Back to school should not mean back to fear for Jewish students

It’s back to school time and many Jewish families are worried about much more than just shopping for new shoes and school supplies. They are concerned that their children may not be safe because they are Jewish.

Alongside math and reading, school is where children learn where they fit into society and whether the surrounding adults will protect them, but the recent rise in antisemitic threats and violence is putting all of that in jeopardy.

According to the New York Police Department, antisemitic hate crimes increased by 8.5% in New York City in the first seven months of 2026. The majority of hate crimes in the city were anti-Jewish, despite Jewish New Yorkers being only a tenth of the population.

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But it’s not just a New York problem.

Recent FBI statistics show that, although Jews only make up only 2% of the U.S. population, they were the victims of 16% of all reported hate crimes and nearly 70% of all religion-based hate crimes.

And 10% of those crimes happened in schools. Antisemitic incidents at K-12 schools have increased 434% since 2020.

While rising antisemitism has resulted in real-world violence that directly impacts the Jewish community, it is a problem for our entire society and requires a whole-of-society response, with our cultural and political leaders stepping up.

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Online platforms must enforce their own rules against incitement and threats. Research has found that 74% of Americans who encountered antisemitism saw or heard it online or on social media. Two thirds of Jewish adults who experienced this did not report it because they did not think anything would be done.

Imagine how much more profound this is for both Jewish and non-Jewish children. Students often carry what they see online into their real lives. A culture that excuses online antisemitism eventually meets students at the school locker, the bus stop and the classroom.

Schools cannot solve every social failure, but they can set the standard for how a free society responds to hate.

The U.S. Department of Education issued a letter reminding schools "Title VI protects all students, including students who are or are perceived to be Jewish, from discrimination," and that "schools must take immediate and appropriate action to respond to harassment that creates a hostile environment."

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Administrators should say plainly that antisemitism is unacceptable, whether it appears as a threat, a slur, a swastika, harassment over Jewish identity or intimidation tied to Israel or Zionism.

Further, education must be more than a one-off assembly after an incident. Students should learn what antisemitism is, how it mutates across political movements, conspiracy theories, and social media trends and why targeting Jews corrodes civic life for everyone.

Schools and law enforcement should coordinate before a crisis. Every school that serves Jewish students should have a clear plan for reporting threats, preserving evidence, communicating with families and protecting students who are targeted. This means treating credible threats and hate crimes as serious matters from the start.

Importantly, safety has to be treated as a public responsibility, not a private surcharge on Jewish families. My organization, Teach Coalition, has found that Jewish schools spend more than $400,000 a year on security, more than $1,000 per student, money that could otherwise support teachers, scholarships, mental health services and academic programs.

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Public funding must meet the scale of the threat. The FEMA Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) helps nonprofits at high risk of terrorist attack, providing $274.5 million for security measures last year. But only 27% of 2025 applications were approved.

If threats are rising and three-quarters of qualified applicants are turned away, Congress should quadruple NSGP funding to a billion dollars and make the process faster and more predictable.

Leaders should stop treating antisemitism as someone else’s problem. School boards, governors, mayors, clergy, union leaders, parent associations and cultural figures all shape the norms children absorb.

A whole-of-society response means better education, stronger security, lawful accountability, responsible technology and the moral clarity to say that Jewish students should never have to hide who they are in order to learn.