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.
Across Western cities, “Nakba” protests fill the streets in May, marking what Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) call the “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding. Protesters chant slogans of “liberation,” wave Palestinian flags, and brandish large symbolic keys—representing homes lost in the Arab-Israeli 1948 War, and a longed-for return.
In London, British actor Khalid Abdalla holds a key symbolising the supposed Palestinian “right of return” (photo: Middle East Eye)
To the casual observer, these demonstrations appear to be non-violent expressions of secular nationalism: a displaced people demanding justice and return. The rhetoric is packaged in the language of “anti-colonialism,” a phrase from the Global South marketed at western universities.
The terminology is secular and political but the facts on the ground tell a different story.
The actual war against Israel is not being led by nationalists. It is driven by radical Islamist groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The attack launched on October 7, 2023, was not called the “Nakba Response” or “Operation Liberation.” It was named “Al-Aqsa Flood”—a title soaked in religious meaning, not national aspiration. It invoked Islam’s third-holiest site which sits atop Judaism’s holiest site.
The strategic use of “Nakba” language in western cities is a deliberate effort to mask a religious war in secular terms. It is designed to resonate with Western leftists who are comfortable championing national self-determination but uneasy with theocratic zeal. It reframes an Islamic holy war as a freedom struggle, making it seem modern, rational, and even “progressive.”
But the religious reality will not remain buried forever.
Because just as SAPs speak of return, so do Jews. If Jews are forced to lose their sovereignty, perhaps diluted in a binational state, it will likely not lead to secular coexistence—it may unleash something far older and deeper: the demand for rebuilding the Third Jewish Temple.
Today, the Temple Mount is controlled administratively by the Jordanian Waqf, which bans Jewish prayer. Since the Second Temple was destroyed in 70AD, Jews have dreamed of rebuilding it, and while that has remained marginal in the modern secular Jewish state, it may surge forward in a post-Zionist situation in which Jews are compelled to relinquish so much.
If Israel is converted to a binational state in which everyone has equal rights, Jews would obviously insist on the same rights as Muslims enjoy today, to pray openly by the thousands on the Temple Mount. The demand to rebuild the Jewish Temple could move from the fringe to the center. The so-called “liberation” of Palestine would be matched by calls to liberate the Mount—from Islamic control.
In that light, the pro-Palestinian protest chants of “liberation” are a double-edged sword. They echo with reciprocal cries: not just the return of SAPs to Jaffa but the return of Jews to the Temple Mount. The religious war launched by Gazans wrapped in secular “Nakba” terminology in the west would be laid bare for what it is.
Muslims and Jews hold keys for places that don’t exist in the holy land anymore – for homes and a Temple. Should one side pursue a “right of return” to create a future-past, the mirrored key will do no less.
On Friday, May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence—one day before the British ended their Palestine Mandate and left the region. The timing wasn’t accidental. Israel’s founding leaders wanted the moment to be marked with reverence, not paperwork, so the declaration was made in advance of the Jewish Sabbath, allowing the entire Jewish people to enter its rebirth with dignity and joy.
The joy wasn’t shared. Within hours, neighboring Arab armies invaded the nascent state, launching a war to crush Jews in the shadow of the European Holocaust. That contempt hasn’t faded. It echoes today in the halls of foreign governments, NGOs, and the mouths of extremist politicians thousands of miles from the region.
To “commemorate” Israel’s 77th birthday, the United Nations hosted a session dedicated not to peace or coexistence—but to “the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” One speaker after another vilified Israel, slandering its conduct in defending itself in a war it never wanted. Accusations of “racism,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” flowed freely—from China, South Africa, Guyana, and others eager to hijack human rights rhetoric for anti-Israel theater.
Not to be outdone, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution to formally mark Israel’s independence as Nakba Day—”the catastrophe.” The language mirrored the UN’s smear campaign, ignoring context, facts, and Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. The resolution outrageously called on Israel to accept seven million Arab descendants of refugees and internally displaced people—almost all of whom have never set foot in Israel—negating a fundamental right of statehood by erasing Israel’s right to control its own borders. It called for the United States to withhold all diplomatic and military support from Israel as it defends itself in the midst of a multi-front war, to facilitate a genocide of Jews.
