Howard County Schools System Agrees to Strengthen Resolve to Deal with Antisemitism

January 17, 2025 JMORE Staff

Howard County students teach their classmates about the Jewish custom of the wedding chuppah as part of the Student to Student outreach program launched in 2023. (Courtesy of the Jewish Federation of Howard County, via JTA)

The Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education recently announced that the Howard County Public Schools system confirmed at least 28 antisemitic incidents against students and staff during the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years.

As a result, the school system has agreed to ensure its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when responding to allegations of harassment based on “shared ancestry.” The OCR identified Title VI compliance concerns with the school system’s record-keeping practices.

According to the OCR’s investigation, these incidents at 16 schools included the posting of swastikas; the mimicking of Nazi salutes; threats to kill Jews; the usage of the phrase “Jew” as a slur; and one middle school student who was called a “dirty Jew” and told she should “go back to the gas chamber.”

This student was also shown photos of Hitler on the cell phone of the threatening student.

In addition, the school system received notice of targeted harassment associated with some walkouts organized at schools, including one Jewish student who requested permission to leave school on the day of a walkout because peers were making “Jew jokes.”

The school system did not “assess whether a hostile environment operated that required school system redress,” according to the OCR investigation. “While school system students have a First Amendment protected right to express their views, including through walkouts, regarding world events, the school system also has a Title VI obligation to ensure that no hostile environment based on shared ancestry operates in its education program and activities.

“Based on this and other information the school system has produced to date, OCR has a Title IV compliance concern that a hostile environment likely existed for individual Jewish students and may have operated for Jewish students school system-wide. … But because the school system did not consider that question, the school system likely did not take steps necessary to redress any such hostile environment.”

To resolve the Title VI compliance concerns identified by the OCR, the school system agreed to:

Issue an anti-harassment statement that the school system does not tolerate acts of harassment, including those based on a student’s actual or perceived race, color or national origin, and encouraging any student who believes he or she has been subjected to harassment or a hostile environment based on race, color, or national origin to report it to the system;
Review and revise its policies and procedures to ensure that the system adequately addresses the Title VI prohibition on discrimination based on race, color and national origin;
Develop and implement policies and procedures designed to help ensure that employees adequately and accurately document and preserve all reports and complaints of and responses to harassment based on race, color and national origin;
Train all employees and staff responsible for investigating complaints and other reports of discrimination to ensure investigators know how to identify relevant witnesses to interview and how to conduct interviews about such harassment;
Provide annual training to all administrators, faculty and staff at the school system on Title VI’s prohibition of discrimination based on race, color and national origin;
Provide an age-appropriate informational program for students at each middle and high school to address discrimination;
Develop and administer a climate assessment for students and staff at each middle and high school to evaluate the climate with respect to shared ancestry and the extent to which students and/or staff are subjected to or witness discrimination;
Review its response to each report of discrimination and/or harassment for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years to make a determination regarding whether the alleged conduct occurred;
Provide the OCR with documentation of the school system’s response to all complaints and oral reports alleging discrimination;
And provide the OCR with documentation of the school system’s response to all complaints and oral reports alleging discrimination and harassment for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 academic years.

“By entering this resolution agreement, Howard County Public Schools commits to protecting students regardless of their national origin or shared ancestry so students can learn in an environment free from harassment that violates Title VI of the the Civil Rights Act,” Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, said in a statement.

The resolution letter to the Howard County Public Schools and the resolution agreement are available on the Office for Civil Rights’ website