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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC in our spring membership drive, trying to reach our goal of 10,000 donors. Thank you for being one if you can. New York City Schools Chancellor, David Banks is back with us. He was in the news most recently for testifying before the House Education Committee about antisemitism in New York City Public Schools. He got some mostly good press for that, for acknowledging that it's a real problem that needs to be dealt with, with consequences, and he gave some specifics, but at the same time, not getting rolled by Elise Stefanik, you know what I mean? Who may have just been out for his head.

At one point, Stefanik asked Banks about Origins High School in Sheepshead Bay where a Jewish teacher is suing the education department over repeated expressions of antisemitism that she alleges were "effectively and promoted and encouraged" at the school. Here is a little bit, just like 30 seconds of Banks and Stefanik on Origins High School.

David Banks: What we have found are wide range, deeply troubling, antisemitic things that have happened at Origins High School. This is the one case that has troubled me the most, Congresswoman, I will tell you that. We have--

Elise Stefanik: What are the enforcement actions?

David Banks: I'm trying to tell you, we have in fact suspended a number of students at that school, but currently this case now is under litigation, and I'm being advised not to speak to the specific things that have happened there, but just know that I have visited that school after these allegations have come up. I met with parents, family, staff, students. I'm deeply troubled by what has happened there and we're going to get to the bottom of it.

Brian Lehrer: That from the hearing last Wednesday. Chancellor David Banks joins us on that and more now. Chancellor, always appreciate when you come on. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Banks: Thank you so much, Brian. A pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Would you start by picking up on that snippet of testimony, understanding that the lawsuits limit what you can say in the media right now. I'm sure people would like to hear whatever you can say about what you acknowledge in that clip was really bad.

David Banks: Listen, that clip was very specific about Origins High School. Origins High School is a small high school that's inside of what people may remember, Sheepshead Bay High School, in the Sheepshead Bay section of the city. I've gone to the school. There were a number of allegations that were made at the school, much of which we found out through the press initially.

What was most interesting to me about that was that the person who brought it to the press was really the person who was an administrator at the school, who was responsible for reporting it to us and never reported these, a number of issues never reported to us through our tracking system but took it to the press. Then I was being held to account by the press to respond. We've had to address that issue as well, but what is going on there we've since found are number of issues, even more than those that were reported in the press.

It's disturbing. We're still investigating, trying to get to the bottom of all of it, and we should have some findings on it very soon. Brian, I think the big point there is that wherever we are finding these issues or wherever they're being raised, we do respond. That notion in Washington DC that somehow or another we are not doing anything is absolutely false and really just ridiculous. We have nothing to hide. These are teachable moments for us, so we've got to apply the right consequences where necessary, but more importantly, we got to make sure that we teach.

We've engaged the Simon Wiesenthal Center which is really just well versed in how to engage school communities in solving for these issues. They're working very closely with us at a number of schools, including Origins High School. At the end of the day, that's what we got to focus on. How do you teach young people so that they show up in a much better ways than you will see from time to time.

Brian Lehrer: You said in the clip that Origins High School is the place where I think you said something to the effect of, you've been the most shocked, or that's been the most serious in terms of the antisemitism that got explicitly expressed. Take us citywide, if you can pull out the lens. I think a lot of American Jews are shocked at what we've seen since October 7th. Not that there was an antisemitism before, to be sure, but the number of expressions of it.

I don't mean denouncing the way the war is being fought in Gaza, which is an issue, or being anti-Zionist even, which even Jews debate among ourselves, but treating individual American Jews with hatred and contempt just for being identifiably Jewish, where yarmulke is a risk now of at least incurring derision more than before, how shocked are you by what you've seen people openly expressing?

David Banks: It's not only shocking to me but it's completely unacceptable. You wonder how kids 14 or 15 years old would show up like this. You begin, I think, Brian, to realize as an example, I went to Hillcrest High School and there was a teacher at Hillcrest High School who was targeted in many ways just for being Jewish, and completely unacceptable. We worked to get to the bottom of that situation there. We did, we ultimately moved the principal out of the school.