As Israel marked its 75th year in 2023, Jewish civilians were massacred by genocidal jihadi Arab terror groups on the Sabbath and Simchat Torah, a holiday celebrating the Jewish Bible. Rockets, kidnappings, and slaughter were launched from Gaza, with terrorists using Palestinians as human shields and Jewish hostages as bargaining chips—while cheering voices thousands of miles away offered rhetorical cover.
Today’s political war against Israel is led by the unholy alliance of far-left ideologues and Islamist extremists. They’ve inherited the mantle of the Arab armies defeated in 1948—and continue their campaign, not for coexistence, but for the erasure of the Jewish homeland. This is a Global Intifada dressed in human rights language but aimed at ethnic cleansing. In 1948, the horde successfully removed all Jews from eastern Jerusalem, the “West Bank” and Gaza. They strive to finish the job.
For them, Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland remains a “catastrophe,” and Israel’s Independence Day is a day for revolutionaries to perpetuate the war. Not just for the 30 countries which continue to refuse to recognize Israel—but for shrill voices in the U.S. Congress who speak as if the past 77 years never happened.
After Arab armies failed to destroy Israel in 1967, the Arab League produced its “Three No’s“: no peace with Israel; no negotiations with Israel; and no recognition of Israel. It has an underlying three principles which continue to drive Jew haters: Jews have too much; Jews enjoying fundamental human rights is a provocation; and Jewish joy is triggering.
The trifecta of Israel’s Independence Day is too rich for global antisemites to ignore.
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.
Anti-Zionism—the rejection of the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people—has existed since the dawn of modern Zionism. However, in 2025 it feels radically different from the 1975 United Nations incarnation. The rhetoric may sound similar, but the ideology, tactics, and alliances behind anti-Zionism have undergone a seismic shift. What once masqueraded as anti-colonial nationalism on the global stage has mutated into global terrorism fused with religious fanaticism. What was once a geopolitical power play of 6.4 billion people from the Global South has transformed into mob lynchings in the streets of Western capitals.
The 1975 Moment: Terrorism Wrapped in Nationalist Language
In 1975, while the United Nations was led by a former Nazi, Kurt Waldheim, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism—a resolution so grotesque and politically motivated that it was ultimately revoked in 1991 through the efforts of the United States. But that year also saw another dangerous precedent set: UNGA Resolution 3376 which declared that the Palestinian people have an “inalienable right” to statehood AND “to return to their homes and property.” This declaration, unprecedented in international law, granted Palestinian Arabs a right that is not afforded to any other specific ethnic group—no such resolution exists affirming an “inalienable” right to statehood for the Kurds, Tibetans, Basques, or countless others seeking independence, and no refugees anywhere have a right to “return to homes.”
This special treatment of the Palestinian cause, even while terrorism was a central strategy of their campaign, reveals a deep double standard in international institutions. Groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose operatives hijacked planes and massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, were welcomed at the UN with open arms. Their leaders were treated as statesmen rather than terrorists. The PLO’s largest faction, Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat, waged a war not just on Israeli soldiers but on civilians worldwide—from airline terminals in Rome and Vienna to school buses and synagogues.
Yet, the PLO and other Palestinian factions successfully cloaked their violence in the language of anti-colonialism. They painted the Jewish State of Israel—a country with deep historical, religious, and legal claims to the land—as a European settler colony, despite the fact that Jews are indigenous to that specific land. In the bipolar Cold War world, the Palestinian cause was adopted by the Soviet bloc (which pretended it never had colonies despite the entire bloc being colonies) as a weapon against the West, and Israel became a convenient scapegoat for third-world grievances.
Today’s Anti-Zionism: From Nationalism to Jihad
The anti-Zionist movement in 2025 is no longer pretending to be about secular nationalism. Gone are the olive-drab uniforms and revolutionary manifestos of Arafat’s PLO. In their place are the colorful flags of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—groups whose founding documents do not mention two states, borders, or peace but rather the annihilation of Israel, vile Jewish conspiracy plots, subjugation of Jews and the imposition of Islamic rule.
