased OCR funding.
Between Oct. 7 — the day Hamas attacked Israel — and Oct. 23, 2023, there was an almost 400% increase in incidents of antisemitism year-over-year nationwide, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a leading antisemitism advocacy organization. The 312 incidents include reports of harassment, vandalism and assault.
During the same two-week period, there were 774 complaints of Islamophobia, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization. By comparison, CAIR received only 63 complaints in the month of August.
OCR is continuing its investigations into school districts for the complaints that have been filed with the federal agency. It currently has 57 opened Title VI shared ancestry investigations of K-12 schools, including many dating prior to the latest Israel-Hamas war and including an investigation into New York City Department of Education, the nation's largest school system. The office’s most recent K-12 investigation was opened on Aug. 26, into New York's Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District.
Some of the investigations that were launched prior to Oct. 7, 2023, also address conduct after the war began, however, said Lhamon.
"We are working as hard as we can, as fast as we can, to address these cases and all the other cases that come into our office," Lhamon said last week. "It was very challenging for us already last year to be addressing the quantum of complaints that came into our office, and we haven't finished this fiscal year yet.”
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