History has a funny way of repeating itself—especially when bad ideas are recycled with new branding. Today, a new crop of political figures like Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are trying to sell New York City the same failed product that turned Venezuela from one of Latin America’s wealthiest nations into a humanitarian catastrophe: 21st century socialism.
Under this model, punitive taxes, price controls, and ideological purity take precedence over economic reality. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez’s promise of wealth redistribution and justice led to runaway inflation, widespread shortages, and the exodus of the country’s professional class. In Cuba, the same story played out decades earlier. Today, both nations are global case studies in how socialism destroys wealth, opportunity, and individual liberty.
Now that same ideology is creeping into American cities, and nowhere is it more potent than in New York. With Mamdani eyeing the mayor’s office, the parallels to California’s decline are alarming. Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, New York is already suffering from the early symptoms of the disease: wealthy residents fleeing the city, a stagnating middle class, and neighborhoods burdened by crime and decay. The situation became so bad in California that the state tried imposing wealth taxes and exit taxes of anyone leaving the state.
Rampant theft due to police not enforcing the law made stores close and leave California cities in San Francisco and Los AngelesLeftward California is losing its population to conservative states of Arizona and Texas according to Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Immigrants—especially those from Latin America—see through the facade. They’ve lived the reality of socialist populism. They know what it looks like when government promises everything and delivers ruin. And it’s no surprise that Mamdani’s support is concentrated among young, white, college-educated progressives. According to polls cited by the socialist Jacobin, he’s significantly behind Andrew Cuomo among Black and Hispanic voters—communities that understand firsthand the cost of broken systems.
If Mamdani’s vision becomes reality, New York may return to the bad old days of the 1970s: crime-ridden streets, garbage-lined sidewalks, fiscal insolvency, and a paralyzed government. But unlike the past, this isn’t just urban mismanagement—it’s ideological. The goal isn’t to fix the system. It’s to remake it in the image of a failed dream.
New York City almost went bankrupt in the 1970s. Crime was rampant. It can happen again.
The antisemitic New York City Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Mamdani. So has Linda Sarsour. Do you think Jews will remain in the city while antisemitism spikes throughout the United States and the mayor is bought by Jew haters?
Jews were 4.5 times more likely to suffer a hate crime than a Black person and 22 times more likely than a Hispanic person in 2023. The antisemitic incidents have risen considerably since then.Anti-Israel and its supporters Linda Sarsour is actively pushing the vote for Mamdani
21st century socialism is not progress. It’s financial and moral regression. And unless voters wake up, New York may once again become the national symbol of urban collapse—this time by choice, not chance.
Orthodox Jews grabbed their phones after Shabbat ended to see what happened in Israel over the prior day. There was mixed news which had already been absorbed by the rest of the planet.
Europe and the United States held firm that the Global North cannot allow Iran to get nuclear weapons.
At the United Nations Security Council – and on X – western nations affirmed that Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. The UK, France, Denmark, Slovenia and Greece stated that Iran’s level of uranium enrichment is inconsistent with a peaceful civilian program, and that Israel has a right to defend itself from a regime which has stoked a war to eradicate the only Jewish State.
This support for Israel was far from given, considering the strident tones taken by some of these governments about Israel’s prosecution of the war from Gaza.
2. The Global South – including China, Algeria and Pakistan – rallied to Iran and called Israel the aggressor.
Russia went so far as to claim that Israel coordinated with the UK on the attack and used bases in Cyprus to support the Jewish State, seemingly trying to widen the aperture of the war. The UK strongly denied the allegation and condemned Russia for “spreading disinformation”.
3. Palestinians stayed bizarrely mum on the conflict.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority news agency, said virtually nothing about the latest escalation between Israel and Iran. While it normally cheered attacks by Houthis and Hezbollah over the past 600+ days, it would appear that the PA is focused on separating itself from the Iranian axis of evil which includes Hamas, to position itself as a credible government for the day after the Hamas War.
4. Iranian nuclear capabilities remain intact.
From initial reports, it appears that only surface facilities were destroyed and that much of the hardened below ground nuclear infrastructure is still functional. It means that the war effort is unlikely to end soon, and Israel may turn to the United States to either supply the weapons to destroy the underground infrastructure or to compel Iran to dismantle it.
5. Iranian missiles kill Israeli civilians.
While Israel targeted Iranian military commanders and infrastructure, Iran fired over 100 missiles and drones at Israel, hitting apartment buildings and killing several people. The country remains locked down as the battle with Iran continues.
6. U.S. politicians gunned down.
In an ongoing disgraceful trend of targeted attacks, local politicians in Minnesota were shot and killed by a man who seems to have had a targeted list of people who supported abortion. On both the right and left, people with opposing views have come to view the other side as existential threats for which they are willing to kill and be killed.
7. Affable Democratic Socialist extremist closes on winning New York City Democratic primary.
Zohran Mamdani, a smiling radical backed by the antisemitic fringe group Democratic Socialist of America, is rallying far-left progressives as early voting commenced in NYC. His appeal to make busing and childcare free and freezing rent on rent-controlled apartments is too enticing for many to even consider the destruction he will do to the city.
