An upstate New York school district has agreed
to pay $4.48 million and enact broad reforms in curriculum and training to
settle a lawsuit by five current and former Jewish students who claimed that
they had been victims of pervasive antisemitism in the schools, a court filing
on Monday showed.
The civil rights lawsuit, filed in 2012, had
accused officials of the Pine Bush Central School District, which is about 90
minutes north of New York City, of failing for years to take action to protect
the Jewish students from antisemitic bullying, slurs and other intimidation.
The students had told of finding swastikas
drawn on walls, desks, lockers and other school property; of being subjected to
epithets and nicknames; and of being shoved and beaten, according to
depositions in the lawsuit and later interviews with The New York Times. The
students also described terrifying bus rides with classmates leading “white
power” chants and making Nazi salutes.
The agreement, which still must be approved by
Judge Kenneth M. Karas, calls for the students to receive two-thirds of the
$4.48 million settlement, with their lawyers receiving the rest. The deal comes
two weeks before the case was to go to trial in United States District Court in
White Plains.
“Antisemitic
harassment is wrong,” the school district and the plaintiffs said in a joint statement posted on Monday on the
Pine Bush website. “The district will never condone antisemitic slurs or
graffiti, Holocaust ‘jokes’ or physical violence. No family should have to
experience the hurt and pain that bullying and name-calling can cause children
to endure because of their religious, national or cultural identity.” The
district does not admit fault in the settlement.
Judge Karas will retain jurisdiction over the
matter for three years to enforce the terms of the agreement, according to the
settlement document, which was filed on Monday. The judge was expected to take
up the matter at a hearing on Tuesday, but a court spokesman said the matter
would be heard on July 9.
The 2012 lawsuit charged that “deliberate
indifference” by school officials had allowed the antisemitic harassment to
persist across grade levels in three of the district’s schools. As a result,
the students’ grades had suffered, and they became withdrawn and depressed, the
suit said.
Pine Bush officials had
vigorously fought the suit, arguing that they had responded properly by holding
anti-bullying assemblies and imposing discipline when it was appropriate. The
school district, west of Newburgh, N.Y., serves about 5,600 children from Orange,
Sullivan and Ulster Counties. In the 1970s, Pine Bush was
the home of a Ku Klux
Klan chapter president.
It was not clear how the district, which has a $109 million
budget, according to its website, would cover the cost of the settlement. In
May, Pine Bush’s lawyers said in a court filing that the district’s insurance
carrier had “denied coverage for this case.” The district said on Monday that
it believed the settlement funds “should be covered” and that it would proceed
with litigation against the insurer.
The settlement calls for mandatory training for teachers and
staff members on how to recognize and report anti-Semitic graffiti,
name-calling, insults and other such harassment; the district must also
maintain a broad diversity and anti-bullying curriculum, developed with the
Anti-Defamation League.
The
school district must revise its policies against discrimination and bullying to
ensure that they cover and prohibit anti-Semitic harassment, and such episodes
must be “promptly and thoroughly” investigated.
Pine
Bush would also be required to institute “meaningful, consistent, minimum
consequences” for anti-Semitic harassment and increase its severity for
repeated instances. And the district must promptly photograph and remove any
anti-Semitic graffiti that appears on school property.
In 2013, after The Times published an extensive article about the case and the broader issue
of anti-Semitism at Pine Bush, federal and state authorities opened civil rights investigations
into the allegations.
Last year, the office of Preet Bharara, the United States
attorney for the Southern District of New York, filed a statement of interest in the case that said the evidence was
“sufficient for a jury to find that the district failed to respond to pervasive
anti-Semitic harassment in its schools” by taking action required under a civil
rights law.
In
November, Judge Karas denied the district’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit in the case of
three plaintiffs. While not ruling on the merits of the case, the judge said a
jury could reasonably find that the plaintiffs had “suffered severe and
discriminatory harassment, that the district had actual knowledge of the
harassment, and that the district was deliberately indifferent to the
harassment.”
The
settlement also requires the district to seek assistance for three years from
the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights in revising policies, training and
curriculum that are part of the agreement.
“The
purpose of the required reforms is simple: to ensure that no student in the
district has to endure such horrific anti-Semitic or racist harassment ever
again,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Ilann M. Maazel of the firm Emery Celli
Brinckerhoff & Abady, wrote in the court filing.
The
Jewish students, in depositions, accused at least 35 students of anti-Semitic
acts, but they and their parents said their complaints were not taken
seriously. The lawsuit cited a 2011 email from Philip G. Steinberg, the
superintendent at the time, responding to a parent’s complaint about harassment
of her daughter and another Jewish student. “I have said I will meet with your
daughters and I will,” Mr. Steinberg wrote, “but your expectations for changing
inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic.”
Mr.
Steinberg, who is Jewish and has retired from the district, said in an
interview at the time that the lawsuit was a “money grab” and that some of the
plaintiff’s claims were “embellished.” He declined to comment on Monday.
Adele
P. Kimmel, a lawyer with Public Justice, a legal group based in Washington that
served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said the reforms in the Pine Bush
settlement “are a blueprint for what school districts across the country should
do to prevent and address bullying in their schools.”