Palestinian Arabs wave Palestinian and Islamic terrorist group flags in front of the Dome of the Rock atop the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, following the last Friday prayers of Ramadan, on April 29, 2022. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
This is not political “resistance”—it is Islamic terrorism, pure and simple. Hamas, recognized as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and much of the democratic world, deliberately targets civilians with rockets, suicide bombings, and, most recently, the atrocities of October 7, 2023. That day saw the cold-blooded murder of over 1,200 Israelis—men, women, children, and the elderly—in a coordinated attack that included rape, torture, and hostage-taking. It was not a liberation struggle but a heinous pogrom.
The shift from secular nationalism to radical Islamism has had profound consequences. Today’s anti-Zionist actors no longer make appeals to human rights, self-determination, or even statehood. Their aim is not a Palestinian state alongside Israel but a caliphate instead of it. Hamas’ charter explicitly rejects any peaceful resolution and defines the conflict in religious, not political, terms.
This ideological transformation aligns Palestinian terrorism with broader jihadist movements including al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. Their ideological DNA is strikingly similar: the use of violence as a religious duty, hatred of Jews as a theological imperative, and contempt for the liberal values of democracy, pluralism, and gender equality.
The Reverse Flow: From Global South to Global North
In 1975, anti-Zionism was projected from the Global South outward, as newly independent states sought to reshape the international order. Israel was falsely cast as a proxy of colonialism. But today, the direction has reversed. Anti-Zionism now festers not only in Middle Eastern regimes and terror groups, but in the heart of the West including Paris, Berlin, London, and New York City.
Anti-Israel protests in front of Columbia University in New York City
This shift is in part the result of demographic and ideological changes in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Starting in 2010, the wave of uprisings which once promised liberal reform, instead ushered in chaos, civil war, and Islamist resurgence. Millions fled failed states and collapsing economies, many ending up in Europe and North America. While many migrants seek peace and prosperity in their new homes, a shrill cohort brought the radical ideologies of their home countries—including deep-seated antisemitism and hostility toward Israel.
The result is that anti-Zionist marches in Western cities increasingly showcase imported hatred. Protests ostensibly about Gaza often devolve into anti-Jewish rhetoric, violence, and the open glorification of terrorism. In some cases, demonstrators chant slogans borrowed directly from Hamas propaganda. Far too many on the political left—who once stood for secularism, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ protections—have aligned themselves with Islamist movements that stand for the exact opposite.
Anti-Israel protestors in front of New York City exhibit about those murdered at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023
In 1975, college Marxists may have read the United Nations’ “Zionism is racism” resolution as simply a tool used by a group seeking national independence. In 2025, the kaffiyeh-clad protestors are shouting for an “intifada revolution” with the religious zeal of Hamas affinity groups. They have been baptized by the current conflict and converted to winner-take-all jihadists.
All Noisy on the Western Front
Palestinian terrorist groups cannot defeat the Israeli army on their own. To defeat Israel, local Arab leadership relies on two principal supporting actors: Islamist countries and groups on the military front, and stripping Israel’s defensive support from the west.
The Islamists countries of Iran and Turkey (both not Arab) and the jihadi groups of Hezbollah and the Houthis provide weaponry, training and funds to fight Israel militarily. Palestinian Arabs hoped for greater success in killing Jews, but appreciated those waging war on Israel.
Hamas continues to count on jihadists – old and new converts – in western cities to wage its bloody antisemitic war. Members of the Global South now residing in the Global North and their allies are an essential front to end support for the Jewish State. Actively removing defenses may appear to pass legal scrutiny by western laws compared to calling for violence, but the desired antisemitic goal is identical: the demise of half of global Jewry who live in their ancestral homeland.
Conclusion
Anti-Zionism in 2025 feels different than it did in 1975 because it IS different. Then, it was driven by secular radicals speaking the language of national liberation—even as they committed acts of terror. Today, it is led by Islamist extremists who openly seek genocide and global jihad. Then, it was framed as the Global South fighting colonialism. Today, it is the Global South bringing its biases into the heart of the Global North.