DSA arguing that all Israeli Jews are fair game for annihilation, backed Mamdani for mayor of NYC
New York Jews are forced to consider multiple layers of threats. The furthest away and most violent is the antisemitic Islamic Republic of Iran which still has the means to kill millions in Israel, Europe and the North America. A step closer, around the U.S., left-wing and right-wing radicals are using guns and Molotov cocktails to kill people with whom they disagree, and Jews are often the favored target. In the immediate backyard, the city with the greatest number of Jews is set to have a mayor backed by modern day non-White Nazis, just as lethal to Jews as the White Nazis of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
Disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman hugs his DSA comrade, Zohran Mamdani, as he tries to rally New Yorkers to vote for the fellow extremist
American Jews are buying guns. They are demanding that the government provide funds to harden Jewish centers and combat domestic terrorism. They are urging fellow Americans to prioritize law enforcement and peace over unsustainable giveaways.
And they are being forced to consider their own priorities: sending monies to organizations in Israel which are exhausted in fighting a multifront war, or to focus efforts here on electing centrist politicians, fighting toxic ideologies being instilled in schools, and preparing their community for a life lived in fear.
The violence is getting closer and Jewish trifocals are attempting to simultaneously assess the levels of threat and proximity. Two thousand years of collective trauma have often proven insufficient for the challenge.
The human body always has a temperature but no one talks about it unless it spikes. At a perfect 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, no one even uses the word “temperature.” Jump a few degrees, and suddenly it’s sirens and sick days.
Antisemitism works the same way.
Jews have long been the most targeted religious group per capita in the United States. Attacks, slurs, defacements, discrimination were normalized and ignored. Society treated Jew hatred like a low-grade temp: just part of the day-to-day hum of our civic immune system.
Then came October 7, 2023.
The massacre of Israeli civilians by Gazan terrorists ignited something far beyond protests thousands of miles away — it was an outbreak of unmasked hatred. Jewish students were chased off college campuses. Synagogues were vandalized. Civilians were gunned down in Washington, D.C. Jews were burned alive in Boulder, Colorado.
The low-grade temperature turned into a public health emergency.
The presidents of leading universities were like first year medical school students, offering cooling words while feeding the fever. They were mum as professors glorified the slaughter of Jewish children. They discussed free speech while student groups blamed the victims. The campuses didn’t just incubate antisemitism — they made it a fashionable teaching moment of civic engagement.
The pandemic of antisemitism chased Jews indoors and to their homes while the fever set up camp in quads. President Biden fumbled the vaccine, creating task forces that dealt with antisemitism – and Islamophobia. Biden couldn’t figure out whether to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism or not, while it invited the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) – which glorified the October 7 slaughter – onto the task force meant to address Jew hatred. (To no one’s surprise, no Jewish groups were placed on the Islamophobia task force.)
Enter President Trump with an ice bath.
His administration is moving to dismantle the academic machinery that has enabled the plague, including revoking visas for foreign students at institutions like Harvard. Those students tend to come from the Global South where antisemitism is endemic. It’s not a gentle response. It’s designed to be a fever-breaker.
And it’s not just the universities which are infected.
California’s public schools – the Santa Ana Unified School District in particular – have become the Wuhan labof American antisemitism — unleashing a virus of hate that targets the young and vulnerable. Unlike COVID-19, this disease travels faster through idealism than droplets, and to the young more than seniors. It spreads through TikTok videos and campus chants. It thrives in “social justice” syllabi soaked in Hamas talking points.
At SAUSD, Jews were not just excluded from ethnic studies; they were labeled “oppressors” and “racists.” Those who dared to push back opposing the antisemitism were accused of suffering a “colonized Jewish mind.”
The school board intentionally set a fire in the California desert: it condemned Jews as heretics in absentia, to be burned at the stake. While a lawsuit shut down the SAUSD ethnic studies and social justice courses, the virus had already spread.
Antisemitism is highly contagious when the populous is reeducated with lies and slander. Schools and woke media spread a narrative that Jews are “powerful” who stole their wealth and land in a capitalist and racist fashion from noble people of color. The blood libel – always there at the comfortable 98.6 degrees – became elevated after pro-Palestinian activists attached their cause to Black Lives Matter, and politicians fanned the flames during the pandemic. Marc Lamont Hill’s 2015 “from Ferguson to Palestine” and Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s 2021 “from Gaza to Detroit” and 2024 “from Detroit to Cleveland to Gaza” were an incubation continuum, turning global Jewry into a virus to be vanquished. October 7, 2023 was the breakout moment.
We have been led to believe that antisemitism is a sickness that infects non-Jews which can be healed via education. The consequential thought is that reeducating people that Jews are neither powerful nor racist will somehow break the fever. Teaching people about the Holocaust and the frequency of antisemitic attacks are marketed as cures for the ailments.
