DOE hears no evil in ‘hate-chant probe’
City schools Chancellor David Banks denied reports of heinous chants of “Death to Israel” and “Kill the Jews” at a Brooklyn high school during a congressional hearing this week — but critics say the Department of Education never investigated.
“We have found no evidence that that actually happened,” Banks told House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of the alleged chants at Origins HS, where Jewish teachers and students say they have been terrorized by antisemitic teens.
“Just because something was written on the front page of a tabloid doesn’t it make it true . . . . We have to investigate,” Banks said.
The chants were among many disturbing incidents at the embattled Sheepshead Bay school exposed by The Post and now part of a lawsuit on behalf of campus manager Michael Beaudry and former Origins teacher Danielle Kaminsky.
Their lawyer, Jim Walden, says his clients haven’t been contacted for any investigation and that Banks is “talking the talk and not walking the walk.”
“The whole notion that the Origins allegations were investigated is ridiculous,” Walden told The Post following the House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing.
“Banks is not calling anyone to actually get a real understanding of what happened at Origins, or talk about these grandiose solutions that he professed,” he said.
Banks told Stefanik that the DOE has discovered “wide ranging, deeply troubling antisemitic things” at the school — but had not found that students chanted the hateful rhetoric at an Oct. 11 march, just four days after the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Suspicious finding
“[Kaminsky] wasn’t hallucinating,” Walden said. “Why the DOE couldn’t find evidence to corroborate that is highly suspect.”
If asked, she could have provided the names of students who participated and who likely filmed the activity, Walden noted.
“It’s going to be pretty embarrassing for them when I serve discovery very soon,” he said.
The April 3 suit recounts the chronic hostility Kaminsky and other Jews at the school experienced, including her being called a “dirty Jew” and given the Nazi salute, and an email to teachers that said, “All Jews need to be exterminated.”
The administration failed to address the complaints and retaliated against Kaminsky and Beaudry, according to the suit.
At the hearing on Wednesday,
Banks said “a number of students” were suspended but that he couldn’t comment further because of the lawsuit.
“I had visited that school after these allegations have come up,” he said. “I’ve met with parents, families, staff, students. I’m deeply troubled by what has happened there and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
A DOE spokesperson referred questions from The Post back to Wednesday’s hearing.