“Things are really bad.”

That was the diagnosis of John Carroll, Marin County superintendent of schools, speaking to a representative of the U.S. Department of Education Thursday at an event on antisemitism held in San Francisco.

Carroll was answering a question posed by Cindy Marten, deputy secretary of the federal agency who assumed office two years ago following her nomination by President Joe Biden and confirmation by the Senate.

The roundtable discussion, which featured the heads of a number of Bay Area school districts, marked the launch of a nationwide antisemitism listening tour by the Department of Education. Education is one of eight departments instructed today by the Biden administration to extend civil rights protections to victims of antisemitism and other forms of religious bigotry.

The Biden administration unveiled a far-reaching strategy to combat antisemitism in May that included more than 100 recommendations across government entities. In addition to a schools listening tour, the administration is aiming to counter antisemitic discrimination in federally funded transit systems, housing, food programs and other areas.

The meeting took place at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in downtown San Francisco, and was followed by a closed session with local Hillel students.

At the CJM, Marten listened for an hour to a room of education professionals and Jewish leaders, who shared how antisemitism manifests in their schools, and what they think could be done about it.

She heard a range of heartfelt accounts, as superintendents and staff representing San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Oakland, Albany, San Ramon, Marin and Diablo Valley school districts talked about the very real challenges of addressing hate in the classroom and on social media, and how students are affected.

“They aren’t going to learn if they don’t feel safe,” said Adam Clark, superintendent for the Mt. Diablo district.

The superintendents were joined at the roundtable discussion by leaders of Bay Area Jewish organizations, including Tye Gregory of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, Sarah Levin of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa), Morgan Blum Schneider of the JFCS Holocaust Center, Teresa Drenick of the regional branch of the Anti-Defamation League, and Kerry King, interim executive director of the CJM.

Marten is Jewish and said she was happy to spend Yom Kippur in California, the state where she’s spent much of her professional career.

Among the topics discussed were best practices and policies for districts to follow when responding to hate incidents, as well as more training for teachers who may cross a line into antisemitism inadvertently.

Drenick underscored the seriousness of the problem. She said the ADL had seen a huge uptick in reported cases from schools, but that she knew it tended to be underreported.

“The drumbeat is really steady,” she said.

Gregory told Marten he thought there were issues around the teaching of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in classrooms and incidents where Jewish students felt marginalized or attacked because of it.

“That’s a very tricky issue,” the JCRC Bay Area leader said. “Superintendents don’t have the background to navigate when antisemitic tropes come in.”

Kyla Johnson-Trammell, superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District, spoke to the need to have systems in place for an efficient response when there’s a hate incident.

“Ninety percent of the time, people freeze,” she said. “Then it’s assumed you don’t care.”

The listening tour will include schools as well as colleges and universities, where Department of Education representatives will hear from Jewish students about hostility on campus, which many Jewish groups say often comes from the anti-Israel left.

Last week, an LGBTQ student group at Rice University cut ties with Hillel over its support for Israel, and in a separate incident, the Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania was vandalized.

“The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to lead a robust, whole-of-society effort to combat antisemitism and discrimination in all its insidious forms,” a White House official said in an emailed statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.