Updated Jan. 21
A third-party investigator hired by the Oakland Unified School District found that a former middle-school teacher posted “antisemitic materials” in and near his classroom during the 2023-2024 school year, creating a divisive and “unwelcoming” environment for Jewish students.
The finding, released confidentially to the complainant on Monday and shared with J. on Tuesday, corroborates a specific grievance filed on behalf of Jewish families over antisemitic acts at Montera Middle School in the Oakland Hills. But the complaint is just one of many like it filed by Bay Area Jewish families since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its terrorist attack in Israel, precipitating a destructive, deadly war and a global spike in antisemitism.
Attorney Marleen Sacks filed the complaint with the district on Nov. 28, 2023, through the state’s Uniform Complaint Procedures (UPC). It is one of nine similar complaints she has filed against the Oakland school district alleging 20 to 30 incidents of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, she said. Many more UPC complaints have been filed in Berkeley, San Mateo County, San Francisco and other Bay Area districts.
“This is one of many, many issues I filed complaints about. They take place all over the district,” she told J., speaking of Oakland, where she lives. “This is the first finding we’ve gotten. The district is very slow to respond.”
The complaint alleged that an English teacher at Montera put up posters attacking Israel in and just outside his classroom in the fall of 2023 and for several weeks refused to take them down when confronted. “End genocide now,” one stated in all-caps, according to photos published in the Telegraph, a student newspaper. Another said, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Next to those posters was one of a Renaissance sculpture called “The Pietà,” which depicts Jesus after crucifixion. Surrounding “The Pietà” were what appeared to be photos of Palestinian victims.
The teacher “displayed a poster of ‘Pietà,’” the investigation report states, “which, apart from the deicide trope, by nature excludes non-Christians from the conversation.”
The teacher, Arvind Reddy, did not agree to an interview with the investigator who conducted the inquiry, according to the report, but responded to written questions in which Reddy “took a firm stance against Israel’s actions related to what they described as the ‘genocide’ of Palestinian individuals,” the report said. Reddy no longer works for the district.
Another poster contained a handwritten Nelson Mandela quote stating, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” The investigator determined that Reddy did not “ensure that all sides of a controversial issue are impartially presented,” in violation of district policy.
The investigator interviewed several witnesses, including students and adults, according to the report.
One, a teacher, described having a “visceral reaction” to the posters, and avoided the hallway outside Reddy’s classroom where they were posted, the report said. Another witness said that the posters were a “shock” and described one as a “call for ethnic cleansing.”
Three witnesses “tried to engage in a dialogue with Reddy about the posters and the impact they had,” the report said, “but Reddy was not interested in discussing the matter beyond defending their right to display them.”
The report added, “The variety in age, religious background, and affiliation with the District of those who complained indicated that the posters were reasonably perceived to be antisemitic and divisive.”
The Oakland Unified School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Public school districts across the Bay Area have long dealt with controversy related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but tension has been supercharged since the start of the current war.
Teachers unions in San Francisco and Oakland approved stark statements condemning Israel in the early months of the war — statements that did not mention the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Meanwhile, some teacher groups have pledged to “teach Palestine,” or educate students about the subject from a wholly Palestinian perspective critical of Israel. Oakland teachers did so during an unsanctioned “teach-in” on Dec. 9, 2023, drawing rebukes from a group of pro-Israel Jewish families. The Berkeley schools superintendent, Enikia Ford Morthel, was called to testify before Congress last spring in response to a litany of complaints, including that a second-grade teacher supervised a lesson in which her students wrote “stop bombing babies” on sticky notes.
Dozens of Jewish families left the Oakland Unified School District early last year due to concerns about antisemitism and one-sided instruction about the conflict.
Amid this atmosphere of heightened tension, teachers with strong pro-Palestinian views have pledged to carry on and oppose efforts by district administrators, pro-Israel Jewish families and others to tamp down their plans to introduce materials in the classroom absent of Israel’s perspective.
Later this week, a group called the Oakland Education Association for Palestine, an off-shoot of the teachers union, plans to hold an information session called “Teaching Palestine in 2025.” A digital flyer for the event said it’s designed to help teachers “feel empowered in teaching about the ongoing genocide in Gaza” and provide information on what it described as “OUSD’s repression of Palestinian solidarity.”