Every student deserves a school environment where they feel safe, respected, and free to learn without fear of harassment or discrimination. The OCR agreement is an essential step in ensuring this for Jewish students in Howard County Public Schools. You can find the letter to Superintendent Barnes here.

Key points:

• Recognition of Harm: The OCR’s findings validate the experiences of Jewish students and families who had repeatedly reported feeling unsafe or marginalized due to antisemitic bullying and harassment.
• Requiring Transparency: The OCR agreement requires HCPSS to start properly tracking and reporting incidents of hate/bias including to OCR so that systemic issues are not swept under the rug.
• Training and Mitigation: We welcome the OCR agreement, but are concerned that the same team that ignored or dismissed the problem for so long may now be tasked with implementing the solution. HoCoJAG believes training and mitigation must be guided by nationally recognized experts on K-12 antisemitism such as the CAMERA Education Institute, The Brandeis Center, the Anti-Defamation League, or the American Jewish Committee.
• Accountability: HCPSS must hold faculty, staff, and student organizations accountable for acts that create a hostile environment for any protected class. Violations of HCPSS bullying, harassment, and anti-discrimination policies must come with consequences. 
• Title VI Responsibilities: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act requires schools to counter a hostile environment for any protected class (including Jews) regardless of how that environment was created. OCR is very clear that even if the hostile environment is caused by protected political speech, it does not relieve the school of its obligations.

HoCoJAG sent a letter to the Baltimore Banner in response to an article that mistakenly indicated that Black men and women are most likely to be victims of hate/bias crimes. Although it’s a bad competition to win, Jews are actually most likely of any group to be victims of hate/bias crimes, both statewide in Maryland and locally in Howard County. The letter provides the detailed statistics and supporting resources to demonstrate this. We ask the Banner to help increase awareness of the severity and extent of antisemitism.