Canoga Park Senior High School, a 112-year-old public school in the Los Angeles area with about 1,400 students, has taken sufficient action to comply with a Los Angeles Unified School District deadline to correct a “hostile” environment against Jews and Israelis, according to Nidia Castro, the school’s principal since 2024.
When JNS asked Castro if she thought the school would meet the district’s deadline on Thursday, the principal responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!”
JNS sought comment from the district, the country’s second-largest, with more than 375,000 students across more than 600 schools.
On Oct. 19, the district ruled that teachers at Canoga Park Senior High violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the state education code with anti-Israel advocacy at school that fomented a “hostile” environment against Jews and Israelis.
The North American Values Institute shared its determination, which addressed the behavior of three teachers at the school, with JNS. The institute was the complainant, and the district’s determination came in response to emails the institute shared exclusively with JNS.
Dana Stangel-Plowe, chief program officer at NAVI, told JNS that “it’s heartening to see school leaders stepping up to hold teachers accountable.”
“In a politically difficult environment, Los Angeles Unified decided to put a stop to teacher conduct that crossed the line into unlawful advocacy,” she said. “The real test will be whether the district follows through with meaningful enforcement to ensure a safe learning environment for all students.”
The emails from the school show that teachers used the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on campus as “a shell organization to carry out their own protest actions and activism on campus” and used “the classroom as a tool for activism,” according to NAVI.
The district found that one of the teachers “incorporated political advocacy into portions of the school-sponsored dance program” and “choreographed the performances, stated that she taught students about Palestinian resistance through the music, movements and history and characterized the students as ‘taking a stand.’”
“The evidence does not establish that Teacher 1 presented these messages for critical examination or distinguished Palestinian cultural instruction from her own political advocacy,” the district found.
“The evidence does not establish that students’ grades or dance-team participation depended on adopting Teacher 1’s political position,” but the “instructional conduct was biased in favor of people associated with Palestine and the conflict involving another nation state or related ethnic group (Israel or shared Jewish ancestry),” the district found.
The district also found that the teacher “used her position and school procedures to recruit students” to the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.
“In June 2026, she requested that 49 students be summoned to attend an SJP meeting, and the summonses were delivered during instructional time,” the district said. “The instructional conduct was biased in favor of people associated with Palestine and the conflict involving another nation-state or related ethnic group (Israel or shared Jewish ancestry).”
‘Contributed to discriminatory environment’
Students also told the district that a different teacher “encouraged SJP participation and promoted the club through classroom flyers and discussions,” behavior that the district found “exceeded neutral employee supervision of a student organization and conveyed employee support for the club and its political position.”
The district found that the three teachers “wore keffiyehs at school, including during instruction, while expressing political support, discussing Gaza or genocide or promoting SJP.”
A student told the district that one of the three teachers “wore a keffiyeh during instruction, discussed current news each morning, cried while discussing what was happening to children in Palestine and held a moment of silence for Palestinian children.”
One of the three displayed flyers in the classroom that, among other things, stated that Israel’s “genocide in Gaza” orphaned Palestinian children and that “Israel kills” and the “United States of America pays,” according to the district.
The flyers “contributed to the discriminatory environment” against Jews and Israelis, the district found.
The district ruled that one of the teachers “repeatedly connected Israel and Gaza to genocide during instructional time,” and students reported that he compared Gaza to the Holocaust and told the class that he wore a keffiyeh to support Gazans.
“Teacher 3 used his instructional authority to present Israel through a repeated genocide and displacement narrative, expressed support for Palestinians and encouraged students to join the associated student organization,” the district found.
“Teacher 3’s repeated instructional framing, personal endorsement and recruitment added to the environment hostile to students associated with Israeli national origin and Jewish shared ancestry,” it said.
The school principal authorized a display in the campus library that communicated “a one-sided political account in which Palestinians were presented solely as victims and Israel solely as the aggressor,” the district found.
That “contributed to a discriminatory environment” against Jews and Israelis, it said. It noted that the principal gave the three teachers and the librarian permission to be involved in the display’s creation.
The district told the school to take a series of measures, including “periodic monitoring to ensure that Teachers 1, 2 and 3 implement professional, standards-aligned instructional practices that avoid partisan bias and advocacy.” It also had to remove the anti-Israel flyers from the teacher’s classroom by Thursday.
That deadline is the one about which JNS asked Castro.
The district also told the school that it has until Nov. 18 to review “SJP’s governing documents, meeting practices and staff supervision” and until Dec. 18 to implement training on Jew-hatred and other forms of discrimination for all teachers and administrators at the school.