But those approaches inherently keep Jews distinct; it leaves them as foreign entities in the body which will sooner or later be attacked by white blood cells. It is best to get blood cells to view Jews as normal, healthy cells like others, not unnatural tumors.
There are abundant opportunities to do so. A significant percentage of people from Latin America are descendants of conversos, Jews who were forced to convert by the Church during the Inquisition. Does the Hispanic community know they share common ancestry with Jews? The United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Are schools teaching the humble faith of America’s founding fathers which looked to build a “government for the people by the people”?
Yes, Jews are distinct, but a healthy and functioning part of the body like a heart or lung. The antisemitic and anti-Israel movements which characterize Jews as a dangerous alien mass – strangers to be attacked by both White supremacists and the majority-minorities pushing DEI – places global Jewry perpetually in the crosshairs.
Jews should not hide in the manner President Biden’s Jewish Engagement Director Aaron Keyak posted on X in May 2021 that “It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your life or physical safety take off your kippah and hide your magen david (Jewish star),” in response to growing antisemitic attacks. Quite the opposite. Schools must showcase Jews as an integral part of a healthy and functioning society.
It is for the safety of American Jewry and betterment of America.
Westchester County has three neighboring towns which act very differently when it comes to their public schools. White Plains stands out relative to neighboring Scarsdale and similarly sized New Rochelle: it spends more and gets worse student performance.
White Plains has a staggering 2025-2026 budget of $277,965,500 for 6,836 students. That amounts to $40,662 per student. That is 13% more than Scarsdale spends, which is one of the best school districts in the entire country. It is also significantly more than New Rochelle which is a similarly sized city with comparable demographics.
And White Plains performs much worse than both despite its massive budget.
Almost all of the Hispanic and Black students in Scarsdale perform well in math, with both groups having over 80% proficiency. In New Rochelle, proficiency in mathematics is 57% each for the groups. Yet in White Plains, only 38% of Hispanics and 42% of Black students have proficiency in math.
Where does the money go in White Plains if not into educating students?
Ten years ago, the White Plains school budget was $208,750,0000 in 2016-2017 when it had 7,091 students, spending $29,439 per student. White Plains is now spending 38% more per student. Much of the cost is NOT GOING FOR THE STUDENTS but to facilities and teacher benefits.
Facilities
The school district has 1.4 million square feet of buildings, not including the new $33 million high school building going up now. New York State generally guides schools to have 85 to 125 square feet per child, depending on the grade. White Plains has 199 square feet per student, 60% more than the high-end recommendation.
And the White Plains school district is planning on spending much more on facilities despite a declining enrollment.
The city already has $88 million of debt and an $11 million capital lease (page 26). The capital lease and $38 million in notes are coming due in 2026. Presumably this is going to be refinanced in a higher interest rate environment which will add expenses into the school budget.
Fewer kids, worse performance and state-of-the-art buildings.
Teacher Salaries and Benefits
The budget lays out teacher salaries (page 39), with school principals making just under $200,000 per year and the school superintendent making over $300,000.
Employee benefits account for $68.6 million (page 10), or 25% of the budget. This is a 10% jump from the previous year, and accounts for OVER HALF OF THE INCREASE from last year’s budget. So while curriculum development went down this year, teacher benefits rose by $6.25 million.
And this is going to continue according to the long-term plan (page 25). Contributions to the teachers retirement and employee retirement systems are going to keep going up while the number of students declines.
Student Performance
There is a lot of data on student performance (pages 43 onward). There are a few take-aways:
The school is 70% Latino and Black and those groups are not reaching proficiency in English or math
Roughly 19% of the students are English language learners, 17% have disabilities and 56% are economically disadvantaged. The English learners and those with disabilities are doing terribly. It is unclear how the school can continue to keep these children in the school system when they are clearly unable to service them. The government should do a full review of the situation.
School Board
The school board will tell you that your taxes are not going up and that the school district is an incredibly open and caring environment with state-of-the-art facilities. What they are not telling you is that they have been over-taxing you for years to fund capital projects, have $50 million of looming debt coming due in 2026, are spending incredible sums on teacher benefits while allowing a significant percentage of the student body to flounder.
That is the sad reality.
ACTION PLAN
Vote on May 20. Polls are open from 12:00PM to 9:00PM. Find your voting location here.
Vote ‘No” on the school budget to reduce it by $3.4 million.
Vote for Julia Oliva, a parent of a second grader who wants to put money into services instead of football fields. It is time to phase out the old school board which has spent your money on shiny buildings instead of our youth.
If you thought the fight for our values ended with Jamaal Bowman’s defeat in last year’s Congressional Democratic primary, think again. That victory—fueled by a coalition of Jewish voters, moderates, and outraged citizens—was just one front in a much larger war. The next battleground? Our local school boards.
