A San Mateo County school district has agreed to make extensive policy changes after settling an antisemitism lawsuit brought by six Jewish families who alleged that their children faced harassment at two of its high schools. The families also alleged that when they reported the incidents, administrators repeatedly ignored their complaints.
The Sequoia Union High School District, which operates four high schools and serves nearly 9,000 students, will overhaul how it defines, investigates and responds to antisemitism after reaching a settlement in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in November 2024.
Attorneys for the families say they consider the 50-page settlement among the most significant of its kind ever reached with a public school district.
“This is the most comprehensive legally binding set of reforms instituted by a public school district that we know about in the United States as a result of litigation,” Ryan Weinstein, an attorney with Ropes & Gray, which represented the families, told J. “In crafting this particular settlement, we studied all of the other existing settlements entered into by universities and public schools.… They’re much, much more limited.”
The settlement includes no admission of liability by the school district.
The families, whose children were attending Woodside High School and Menlo-Atherton High School, sued the district after filing several complaints through the Uniform Complaint Procedures, a statewide framework for assessing discrimination at K-12 schools. They alleged the district failed to adequately investigate the complaints. Their complaint detailed more than a dozen incidents beginning shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
William Kesselman, a Menlo-Atherton High School student whose family joined the lawsuit, previously told J. that a classmate said to him on Oct. 16, 2023, that he “hopes me and my entire family burn in hell, and that Hamas kills us all.” When he reported the incident to administrators, he said, they dismissed his complaints and he considered leaving the school. His allegation was included in the lawsuit.
At Woodside High School in late October 2023, a Jewish student was confronted by a group of peers who yelled “Go back to where you came from,” according to the suit. A computer science teaching assistant at Woodside High later advised a different Jewish student to conceal her Star of David necklace or she would “get what she deserved,” according to the lawsuit.
The suit named multiple teachers who allegedly singled out Jewish students and used non-state-approved materials that misled students about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One world history teacher at Woodside allegedly urged students to draw a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas and falsely told them that Palestine has been a U.N.-recognized state since 1947, according to the lawsuit. Another teacher at Woodside allegedly asked a student if she was Jewish, saying he could tell by her nose.
Both teachers remain employed by the district and signed the settlement agreement. Neither responded to J.’s request for comment.
The settlement agreement, signed May 23, requires the district to take several steps over the next three years. It must adopt an explicit definition of antisemitism as a prohibited form of discrimination, provide mandatory annual antisemitism training for all staff who work with students and, beginning in the 2026-2027 school year, include at least one lesson on antisemitism and its modern manifestations in every world history class.
Any supplementary materials teachers use about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be reviewed and cleared by an independent outside attorney before use in the classroom. That same attorney will also conduct fresh investigations into the antisemitism complaints the families originally filed with the district before the lawsuit and will issue written findings on whether the district responded to those complaints in accordance with state and federal law.
Parents who file complaints will receive the investigator’s full written findings, including the evidence considered, subject to privacy-related redactions, in a significant expansion over the previous practice of providing only a general summary.
A separate neutral arbitrator, agreed upon by both sides, will oversee the district’s compliance with the settlement terms for its duration and can resolve disputes between the parties if they arise.
The district will pay $325,000 to the plaintiffs.
“We feel a huge sense of relief about this settlement,” said Lisa Joy Rosner, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and parent of a former Woodside High School student. “That said, there’s more advocacy work to be done to support our youth and to help them feel secure in their Jewish identity.”
Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, a nonprofit law firm focused on combating antisemitism in education that represented the families pro bono alongside Ropes & Gray, said she expects the settlement to have implications beyond this case.
“We also anticipate that the relief we’ve obtained here will be a model in litigation we and others are pursuing in antisemitic discrimination cases across the country,” she said in a statement.
The California School Boards Association, a nonprofit that advises public school districts on board policies to comply with the state education code, told J. that the settlement is “more prescriptive than what you normally see in this type of dispute.”
Troy Flint, an association spokesperson, said in an email to J. that the updated policy giving complainants full access to evidence gathered during complaint investigations is an “unusual provision that could have significant implications for how investigations are conducted.”
The settlement requires the school board to announce the policy updates at a public meeting within 30 days. The board’s next regular meeting is set for June 10.
“We have zero tolerance for antisemitism, or any form of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, or bullying,” Sequoia Union Superintendent Crystal Leach said in a statement. “We are dedicated to creating a safe and welcoming learning environment where every student can thrive … regardless of their background, religion, or identity.”
The district did not respond to requests for additional comment.
The settlement is one of several reached in recent years as complaints of antisemitism in K-12 schools have surged since the Oct. 7 attack.
In February 2025, the Santa Ana Unified School District in Southern California settled a lawsuit brought by Jewish families who alleged its ethnic studies courses contained antisemitic content. In April, a Jewish student at San Leandro High School filed a lawsuit against her district alleging two years of antisemitic harassment that administrators either failed to address or at times fueled.
In March, the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and several other Jewish organizations sued the state of California itself, naming more than a dozen school districts, including Berkeley Unified, over what they described as systemic failure to protect Jewish students.
The settlement comes as California has moved to strengthen protections for Jewish students statewide. AB 715, signed into law last year, requires the state to appoint an antisemitism prevention coordinator for K-12 public schools and establishes a framework for districts to identify and respond to anti-Jewish harassment.
The Sequoia settlement’s definition of antisemitism and its training requirements are designed to comply with the new law.