The “radical left” always carried the notion of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism but over the last fifty years, it has adopted new comrades and approaches. As the far-left is loathe to call out the antisemitic, anti-gay, anti-feminist zealot allies – lest they appear insensitive to different cultures – they have absorbed new philosophies. Such is the war of “by any means necessary,” a Jew-hunt which is becoming localized by the socialist-jihadi alliance.
Anti-Israel protestors march in the streets in front of Columbia University
The movie “All Quiet On The Western Front” was about the brutality of trench warfare in World War I, and the impact on soldiers’ mental and physical well-being. People use the phrase as an expression of things outwardly appearing normal and unchanging while huge terrifying tectonic shifts occur beneath the surface.
Whether a secular nationalist bursts into a synagogue shooting worshippers or a jihadi fanatic does so, makes little difference to the Jewish dead. However, progressives’ abandonment of their own fundamental tenets when it comes to Jews – and doing so proudly and publicly – is a five-bell alarm about crumbling democratic norms.
We have reviewed the terrible anti-Israel bias ingrained in public schools in Talking About Local School Boards in New York State, and socialists’ activist influence in public school unions and school boards in Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For School Boards. This article will discuss a particular school district – White Plains, NY – as a basis for you to get involved in your own district, and will compare it to New Rochelle, a similar district nearby.
Basic Statistics
Start by understanding some key statistics about the school district before wading into the school board itself.
Greatschools.org is a good place to familiarize yourself with your school district. White Plains has seven schools: 5 elementary, 1 middle school and 1 high school. In their assessmnet, compared to New York State, 57% are performing below average and 43% are average, a pretty terrible score.
Digging into the data deeper, provides some understanding of the poor scores.
The student body of 6,887 is 58% Hispanic, 21% White, 10% Black, 4% biracial and 3% Asian. Roughly 17% are learning English and 50% are from low income households. The demographics are similar to New Rochelle which is a bigger school, with a greater percentage of Blacks students. White Plains has more students learning English (17% to 12%), while New Rochelle has a slightly greater percentage of students from low income households (55% to 50%).
While all of the racial groups perform well on U.S. history tests, the Hispanic and Black students perform below New York State average in English (30% and 29%), and Black students grossly underform in science (16% with proficiency), even compared to those same ethnic groups around the state. Curiously, each group performs well on standardized regents exams, making one wonder whether teachers are simply teaching to pass the regents rather than basic skills.
The dynamics are not unusual for the state. According to the GreatSchools site, Black students typically only have 22% average proficiency in science around the state, and Hispanics are at 23%. White and Asian students are at 43% and 55%, respectively, considerably higher. However, in White Plains, only Black students trail the state average.
The scores for Black students in New Rochelle in English were significantly better, with 43% being proficient, significantly higher than White Plains Black student body at 29%.
The figures in Ballotopedia are different, but also show that White Plains’ Hispanic and Black students do not cross 45% proficiency in Math, while White and Asian students have 73% and 75% proficiency, respectively. New Rochelle Hispanic and Black students each have 57% proficiency in Math, considerably higher than White Plains.
White Plains (WP) far exceeded New Rochelle (NR) and state averages in other categories like graduation rates (91% versus 83% and 87%, respectively for NR and state averages) and those taking Advanced Placement courses (AP), with 29% compared to 18% and 21% for NR and the state, respectively. Overall, 79% of White Plains’ graduating students went on either to college or vocational school, compared to 75% and 68%, respectively for NR students and the state on average.
This WP performance came at a cost.
Enrollment in the WP schools was roughly 6,900 students and projected to be relatively flat for the next year, despite 8,000 apartment rental units coming online over the next few years. With a 2025-6 budget of $278 million, the average cost per student is roughly $40,000.
With 595 teachers, the WP student-to-teacher ratio was roughly 11.6:1, well below the stated goal of under 20-to-1. The overall WP district headcount including administrative positions was 1,196, or 5.7 students per school staff. This compares to NR with 767 teachers and 1,643 in total staff, or 12.6:1 student to teacher ratio and 5.9 students per staff.
On average, school districts in the state are funded 50% by local taxes, 46% by state subsidies and 4% from the federal government. White Plains is 78% locally funded (74% property tax and 4% other taxes).
