A report from a Jewish teachers' group cataloging at least 250 antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents in New York City public schools landed on Mayor Zohran Mamdani's desk, the same mayor who scrapped the city's antisemitism definition earlier this year.
United Jewish Teachers, an organization representing Jewish educators in the city's school system, compiled the incidents spanning from the October 7, 2023 terror attacks on Israel through the current school year and sent the findings to Mamdani and schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels. The group's president, Moshe Spern, offered a blunt assessment of the administration's response so far: "It's what I would expect. They haven't done anything to address antisemitism."
The numbers paint a grim picture across all five boroughs. Sixty-five percent of the documented cases involved what the report calls "direct acts", harassment, vandalism, assaults, swastikas drawn or carved on school property, and verbal threats against Jewish students and staff. Another 23 percent involved biased classroom instruction about Israel and the Middle East. Ten percent involved organized walkouts, with the remainder covering other staff actions, including social media posts.
Brooklyn accounted for the largest share at 37 percent of all incidents. Queens followed at 27 percent, Manhattan at 25 percent, the Bronx at 9 percent, and Staten Island at 2 percent.
The report, first reported by the New York Post, details specific incidents that illustrate the scope of the problem. On January 27, someone carved a swastika into a blackboard at Brooklyn Tech High School, one of the city's most prestigious public schools. On May 1, a student at Townsend High School in Queens was harassed for planning to join the Israel Defense Forces after graduation. On May 28, a flyer appeared in the hallway at Flushing High School in Queens displaying a Nazi symbol and calling Israel an apartheid state.
In one November incident, a teacher at Manhattan's Heritage High School attended a disruptive anti-Israel protest outside Park East Synagogue. That a city employee, someone entrusted with educating children, would participate in a hostile demonstration outside a house of worship captures the kind of institutional failure the report describes.
The report's language is direct. United Jewish Teachers wrote that "the data reveal a persistent pattern of hostility directed at Jewish students, educators, and staff" and that "these incidents have created hostile learning and working environments across the system."
Spern went further, pointing to a systemic breakdown in accountability:
"Many incidents documented by United Jewish Teachers show limited or no effective follow-through by school or district leadership, allowing hostile conditions to persist. These patterns have continued across multiple school years, indicating that existing policies and practices have not adequately protected Jewish members of the school community."
The UJT report does not exist in a vacuum. The city's own school data on student-on-student bullying, harassment, and discrimination based on religion tells a parallel story. In the 2018, 2019 school year, the last full year before COVID, the system recorded 151 such incidents. By 2022, 2023, that number had surged to 367. It climbed again to 398 in the 2023, 2024 school year, the first full year after the October 7 attacks. The 2024, 2025 school year recorded 319 incidents.
Spern noted that most of those religion-based incidents are likely directed at Jewish students, a reasonable inference given that NYPD data shows more than half of all citywide hate crime incidents this year have been deemed antisemitic.
One critical gap makes the problem harder to track and harder to fix: city schools do not break down hate episodes by specific religion. A system serving more than a million students cannot tell the public how many incidents target Jewish kids specifically versus students of other faiths. That blind spot, whether by design or bureaucratic inertia, makes accountability nearly impossible.
The report arrived at City Hall during a period when the Mamdani administration has moved in the opposite direction from what Jewish community leaders have demanded. In January, Mamdani, described as a staunch critic of Israel, scrapped the executive order issued by former Mayor Eric Adams that adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism. That definition, used by dozens of countries and institutions worldwide, provides a framework for identifying when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism.
Mamdani's decision to rescind it fits a broader pattern. Jewish leaders have raised alarms about the mayor's posture toward their community, and his administration has faced scrutiny on multiple fronts.
The UJT report now asks Mamdani to reverse course. Among its recommendations: adopt the IHRA definition across all Department of Education regulations, policies, and professional training. The report also calls for mandatory NYPD investigation and evidence preservation whenever hate graffiti appears in schools, a central DOE public portal that regularly reports antisemitic incidents, mandatory antisemitism training for staff, and a review of curriculum materials for biased narratives about Israel and the Middle East.
Whether any of those recommendations gain traction under this mayor remains an open question. Federal investigators have separately probed financial ties between a Mamdani ally and an anti-Israel network, adding another layer of scrutiny to the administration's posture on these issues.
A representative for Chancellor Samuels responded to the report with a statement that read like boilerplate:
"New York City Public Schools is focused on ensuring that every student and educator is safe and respected in school. We have a zero tolerance for hate or bias, including antisemitism, and investigate and respond to all reported incidents in accordance with our Chancellor's Regulations and applicable laws."
The spokesperson also pointed to the DOE's "Respect for All" program, which assigns a dedicated staff member at every school to lead anti-bullying and bias prevention efforts. The department maintains an Anti-Hate Hotline and an online reporting form for students, staff, and community members.
But 250 documented incidents across nearly three school years, with what UJT describes as "limited or no effective follow-through", suggests the gap between the DOE's stated policy and its actual performance is wide. A "zero tolerance" policy that tolerates swastikas carved into blackboards and Nazi flyers posted in hallways is not zero tolerance. It is a slogan.
The Mamdani administration's broader record of accountability failures makes the DOE's assurances harder to take at face value. A major policy misstep earlier exposed the personal information of nearly a million New Yorkers, and the mayor has faced criticism for his handling of other civic obligations.
Spern and his organization have drawn a clear line: the problem is not a lack of reporting mechanisms or hotline numbers. The problem is that when incidents are reported, the system does not act. Jewish students watch swastikas appear in their schools. Jewish teachers see colleagues join hostile protests outside synagogues. And the administration that could set a different tone instead dismantled the very framework designed to define and combat antisemitism.
Mamdani has already drawn the ire of victims' families for skipping a memorial honoring those lost in a prior terror attack. His willingness to show up for New York's Jewish community, in policy, not just in press statements, remains equally in doubt.
When a city's schools cannot keep Nazi symbols off the walls and its mayor will not even adopt a common definition of the hatred behind them, the message to Jewish families is unmistakable, and no hotline number will fix it.