What we're seeing citywide, Brian, issues of people drawing swastikas on bathroom walls and engaged in some hateful rhetoric. When you talk to some of the kids, you realize that many of them are not even sure what they're even doing. They don't even know what a swastika represents. Or when they say from the river to the sea, they're parroting a lot of what they see from older adults and what they're watching on social media.

That's what I mean when I say we've got to respond by educating these kids. You're not filled with hate when you're 13 and 14 years old. You're being led by misinformation and a lack of exposure. That's why I say at the end of the day, the real antidote to this is about how we educate. That's the reason why I push back so much in Congress, because to me, they were not really about how do you solve for this? They were really about got you moments and creating viral moments, see who you can get in trouble, but at the end of the day, that does not help the Jewish community.

Brian, you should also know, we have lots of cases as well against the Muslim community. I've got cases where people have pulled a hijab off of a young lady who's 16 years old. It's like the ultimate violation. We've had teachers who've said horribly Islamophobic things to kids. It's a bad situation on both sides. It just, again, strongly suggests that we have a lot of work to do to help all of our kids and our teachers to meet this moment. You do that through education. I can't discipline our way to solving this. You have to do the appropriate discipline, but at the end of the day, you got to teach.

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on that because I noticed in the testimony you talked about disciplining students as well as some staff where you found it appropriate. To your point, if we're talking about a 14-year-old kid, let's say, not fully formed by any means, maybe subject to antisemitic contagion and saying hateful things or even drawing a swastika really hateful, but it's a kid. How do you find the right balance of punishing and educating?

David Banks: It is not easy to find the right balance. We deal with each one of these cases individually. There's a difference in terms of how you would deal with a kid drawing a swastika on a bathroom wall in their high school versus doodling in their notebook. They're two different kinds of expressions and so you got to look at everyone within the context of which they happen. These are not just black and white issues. They're very much in the gray area, and you got to deal with them that way while still trying to provide a level of guidance.

We've trained all 1,600 principals in the city on how to engage our disciplinary code and we are going to continue to do more because the initial feedback was that many of our school leaders did not feel that the guidance that we gave was specific enough to issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

We are very much engaged in a process here, Brian. We didn't start out saying we've got all the answers, which is part of the reason why I was trying to say to Congress if they really want to help, they can call a national convening to really try to help all of us figure this out. I don't think Congress is concerned at all about trying to solve for this. If they were, we didn't hear one question that said, how can we help you? It was all designed to just see if we can catch you in a got you moment. To me, that's not helpful. That's not responsible leadership. I think we need to be moving very differently and we can all be learning from each other. This is a challenging moment for school systems all across the nation. This is not generally what teachers and principals sign up for. Our job is to educate, and all of a sudden, we've all been thrust into the middle of a very emotionally fraught crisis that is happening in the Middle East. We're all being told, "You better figure out how to solve for this. We're expecting you to have all the answers." We need to work together to come up with the answers.

Brian Lehrer: Is this the hardest thing you've ever had to manage as an education leader in terms of intergroup relations, both ways for that matter, in the schools?

David Banks: I would say so, Brian. I've had to deal with a lot of tough issues over the years, but this is probably the toughest because what we're dealing with here is history. We're talking about religion, culture, life, and death that is playing out in front of our eyes in real-time. I had one of the young ladies at Hillcrest High School say to me, "With all due respect, Mr. Chancellor, this was bound to happen." I said, "Why would you say that?" She said, "Because we're watching social media every day."

The kids don't watch the major news channels, they watch social media. They're being inundated with images and, quite frankly, a lot of images that are playing out in Gaza. A lot of these kids in these schools are also Muslim and Arabic background. They have a strong connection to that community. They're seeing babies being killed every day. They're saying, "We come to school, and nobody helps us to unpack it."