The actual WP budget submitted for approval shows a breakdown for the budget as: 50% for instruction, 25% for employee benefits, 15% for general support, 5% for student transportation, and 4% for debt service. Why is only half of a school budget going to education?
New Rochelle’s school budget is $360 million serving 9,700 students ($37,100 per student) and property taxes account for 67% of the budget. New Rochelle has a budget line for the high school principal of over $1 million and the department chair and supervisor each with $700,000.
Data Assessment
The data is not consistent between sources but overall, it seems that White Plains spends more for students than New Rochelle. The reasons seem to be a relatively higher number of teachers as well as costs for more upgraded facilities. Despite spending more, the results for Hispanics and Blacks are worse on test scores but better on regents and high school graduation rates (92% to 83%).
Other Students
A total of 1,132 students in White Plains do not attend public schools, or over 14% of the total. These students do not receive funding for education, food, transportation or tutoring services.
There are no charter schools in either White Plains or New Rochelle, making the public schools the sole recipients of all funding, despite one in seven students being educated outside of the schools.
WP School Board
The White Plains school board is made up of seven people, each serving a three year term. In 2025, two of the most tenured board members have terms coming up.
Name
Assumed Office
Term Ends
Jessica Buck
2024
2027
Craig Mondschein
2024
2027
Cayne Letizia
2015
2027
Valerie Daniele
2023
2026
Rosemarie Eller
2005
2026
Sheryl Brady
2007
2025
Charlie Norris
2007
2025
As seen in the table above, there are three people on the board who have been serving for almost two decades, and three people serving in their first terms. Ideally, a board should have a mix of current parents together with people with historic knowledge.
There are four people running for the two seats. Sheryl Brady and Charlie Norris are both seeking reelection. Newcomers Julia Oliva and Dr. Mohammed S Chowdhury are also seeking the board positions. They all submitted responses to a questionnaire submitted by the League Of Women Voters of White Plains, which will be hosting a forum on May 13 at 7:00pm at the WP High School.
I spoke to the four candidates about their interest in the school board. Below is a snapshot.
Sheryl Brady:
She grew up in Westchester and is passionate about education and continues to keep up to date with seminars.
She had four kids go through the public school system and was very involved in the PTA. She is also very involved in Kol Ami in addition to the public schools.
She thinks the superintendent Dr. Joseph Ricca (Josephricca@wpcsd.k12.ny.us 914-422-2019) is fantastic and always available for questions. She believes he is also well known at the state level.
Brady believes the school board is about setting tone and policy which is focused on the intrinsic value of every person.
Her focus is on targeted, individualized instruction for the students.
She thinks the school facilities are amazing and acknowledged the community support for a $60 million bond issue to fund the improvements to the schools and athletics fields.
She is supportive of the cellphone bans in schools but likely would have been more permissive for high school students than the state mandate.
She thinks the governor’s mandate on teaching gender identity in all grades including lower grades should be age appropriate
She does not think antisemitism is a big issue in the district, and whenever there is an incident, to use it as an opportunity to bring the students together to learn empathy and Jewish history of persecution, and the Holocaust in particular.
In regards to teaching about the Arab/Muslim-Israeli conflict, she thinks teachers should not take sides and try to maintain respect.
Charlie Norris:
He grew up in Hartsdale and is passionate about education. His two children were fourth generation in WP public schools
He was the first male head of the PTA in 1993 and that got him involved in the school and ultimately the board in 2006. He has seen the schools change to be much more Hispanic and pivot according to their needs as well as special needs students which are much more numerous now than when he was a parent of a student.
He is very proud of where WP is now, while other schools in Mount Vernon and New Rochelle need to lay off teachers and cut programs.
He loves the state-of-the-art facilities already constructed the last few years as well as the new $35 million building going up to expand the high school. It is going up without an increase in taxes.
He is in favor of banning cellphones for kids in school.
He is in favor of teaching gender identity in schools and all types of family structures in an age appropriate manner.
He thinks antisemitism in schools is a function of general society and children pick it up (rather than it being introduced in schools). When there are incidents, they bring in rabbis to have meaningful discussions.
For the Arab/Muslim-Israel Conflict, he thinks it is important to be informative without taking sides. It is for educators to choose materials for the students and only sometimes does that come up to the board level.