Yes, school boards—those often-overlooked panels of elected volunteers who decide how to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, what our children are taught, and what values our public institutions promote. Voting to approve school budgets and new school boards will take around New York State on May 20. In Westchester County, two city school board races —in New Rochelle and White Plains—are shaping up to be ideological flashpoints, and the Jewish community cannot afford to sit them out.
Because what’s happening in these school districts mirrors the dynamics that led to Bowman’s rise—and fall. And unless we show up, the same extremist playbook will continue to take root, just under a different banner.
From Bowman to the Board: The Same Movement, New Target
In 2020, former public school principal Bowman’s ascent was cheered by radical groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as he defeated Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th Congressional District, one of several “progressive” victories. The DSA’s 2023 convention called on its members to build on those victories and get people elected not only in Congress but on local school boards.
The strategy was simple: infiltrate local systems—schools, unions, and boards—with activists trained not in pedagogy or finance, but in ideology. These organizations view school boards as soft targets: low-turnout races that are easy to win with grassroots organization, with enormous power over curriculum, staffing, budget and even political culture.
Nowhere is this strategy more visible than in the New Rochelle school board election, where Dr. Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is aligned with the same progressive, anti-Israel networks like WESPAC that propelled Bowman into Congress. Rivera-McCutchen has been outspoken in her support of “radical care” models, a euphemism for politicized curricula that blur the line between education and activism. Her book on “Radical Care” has a foreword by Bowman and he has endorsed her in the race, which should alarm every Jewish and moderate voter.
Remember: Bowman didn’t fall because his opponents suddenly outspent him, despite what radical socialists scream. He fell because our community turned out. In Westchester, especially in places like New Rochelle, Scarsdale, and White Plains, Jewish voters made the difference. And we must do it again on May 20.
The Stakes in New Rochelle
New Rochelle’s school district is large—9,700 students and over $360 million in spending—and politically volatile. While minority student outcomes have improved, the district is on shaky fiscal ground, and ideological activism is increasingly overt.
Two candidates—Elana Jacob and Jessica Klein—are running to restore balance. Both are active members of the Jewish community and parents. Both are running because they believe in education, not indoctrination. They are not interested in scoring political points—they’re interested in ensuring that students can read, write, think critically, and treat others with respect.
They are up against a well-organized, highly motivated bloc that views school boards as the next front in a larger ideological war. If we don’t match that energy, we lose the ground we worked so hard to win when we sent Bowman packing.
What’s Going On in White Plains?
White Plains is not immune. There, a two-seat school board race has drawn four candidates—two incumbents and two challengers. Sheryl Brady and Charlie Norris have each served for over 15 years. They are status quo guardians who toe the superintendent’s line, not particularly concerned about antisemitism indoctrination in the district, favor “age-appropriate” instruction on gender identity to even the youngest students in kindergarten, and are giddy about the city’s capital program that has professional-grade football fields. Their governance has led to skyrocketing costs—over $40,000 per student, among the highest in the state—while academic outcomes for minority students, especially Black and Hispanic students, have remained poor. That astronomical cost is funded 78% with local taxes, also a high in the state where the normal local tax burden for public schools is around 50%.
Enter Julia Oliva, a new candidate who is running on a platform of fiscal discipline, academic excellence, and common sense. She has a child in the public elementary school and believes in redirecting funds from flashy capital projects toward things that actually benefit students: vocational training, classroom instruction, and teacher development.
While it is unclear how she will do in a board setting, Oliva deserves our support. She would bring a fresh, needed voice to a board that desperately needs one.
The fourth candidate, Dr. Mohammed S Chowdhury, has no children in the school, is unfamiliar about the weak performance of minority students and the enormous budget, and not a serious invested candidate.
The Broader Trend: Silence Is Not Neutrality
Some in our community may ask, “Why get involved in school board politics?” Here’s why:
School boards set the tone for everything: what’s taught, how it’s taught, and whether bias—subtle or overt—is allowed to fester. They help set the budget for the public schools and influence whether charter schools or transportation for students at private schools will get funded.
These elections are winnable. Most school board races are decided by just a few hundred votes. In districts like New Rochelle and White Plains, the Jewish vote is not only significant—it is decisive.
The opposition is not sleeping. Progressive networks have identified these races as key footholds. They are training, funding, and running candidates who align with their views. If we stay home, we hand them the keys.
Remember: the same activist energy that got Bowman elected now animates many of these local candidates. They may not use his name—but they are advancing his ideology.
What You Can Do
Vote on May 20. Put it in your calendar. Bring a friend. Tell your synagogue or community group. You do not need to have students in public school to vote. You pay taxes and fund the future.
Support Jacob and Klein in New Rochelle. Support Julia Oliva in White Plains.
Vote on the school budget: Reject the White Plains budget to lower the expenses by $3.4 million.
Prepare to run in 2026: There is an election every year, and all that is needed is 100 signatures from the district.
Speak up: Attend board meetings, write letters, post on social media. White Plains Superintendent is Dr. Joseph Ricca (Josephricca@wpcsd.k12.ny.us 914-422-2019)
Volunteer: Local races are won with word-of-mouth and turning out.