The adults are afraid to touch it because no one wants to be accused of saying one wrong word and now they're being accused of being Islamophobic or being anti-Semitic. The adults are scared to even address this. That's what we've-- We have a lot of work in front of us. We've engaged groups like Facing History and Ourselves who are skilled in how to help adults navigate this because that's the biggest challenge we have, Brian. How do we help our teachers and our administrators to be able to have responsible conversations with kids? We allow the kids to get their voices heard, get their emotions out, but do it in ways that are responsible and not hurtful to others. That's easier said than done.

Brian Lehrer: Indeed. What's an example of what you're trying to do at the education level that might be new because you've said several times in this conversation that the main path out is education.

David Banks: We are in the process of creating a brand-new curriculum that I'm very excited about. We have a series of curricula here that are called Hidden Voices and we've done already major one for the AAPI community. Just a couple of months ago, we released one on the global African diaspora, and talking about the contributions of African Americans and Africans around the world. It's been met with a great reception. We've done one for the LGBTQ+ community.

Now we're working on one for the Jewish history as well as Muslim history. The Jewish history is much greater than just teaching about the Holocaust. Right now, we are mandated by the state to teach about the Holocaust, and we do. In many of our ELA classes, we use a lot of Jewish literature. We read books like The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Weisel's Night and many others. To have a very comprehensive program that can be used by every grade across the city and across our system does not exist.

That's what we are developing now. We're going to be working with scholars, professors, community members in this process. It'll take us about a year to do it. It doesn't happen overnight, but it is one that we are very, very excited to be engaged in. We're working with the Museum of Jewish Heritage who are playing a major role with us on creating more resources around anti-Semitism and we're working with other Muslim groups to help us with that community as well.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think then, looking back, that there wasn't enough specific education about Jewish culture and Jewish history in the public schools? I know one of the complaints that's come up from some advocates for Jewish students at the college level is that so many other groups have been treated with specific departments, specific histories because of the history of marginalization, but that Jews were seen as, in most cases, with what they call access to whiteness in America or more privileged economically on average, as it's turned out. There wasn't the attention paid in an academic or cultural sense to that particular minority group, and that's coming home to roost now.

David Banks: There's probably something to be said for that, Brian. We've done a number of things that celebrate the history of the Jewish people in our schools, but I think it's moments like this that help us to understand that there's so much more that we should be doing. It's not just what they're reading about in the book. We have to create more moments of exposure. Since I've become chancellor, we've sent a couple of thousand kids to visit the Jewish Children's Museum on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.

It's amazing to see kids go there and be exposed to so many things that they did not know about the Jewish community. We've sent thousands of kids who go and visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan. More and more, we've got to continue to create ways for kids to get to know one another. Because when kids get to know one another, that's the game changer. A Millennium High School in Brooklyn is a classic example that when all this broke out after October 7th, those kids from the Jewish Students' Organization and the Muslim Student Organization came together and said, "We will not be divided. We love each other. We work together."

They wrote a beautiful op-ed about how they continue to stand together. I think it's a classic example of what we mean when we say to have a level of exposure to each other and you realize each other's common heritage, customs, traditions, rituals, and just your humanity. But you know what's interesting about that too, Brian, is even in their unity together, those student groups have received hateful mail from people saying, "You should not be joining together. This is war and you have to choose a side."

Those are the things that adults will invoke even on young people. Here's kids who are just trying to figure out how to be together in peace and love and there are people who don't even want to see that happen.

Brian Lehrer: New York City Schools Chancellor, David Banks, thanks for coming on and talking through some of this tough stuff with us, being accessible to follow up on that contentious hearing in Congress last week and talked about some of these complexities and what you're trying to do. I hope you'll come back soon, and we'll talk about reading and writing and math and science and pre-K and 3K and educational disparities in terms of outcomes and all that stuff too. But-

David Banks: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: -this is the issue of the moment. Thank you for doing this with us. We really appreciate it.

David Banks: Thank you, Brian. We will meet this moment. Thank you so much.

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