The House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s recent report, “Antisemitism in K-12 Schools,” found that, in the School District of Philadelphia, “employees—from teachers to senior staff—foment antisemitism in the district” and that they “have been responsible for drafting district curricula.” The result it finds is predictable: The SDP’s curricula “promote ideology justifying violent resistance and legitimize radical groups that incite antisemitism.”
The report helped complete a story pieced together by journalists, activists, and investigators for years. Specifically, how a small group of strategically positioned radicals took over the SDP, the ninth-largest school district in the country.
The basics are simple: A man named Ismael Jimenez, a leading figure in local teachers’ organizations and with allies in numerous organizations, was appointed social studies curriculum director for the SDP. For years, Jimenez and a handful of allies, including Keziah Ridgeway, a woman once suspended for making violent threats against Jewish parents, and Hannah Gann, recently outed as the “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal,” ran circles around an outdated administrative structure. Decision makers either sympathized, were intimidated, or failed to grasp what was happening. SDP Superintendent Tony Watlington failed to provide sufficient supervision.
Antisemitism in the SDP became more pronounced after Oct. 7, 2023. In early 2024, a group of local parents, along with the Anti-Defamation League, filed a civil rights complaint with the Education Department, alleging prevailing antisemitism. The Biden administration investigated and found that the SDP had received “repeated, extensive notice of harassment … that could create a hostile environment,” but failed to take sufficient remedial action. The SDP reached a resolution agreement with the department that required more monitoring and training during Biden’s waning days.
But problems persisted. Curricula, already problematic, got even more radical. Ridgeway, back from suspension, openly hung “Free Palestine” posters in her classrooms that included QR codes that linked to terrorist propaganda. The SDP’s affiliations with problematic organizations deepened rather than recede.
Contributing factors include Philadelphia’s lack of curriculum transparency, an antisemitic and politicized environment in teachers unions, an aggressive effort to punish the district for pushing back, and attempts to intimidate the school board.
But the single most important cause happened a dozen years ago.
In 2014, a group known as the Caucus of Working Educators was formed within the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, an activist unit with the goal of winning power in the union. The CWE put up slates of candidates for offices, including Jimenez for senior and technical vice president. It also provided professional development courses, denouncing “opportunist corporate consultants,” and instead providing courses on “Transcending Resistance, Igniting Revolution,” and the like.
However, the CWE’s agenda was too fringe. Its office seekers struck out. But that didn’t stop them from getting involved in fringe politics, such as demonizing Teach For America, a program that leads to thousands of young teachers joining schools, as a “neoliberal effort” to “replace unionized teachers,” who they claim are disproportionately minorities, with “inexperienced teachers,” who they claim are mostly white.
In 2021, instead of admitting defeat, the CWE formed an outside activist organization known as the Racial Justice Organizing Committee. The RJOC soon issued a list of 10 “demands” of the SDP, including “Culturally Responsive Curriculum,” an allusion to the sort of politicized, antisemitic curricula that have been tearing California apart with lawsuits and legislative emergency maneuvers. While the RJOC started out as a nonprofit organization, its status had ceased by 2024, but the organization continued to operate. No substantive explanation was given, nor were its finances explained.
Around the same time, Philadelphia Educators for Palestine popped up. A “collaboration” between the RJOC and a group called “Building Anti-Racist White Educators,” it is functionally a new face on the RJOC, made up almost entirely of the same people. Leaked texts suggested that involved teachers would simply change which group they worked under depending on the circumstances.
Equally important, Jimenez, a “core member” of the RJOC, became the director of social studies curriculum for the SDP in August 2022. This position had been vacant for nine years. Jimenez had been making incendiary statements, particularly aimed at Jews, for years, saying in 2014 that “Hamas was created after years of Israeli land grabs on agreed borders and repression. I view Israel as an extension of European colonial power and it is the duty of people who are victims of colonialization to resist.”
This rhetoric did not recede after his promotion. On a podcast with Sharif el Mekki, a controversial SDP contractor who runs his own nonprofit group, he took a similar position, saying Oct. 7 “didn’t happen out of the blue” and resulted from people who “feel like their voice has been denied.” The host tried to nudge Jimenez into condemning Hamas’s murders, but Jimenez repeatedly refused. Nor did Jimenez reserve his ire only for Israelis, saying after a Jewish woman was murdered by a terrorist in Boulder, Colorado, that “the groups who align themselves with American savageness should not be surprised when the savageness is turned on you.” Local Jewish groups publicly criticized Jimenez, but he remained at his post.
Jimenez’s radical sentiments were not solely aimed at Jews. A poster on the door of his office in the SDP reads that “Assata Shakur is welcome here.” Shakur was convicted of murdering a policeman, escaped from jail with the help of armed supporters, and spent four decades in Cuba as a fugitive before her death last year. His view of Shakur is consistent with his opinion of America, which he paints as the focal point of imperialism and colonialism, or “AmeriKKKa,” a term Jimenez uses on social media.