These are low-turnout races. Your vote isn’t one in a million—it might be the one that tips the balance.
Final Word: This Is Where the Fight Is Now
We can’t let down our guard. The battle against Bowman was just the beginning. The activists who filled his rallies are now aiming for school board seats. And they are counting on your apathy.
Don’t give it to them.
Vote on May 20.
Stand up—for our children, our community, and our values.
RESOURCES
If you are out of town or unable to vote on May 20, you can pick up absentee ballots and drop them off before May 20.
Qatar has been buying its way into the heart of American power. Not metaphorically—literally. The small Gulf state has dumped billions of dollars into American universities, co-opted think tanks, and inserted itself into political circles on both sides of the aisle. It’s not just about soft power anymore. This is strategic infiltration.
According to Middle East Forum, Qatar pumped “$33.4 billion into businesses and real estate; $6.25 billion to universities; $72 million to lobbyists. Qatar purchases access to our corridors of power while simultaneously funding Hamas terrorists who seek our destruction. The pattern is clear: Qatar targets critical infrastructure, including our energy grid. It bankrolls academic departments that foment campus unrest, buys Manhattan skyscrapers, and infiltrates Silicon Valley. Its capital flows to Washington insiders who shape Middle East policy.”
And now, in the latest display of quiet power, Qatar gifted the President of the United States a brand-new plane.
This isn’t a gift. It’s a transaction. And we don’t know what was sold.
Experts Sound The Alarm
Jonathan Conricus, a former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson and now senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), has made it clear that Qatar is not neutral. He describes the Gulf emirate as an “active nefarious actor,” using its wealth to export ideological influence and to shield organizations like Hamas. He’s seen what this money funds—from underground terror tunnels in Gaza to misinformation and antisemitic narratives in the West.
Others, like Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute, argue Qatar is just playing defense—just a tiny monarchy with a population of 300,000 surrounded by giants like Saudi Arabia and Iran. But here’s the flaw: Qatar already hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, the Al Udeid Air Base, just outside Doha. With thousands of American troops stationed there, Qatar doesn’t need more protection. What it IS doing is leveraging that partnership as cover for its far-reaching agenda.
Buying The American Narrative And Minds Of The Youth
Qatar’s influence isn’t just in think tanks and campuses—it’s also in your living room.
In 2013, Qatar’s state media arm Al Jazeera bought Al Gore’s cable network, Current TV, for a staggering $500 million. The rebranded Al Jazeera America failed commercially, but its goal wasn’t ratings. It was presence in 40 million American households.
The acquisition gave Qatar the ability to market propaganda under the guise of serious journalism. It continues to do so under the AJ+ brand on social media, pushing anti-Israel, anti-Western, and often antisemitic narratives to audiences across the globe. It doesn’t aim to inform—it aims to manipulate.
The monarchy’s influence extends into elementary public schools.The Qatar Foundation provides materials for New York City’s “Arab Culture Arts” program which has a map of the Middle East with Israel removed. Tova Plaut, a New York City public school instructional coordinator for pre-K through fifth grade classrooms, said “It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools, we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure.”
A report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) uncovered extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating as many as 8,000 K-12 classrooms, reaching one million students. Qatar is mentioned 48 times in the report.
Congressional Sleepwalking
Disgracefully, few members of Congress have called out Qatar for their support of Hamas and fueling antisemitism in American schools.
Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) did so in November 2023 noting “the influence of foreign governments on tax-exempt college campuses, [specifically] Qatari funding for Northwestern University. It is no coincidence that it now has a campus in the Gulf country and has become a pipeline for reporters for the Qatari state-owned media Al Jazeera and their youth-focused subsidiary, AJ+.”
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Vice Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in May 2024, “It’s simple: if Qatar can’t pressure Hamas to make a deal with Israel, they must expel these terrorists so they can be brought to justice and punished for their horrific crimes against humanity. If they won’t do either, then the United States should seriously examine whether Qatar still deserves the privileges of its status as a major non-NATO ally.”
Yet it’s taken the public gift of an airplane to President Trump to finally make everyone in Congress wake up to the evils of Qatari influence.
Conclusion: Start The Audit And Pressure Campaign
President Trump has no qualms bankrupting Iran’s oil business if it continues to pursue a nuclear weapons program. It is time to threaten the Qatari regime to reverse its nefarious connections to state sponsors of terrorism and vicious antisemitism, or face actions similar to those inflicted on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Congress should use the airplane gift as an opportunity to open a wide ranging probe into Qatari influence everywhere in the USA.
If school board elections were Rotten Tomatoes scores, they’d be 97% Fresh—but only because nobody bothered to show up.
White Plains held its 2024 budget approval and school board elections and just over 2,100 voters cast a ballot in a city of more than 60,000 people. That’s less than 4% of the population deciding who controls a school budget north of $250 million. The budget got almost a 90% approval because only the devout show up to vote. You’d get more engagement trying to organize a bocce tournament in a thunderstorm.
