The nation’s largest public school district is under investigation by the Trump administration over allegations of antisemitism.
The Education Department said its Office for Civil Rights has opened a probe into whether the New York City Department of Education violated Title VI by discriminating against Jewish students with its anti-Israel advocacy.
The department cited reports indicating that department employees organized teaching seminars on “Palestine, Zionism, and Resistance,” while a group called NYC Educators for Palestine teaches children as young as age 5 to support Hamas “martyrs” and oppose Zionists as “genocidal white supremacists.”
“Complaints received by OCR allege that these actions in NYCDOE teach and sow hostility and hatred towards Jewish students, potentially creating a hostile environment,” the department said in a Thursday statement.
Kimberly Richey, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement, “No child should be taught by his or her teachers to hate their peers.
“Neither should Jewish children be taught that being Jewish somehow makes them inherently guilty or proponents of hate and violence. Discrimination has no place in our schools, and, unlike the previous Administration, the Trump Administration will not turn a blind eye to antisemitic harassment. OCR will investigate these appalling allegations to ensure the equal treatment of all students.”
The nation’s largest school district by enrollment counted 906,248 students in the 2024-25 academic year, although the district reportedly lost about 22,000 students at the start of this academic year, bringing the number down to 884,400.
A district spokesperson said the department is reviewing the complaint, but added that the NYC Educators for Palestine group is “not connected to the New York City Public Schools.”
Those so-called educators have called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to divest the retirement system from “Israeli genocide and apartheid,” plus require instruction about the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians and Israeli “war crimes,” according to the Center Square news site.
Under Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the department has launched numerous investigations into possible violations of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin, including Jewish identity or ancestry, in education programs that receive federal funding.
The probes include high-profile antisemitism investigations into major universities such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley.
Other K-12 school districts facing federal antisemitism scrutiny include the Berkeley Unified School District and Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.