Julia Oliva:
She moved to White Plains in 2007. She has one young child in the elementary school and a second one will enter in a year.
She has gotten involved in the school because she felt there were issues not being addressed. The open mic at the school board sessions allowed her to have a one way discussion but never heard back from anyone.
She is in favor of banning phones and wants teachers to be equipped with how to handle situation.
She wants to see more vocational instruction in high school as many students are probably not situated for college. She wants courses to prepare students for jobs in technology and cybersecurity, as well as healthcare with the number of expanded medical facilities opening in White Plains.
She thinks that too much money is being spent on non-essential capital projects rather than services. She thinks it’s a poor decision to drop some courses to have state of the art bleachers at the athletic fields.
Dr. Mohammed S Chowdhury:
He has been a White Plains resident since 2002. He is a physician.
He has not been involved in the school and was not knowledgeable about any of the metrics or issues mentioned above. His one son graduated from the school last year and he is seeking to volunteer now. He mentioned that he would tutor.
WP School Board Assessment
Sheryl Brady and Charlie Norris are pretty interchangeable. Both are liberals who have lots of institutional knowledge and having one of them is enough. Julia Oliva seemed very engaged but it is unclear how she would function in a committee setting. Dr. Chowdhury is ill-prepared to serve on the board with no involvement in education and no child at the school.
With 14% of the WP student body not attending public schools, I suggest someone with students in private school run for the school board next year. There are no monies going to compensate students at other schools for their transportation, tutoring or food which happens for the public schools. The 78% of the budget being borne by residents must get pushback from someone at the board and the two incumbents are unlikely to so.
The White Plains Teachers Association bargaining agreement ends in June 2026. It is important to have someone looking out for taxpayers on the school board.
Be involved in the budget process and get information at (914) 422-2071 or email budget@wpcsd.us. There is a Board of Education meeting on May 12 at 7:30 at the High School Auditorium and a League of Women Voters meet the candidates on May 13 at 7:00pm at the WP High School Library Media Center.
New Rochelle School Board
New Rochelle has a nine member board serving five year terms. Two spots are available in 2025 and five people are competing: Myriam Decime, Elana Jacob, Jessica Klein, Dr. Rosa Rivera-McCutchen, and Keith Singletary.
Jacob and Klein are both from the local Jewish community which is looking to continue to build on its grassroots activism which helped get rid of Congressman Jamaal Bowman in the 2024 Democratic primary. Rivera-McCutchen is closely aligned with Bowman and Decime is also part of the Black “progressive” movement. The school board election is a mini rematch of the heated NY16 congressional contest. Singletary is a CPA and focused on risk assessment and a much more reasonable choice than the other Black candidates as the NR public schools are in bad fiscal health.
The League of Women Voters will hold an in-person candidate forum on Monday, May 12, at 6 pm at City Hall and the New Rochelle Chapter of the NAACP will hold an online forum with the Board of Education candidates on Sunday, May 18, at 4 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 997 9688 1792, Passcode: 607622). To speak at a public hearing contact mbonilla@nredlearn.org, 914-576-4219.
Conclusion
White Plains: WP residents are paying an astronomical $40,000 per public school student, and are covering 78% of that cost – well in excess of the state average of 50% or New Rochelle’s 67%. The WP board budget presentation that “staff salaries are in line with collective bargaining agreements” and that the taxes are not as high as they could have been, is grossly misleading. The school board has been pouring money into professional quality facilities and an incredibly high number of teachers relative to the student population, while Black students are doing terribly in English, Hispanic students are doing poorly in science, and 14% of the students not in public school are getting nothing.
Reject the budget to lower the budget by $3.4 million.
Remove one of the long-serving board members with Julia Oliva to reorient the schools more to services than gold-plated facilities.
A parent from the private school community should run in the 2026 election – all that’s needed is 100 signatures from within the district.
New Rochelle: The vast majority of the nine member school board is from the Black community which makes up 19% of the student body and overall population. It would be a terrible outcome to see members of the far-left get seats on the school board.
Vote for Jacob and Klein to get proper representation and overall balance on the board.
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.
First One Through 