This year, four candidates are competing for two open board seats, making the election a contested one – a rarity. Alas, fewer than twenty people showed up to hear them speak and two of them were the timekeepers. And what did the candidates talk about? Diversity, as if that’s a school board issue rather than a census reality. No discussion of education, student performance, budget allocation, or academic results. Just talking points straight out of a DEI seminar.
Candidates for White Plains School Board Debate in White Plains High School library, May 13, 2025
No one mentioned that Black and Hispanic students continue to underperform in math and science. No one asked why 14% of the city’s students—those in private schools—get zero dollars from the school budget. And not a peep about the fact that White Plains spends an eye-watering $40,000 per student, one of the highest per-student spends in the entire state.
Local taxpayers are footing 78% of the school bill. That’s not just high—it’s the highest in the state. The state average is 50%. If the board had its way with no one watching the shop, they’d probably approve one-on-one tutoring for every student and throw in a life coach just to round things out.
In a functioning democracy, school board elections should be about education policy, results, and fiscal responsibility. In White Plains – and most school boards – it’s a sleepy backroom handshake and a baked-in majority. The less people show up, the more the insiders run the show. And in 2025, they’re running it like it’s their own personal foundation.
Don’t believe me? The city is now adding a $33 million building to the sprawling high school as part of a $395 million 20-year capital plan, even though demographers predict that enrollment will stay flat for the next decade.
White Plains High School is adding a $33 million building to be a free vocational school for teenagers
It is no wonder that the school board panel discussion happened in the fantasy section of the high school library. Everyone in the room imagined that they were directors in a high school musical where education is irrelevant and money grows on trees. Maybe next year, the school board candidate debate should be held in a science lab so people can reorient the discussion towards student success.
Don’t get me wrong – I very much appreciate the volunteer work that the school board does. It’s essential. However, they have seemingly lost the focus on teaching students critical skills and have adopted an orientation that school is really drop-off child care so parents can go to work. The primary function – no, the mission – is to keep kids in elementary and middle school safe and happy. With few basic skills, the high school (read pre-vocational school), will prepare them for jobs in nursing and food services after they change out of their prom dresses.
Vote on May 20 in your local school board election and bring a friend. Trust me, there will be no lines.
Major socialist groups have taken aggressive anti-Israel stances, both before and after the October 7, 2023 brutal massacre of people in Israel by Gazans. These socialists are aggressively working their ideology into America’s public schools.
Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) Is Anti-Israeli Jews
The Democratic Socialist of America of New York City demanded that politicians not visit Israel to be considered for its endorsement in 2020, even though the local municipal elections had nothing to do with foreign policy. In July 2023 – months before the October 7 massacre – DSA posted that Israeli Jews could not be considered “civilians,” essentially making all of them legitimate targets for violence, endorsed ethnic cleansing.
The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a radical jihadi group, praised DSA’s stances and called for the group to “discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” The DSA has fallen in line with its jihadi revolutionary comrades, and issued a statement while the slaughter and 1,200 people and raping of women in Israel was ongoing, that the group is “steadfast in expressing our solidarity with Palestine.”
These vile and violent attitudes are being pushed into the public schools.
Infiltration Into Public Schools
The socialist publication Jacobin made the point clearly in January 2024 when it praised the DSA which “passed a resolution encouraging local chapters to run candidates for school boards” during its summer 2023 convention. It noted that school board elections are “small-scale enough that grassroots organizing” can swing elections, and socialists are particularly adept at such activity. It argues that “by connecting with other progressive groups that have been working on education issues in New York for decades, each in their own silos, DSA might be able to cut through the antidemocratic structures and confusing messages” and take over schools to advance their preferred narratives.
The effort is deliberate and focused on public schools. One of the drafters of the DSA resolution to pursue school boards wrote “unlike federal elections, school boards are also races we can have a clear impact in…. By concentrating our efforts on these races, we can have an outsized effect…. By electing socialists into those seats, we can set new model policies.”
The ultimate goal of the DSA is to build its own political party apart from the Democratic Party, and it believes that these school board seats lay the foundation for such long term goal by building communities and indoctrinating the youth.
One can see this happening right now, in races for the head of the teacher’s union and the school board in New Rochelle.
United Federation of Teachers (UFT)
Amy Arundell is currently running to become the president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), a union with about 200,000 members. She was temporarily removed from her post heading UFT in Queens for insisting that the word “terrorist” be dropped from the UFT statement denouncing the October 7 attacks, even though Hamas is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. If raping women and burning families alive is not terrorism, it is unclear if anything is.
The UFT, which represents New York City public school teachers, issued a statement after New York City Department of Education’s chancellor, David Banks, sent an email to district staff stating: “I unequivocally condemn these horrific acts of violence, and I want to offer my deepest condolences and steadfast support to those in our New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) community impacted by the killings and kidnappings.” The UFT statement read “Chancellor Banks’s statement last Tuesday solely centering the needs of Israeli families, and UFT President Mulgrew’s dismissal of Queens Borough Rep Amy Arundell for speaking in support of Palestine are but two examples of the erasure of our Palestinian students, staff, and families.” It recommended educators use a virulently anti-Israel website TeachPalestine as a tool in their classrooms and push the anti-Israel narrative into classrooms.
