Updated on Oct. 28
The Oakland Unified School District discriminated against “Jewish persons” when it repeatedly published materials for Arab American Heritage Month that included a map of the Middle East that excluded Israel, according to a determination by the California Department of Education.
The CDE released its findings Monday in a seven-page report, which was shared with J.
The report found that the OUSD did not properly investigate a complaint about the issue. It also noted that the materials failed “to include Israel in a map of the current Middle East, and instead, label[ed] the entire location as ‘Palestine,’” which “constituted discrimination towards Jewish persons.”
The materials at the center of the complaint were disseminated to educate the community about Arab American Heritage Month on multiple occasions between 2021 and 2024. The materials linked to educational resources, including PowerPoint presentations.
One slide deck attached to a district email sent to parents on April 14, 2021, which was reviewed by J., celebrated Ramadan and Arab American Heritage Month. It contained two slides about the countries of the Middle East. One said the Middle East is “also known as the Arab Nation” and consists of 22 countries, listing them in alphabetical order from Algeria to Yemen. Palestine is on the list; Israel is not. Another slide titled “Let’s zoom in on the Middle Eastern countries” marks the entirety of Israel as Palestine.
Stephanie Mamane, a Moroccan Jewish parent of a student in the district in 2021, urged district leadership to change the map when it was sent the first time and she saw that Israel was omitted.
The district followed up with an email to parents less than a week later to acknowledge the mistake.
“Our Jewish community was upset that a map of the Middle East in an attached slide presentation did not include Israel,” read an April 19, 2021, email from Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell. “Moving forward, we will be consulting a wider, more diverse group when assembling any message like this.”
But materials for Arab American Heritage Month in ensuing years continued to omit Israel. District communications in 2022, 2023 and 2024 all linked to a guide showing a map that excluded Israel.
In 2023, the district announced a new collaboration with Arab Youth Organizing, an arm of the anti-Zionist group Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which is based in San Francisco.
Mamane expressed her frustration with OUSD.
“It felt incredibly irresponsible and sloppy to continue to see the materials shared on public Google drives and promoted year after year,” Mamane told J. via text. “The district doesn’t take Jewish family complaints seriously or address the root of the issue. They simply send a quick apology and then it happens all over again.”
The CDE’s report this week overruled OUSD’s earlier assessment of the materials. The school district had determined that they violated certain district policies, including about “the presentation of controversial issues,” but did not address whether the materials constituted discrimination against Jews. The CDE determined that they did.
The CDE also found that the district took too long to issue its findings. Oakland attorney Marleen Sacks filed a complaint about the Arab American Heritage Month materials on behalf of the Oakland Jewish Alliance in May 2024. It came after the materials appeared in official district communications for at least the third time, along with a photograph of a mural that displayed the phrase “Zionism is racism.”
The district looked into Sacks’ complaint and released its findings in August 2025, more than a year later. The state’s code of regulations requires school districts to investigate and issue a response to a complaint within 60 days.
In her complaint, Sacks also criticized the district for sharing materials from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which has for years promoted boycotts against Israel.
In May 2024, the San Francisco Unified School District found that AROC staff members assisted students in an October 2023 walkout protesting Israel’s attack on Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.
“By providing students with resources provided by AROC, OUSD is openly encouraging continued indoctrination of students in anti-Israel and antisemitic beliefs, and contributing to the dangerous and uninformed environment that currently exists,” Sacks wrote in the complaint, urging the district to “sever all ties” with the organization.
The OUSD report in response to the complaint stated that while the district does not have a formal contract with AROC, the organization is “well known” to students, staff and teachers. Staff members interviewed for the report were “aware of the perception that AROC could be antisemitic yet chose to use them as a subject matter resource anyway in part due to the relationship of AROC to District students, parents and teachers.”
“There has not been a conversation in [the Office of Equity] to discontinue using AROC,” the report read. “This is in part because there is a lack of availability of Arab American history expertise in the District.”
One of the slide decks excluding Israel from the Middle East was revised with a new map showing Israel labeled in white. The updated materials were later republished on the district website in April as part of this year’s Arab American Heritage Month celebration.
OUSD Spokesperson John Sasaki acknowledged the issue in a statement emailed to J.
The repeated instances of excluding Israel “showed a lack of systems in place to ensure similar mistakes would not happen again,” Sasaki wrote on Oct. 24. “One of the messages included a depiction of a mural that should not have been part of the message. The systems now in effect will provide a backstop to prevent that kind of mistake, as well.”