Amy Arundell marked “revolutionary liberation” movements as her face to the world
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) rallied to its socialist-jihadi colleague and issued a statement that “penaliz[ing] their representative for actively seeking an inclusive statement that considers pro-Palestinian narratives is reprehensible.” It is bewildering to imagine how dropping the word “terrorist” from the worst terrorist attack in modern history is a “pro-Palestinian narrative.”
New Rochelle School Board
In the City of New Rochelle in Westchester County, just north of New York City, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is running for the local school board. She is endorsed by disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman who also wrote a foreword for her book on “radical care.” DSA proudly endorsed Bowman.
Rivera-McCutchen was interviewed in March 2025 on the Progressive News Network by Howard Horowitz, a leader of anti-Israel group WESPAC which supports PYM, part of the DSA socialist-jihadi alliance. WESPAC also supports Students for Justice in Palestine, which has fostered antisemitic environment and attacks on American college campuses.
If socialists win seats on local school boards and elections for union leadership, the situation for American Jewry will likely become stark. Get involved.
There has been an alarming increase in antisemitism at universities which has prodded the federal government to get involved. A lot of the foundational problem at colleges is set by the failures of kindergarten through high school (K-12) education. Today’s youth is much more likely to be antisemitic than older Americans, who tend to be more racist, setting the stage for many years of university Jew-hatred.
It is therefore critical for people to get involved in local school boards and impact the budget and curricula.
K-12 Anti-Jewish Bias Around The Country
School boards and teachers’ unions around the United States have pushed anti-Israel and anti-Jewish programming since the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, and before then as well. Here is a sampling:
In April 2021, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which has roughly 1.7 members said that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class,… who want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.”
In October 2023, the Oakland Education Association, a teacher’s union, condemned “apartheid” and “genocidal” Israel. The OEA handed out material from Teach Palestine, with curriculums for educators.
In November 2023, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) union produced a resolution which “condemn the role our government plays in supporting the system of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which lies at the root of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.”
In May 2024, Portland Oregon’s teacher union, the Portland Association of Teachers, had a meeting about how to teach students both inside and outside of the classroom how to be anti-Zionists, complete with a website to disseminate propaganda.
In July 2024, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union and teachers union with around 3 million members held its annual meeting with resolutions to boycott Israel and praise the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel (NBI 8).
The non-partisan American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a report in December 2024 that “Leaders and activists within the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) have waged an aggressive campaign that has encouraged K-12 teachers to become pro-Palestinian activists and bring anti-Israel propaganda into their classrooms.”
In February 2025, the Santa Ana Unified School District of California settled a lawsuit for using “courses that were developed in secret and infected with anti-Semitism.” Committees at the school said “Jews are the oppressors,” and “racist” and worked with outside groups who decried “Zionist control.”
The bias against Jews and Israel is systemic, and starts well before people enter colleges.
State of New York
The State of New York is a Democratic stronghold in which the party controls the governorship, Senate (41-22) and Assembly with a super-majority (103-47). The Democrats have held this trifecta since 2019 which has enabled the party to advance particular policies without much pushback. Some current bills include:
NY A08053, which deals with transgender students in locker rooms and bathrooms
NY A06415, which examines admission diversity in specialized senior high schools
NY S06901, which teaches all students in K-12 about sexuality, including gender identity
NY S02498, which allows parents to exempt their children from lockdown drills
NY S05700, which eliminates religious exemptions for immunizations
This is a sample of current bills impacting schools. Note that there is an exemption for parents to limit their child’s participation in lock down drills, but no accommodation for religious parents to exempt their children from gender ideology classes or be exempted from immunizations.
The orientation of New York politicians is very much about majority-minority groups of Hispanic, Black and the LGBT+ communities. It is not about the minority-minority Jews, despite pervasive antisemitism.
Consider NY Senate bill S317, which requires anti-bias training for every medical student. The text of the bill refers to “people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community.” Despite threats by nurses and doctors to injure and kill Jewish patients and prevalent antisemitism, Jews were not mentioned.
Ohio doctor publicly denigrates Jews and threatens them
Disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman is a textbook example of ingrained bias against Jews in the public sphere, both in politics, education and media. He was a public school principal before going into politics. His anti-Jewish vitriol helped galvanize members in his NY16 district to oust him in a primary in favor of a more moderate politician. He now has a platform on the anti-Israel site Zeteo to continue to demonize the Jewish State.
Every year, seats on local school boards around the state come up for election. This year’s vote in New York State is on Tuesday, May 20. Here is a list for each town and city. The people on these committees will have an impact on the future, locally, in the state and the country.
Some things to evaluate and ask each candidate:
The school budget is $xxx million a year, averaging $xx,000 per student. Student to teach ratios are xx-to-1. Why?
Student enrollment peaked in 20xx and has declined over the years to only xx,xxx. What has caused the decline, beyond COVID?
The school budget is a mix of services, capital projects and administrative overhead. More specifically, it breaks down as XX% for education, XX% for employee benefits, XX% for “general support”, X% for child transportation, X% to repay debt and X% for other. Why?
What is the capital plan for the district and how is it prioritizing things like new buildings and football fields versus services for the students?
How is your school district doing in the absolute and relative to other school districts (rankings here). How is proficiency in math and reading for different groups? How are absentee rates for students? How are graduation rates? How prepared are they for college and how many attend?
Is the high school preparing students for vocational schools in the jobs of the future (like technology) or for professions in the neighborhood (say healthcare)? Is it teaching a class on financial literacy?
How are the schools handling current matters like gender identity classes for young students and banning phones in classes?
Are children with disabilities able to thrive in the district? What steps are being taken to address their situations?
How is the school addressing current events like the Arab-Israeli conflict?
How does the school make sure that all students are able to learn without discrimination, harassment and intimidation?
Are charter schools being allowed and under what framework?
Review the composition of your school board. Is the entire committee there for over 20 years? Are all there for less than five? It usually makes sense to have a balance of people with children who are current students and those with institutional knowledge.
This is a sampling of things everyone should know about their school district. It will not guarantee a great education or prevent swastikas from being drawn on school property, as happened in Weber Middle School in Port Washington, Midwood Elementary, Clarkstown South High School and others. It will not prevent students from rioting against Jewish teachers as happened in Hillcrest. But unattended school boards lead to lax superintendents and distorted lesson plans and school culture. It leads to a systemwide decay in knowledge and values.
New York City has a resource list to help teachers learn and educate students about antisemitism. Other sites have recommendations as well. Have you reviewed the lists to see if there are materials that are omitted or should be removed? Do you have a relationship with the school chancellor, superintendent or people on the school board to effectuate change?
Are you showing up on May 20 to vote?
International actors are contributing to a negative influence at universities but so is the education before students get to college. Get involved in your local school board for the benefit of your community and society, whether or not you have children in the schools.
Liberal media has rallied to liberal universities.
Newspapers like The New York Times call the Trump administration’s investigations into campus antisemitism as a targeted attack on institutions of higher learning, with over-sensitive Jews acting as useful pawns. The Times reporting actively omits and whitewashes the calls for violence against Jews to frame the discussion as impinging on minority rights for its remaining readers.
Consider the story of Kehlani, an anti-Israel singer who called “Long live the Intifada” in one of her music videos. She was invited and then disinvited to sing at Cornell when Jewish students found out about her coming to a campus-wide event. Under the banner “Campus Crackdown,” the Times headline was that her “support for Palestinians” and “her stance on the war in Gaza” led to her cancellation, leading to students being disappointed.
The article did not shy away from her call for intifada, and provided context that while some Jews might infer it as a call for violence, pro-Palestinian voices “regard it as a cry for liberation and freedom from oppression.”
At no point in the article did the Times discuss the 1,000 Jews slaughtered in the Second “Intifada,” including babies blown apart in pizza stores by Jew-haters like “journalist” Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi who lives freely in Jordan.
At no point did the Times describe the environment at Cornell, where a professor celebrated the slaughter and rape of people in Israel on October 7, 2023, saying he has “exhilarated” because “Hamas has punctured the [Israel’s] illusion of invincibility” during a student-led protest a week later off-campus. Russell Rickford was invited back to campus to teach this 2024/5 academic year according to Insider Higher Ed, because his comments were made “in his free time.”
The Times did not write about student Patrick Dai who threatened to kill Jews (in his free time), who was sentenced to 21-months in jail in August 2024.
Instead, the article highlighted “a queer person of color” who was “disappointed” at the cancellation of Kehlani’s performance. It listed a “Gambian-British citizen” who left the country, fearing “possible deportation.”
Why omit the targeting of Jews in the story about antisemitism?
Because the media wants to define antisemitism by its own distorted lexicon, and to shield the systemic Jew-hatred on campus from the Trump administration. If Jews are intimidated, harassed or unable to enjoy campus life, that’s too bad because any modifications might strip fun and opportunities from victims of preference.
According to the ADL, antisemitic attacks in the US reached record levels in 2024. Campus antisemitism jumped 84% from 2023 to 2024, accounting for 18% of all incidents, also an all-time high.
The Times would not write about that either.
Americans are fed distorted media which sanitizes institutions rife with Jew-hatred. The Times raises alarms about “campus crackdowns” because Trump is shattering universities’ “illusion of invincibility,” of tramping Jewish rights with billions of taxpayer dollars.
There really may be only one solution: a revolution to intifada the universities.
Protest outside of AIPAC conference in Washington, DC in June 2023, months before the October 7, 2023 massacre