The RJOC mirrored Jimenez’s positions, promoting the “March for Mumia” to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, also convicted of murdering a policeman. At least one RJOC-PEFP teacher, Gann, participated in the march and celebrated it in her classroom. The event also called for solidarity with Palestinians.
RJOC-PEFP work also involved agitating at school board meetings, holding “teach-ins,” which discouraged teachers from blaming Hamas for anything in Gaza, encouraging the idea that teaching both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict was “white supremacy,” and holding book clubs to promote “Teaching Palestine,” a curriculum by Rethinking Schools.
Rethinking Schools is an external organization that is present in dozens of districts across the nation. However, it is an integral part of the SDP’s drama. It is an official partner of the next-door New Jersey Education Association, and the managing editor of Rethinking Schools magazine is Adam Sanchez, a former SDP teacher. Sanchez is also a teacher leader in the Zinn Education Project, which is coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teach for Change, another radical curriculum group. In practice, these organizations operate in concert, with Zinn acting as the activist branch for its patrons. Zinn is named for Howard Zinn, a Marxist professor revealed by declassified FBI documents to be a Communist Party USA member.
The “Teaching Palestine” curriculum and Rethinking Schools more broadly are at the core of the problem unearthed by the House committee. The book clubs sponsored by Rethinking Schools and run by RJOC-PEFP teachers include lessons pitching the “Teaching Palestine” curriculum. Lessons such as “Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism” are part of the program.
But it went further. Sanchez worked with his former colleagues, still employed by the SDP, to write lessons for “Teaching Palestine.” Specifically, three SDP teachers and Sanchez wrote a lesson titled “Teaching Palestine-Israel from the Perspective of Civil Rights and Black Power Activists.” Released to coincide with Black History Month, the lesson smuggled pro-Palestinian lessons into black history.
All this amounts to the “unofficial” curriculum of Philadelphia. In the meantime, Jimenez was fashioning the SDP’s “official” suggested curriculum with similar messages. The committee report found that “Settler Colonialism” was a key focus. Israel was predictably painted as the epitome of the phenomenon, which was used to justify attacks on it. The SDP’s 2024-25 instructional guide for social studies teachers revolves around “decolonizing the curriculum.”
Jimenez wasn’t alone. Sanchez later publicly bragged that he worked with Jimenez to craft the SDP’s African American studies curriculum, as well as lessons for Rethinking Schools that were also being used in Philadelphia schools. The fact that Sanchez was facing scrutiny from Congress — Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) objected to an antisemitic presentation he gave to the NJEA — didn’t seem to matter.
Another person listed in committee documents as a social studies “curriculum specialist” is Deborah Wei. In addition to her job at the SDP, Wei is listed on the Zinn Education Project’s staff webpage as a “teach truth campaign organizer.” Released documents indicate that Wei opined that +972 Magazine is a resource that “shouldn’t be questioned.” While ostensibly Israeli, +972 Magazine is heavily funded by foreign left-wing organizations and political party affiliates, and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Wei, now retired, is affiliated with the Asian Arts Initiative, which runs events on “Confronting Zionism.”
Unsurprisingly, SDP curricula released by Congress frequently contain a label saying “this lesson was created using materials from the Racial Justice Organizing Committee.” They also cited Rethinking Schools. Watlington said he only became familiar with such facts in preparation for his committee interview.
Simultaneously, activists were holding more “teach-ins,” including events with Students for Justice in Palestine, a group implicated in campus violence that is under investigation by the Senate, and teaching extremist lessons in class. Some teachers bragged on social media about teaching about “justified violence.” Another lesson plan used by Teacher Frankie, also known as Frida Anderson, a biological woman who is nonbinary, includes lessons such as “Occupation, genocide and war: South Africa vs Israel ICJ Case” and asks students to identify the “10 stages of genocide” in Israel’s conduct. No actions by terrorist groups are discussed. Unsurprisingly, Anderson decried the congressional investigation into the SDP to the school board, blaming “Christian Zionists, war hawks, and politicians that belong in the Hague.”
The RJOC also became involved in supporting a “rage and resistance rally” on Oct. 7, 2025. Promotional material used overtly violent imagery, showing militants with guns and saying “October 7 marks two years since Palestinian resistance fighters bravely broke out of the prison that the zionist regime has turned Gaza into.” The RJOC Instagram account posted, “We must reject all normalization with the zionist regime, uplift indigenous Palestinian resistance, and honor the martyrs.”
In December 2025, a major story broke, reporting that RJOC-PEFP teachers had a Signal chat that included students to discuss their activism. School rules clearly forbade teachers from interacting with students on social media. One chat member, Gann, exposed students to images of a bulldozer with a Palestinian flag running over barbed wire, a clear celebration of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Nonetheless, a chat member who raised concerns about including students was removed, and the students remained. Gann said interacting with students is “a core part of who we are … as organizers.”
Watlington told Congress that “teachers have no business, under any circumstances, communicating with children on private chats.” He said he was unaware of the chat and said no one had faced discipline for breaking SDP rules.
Watlington also said he was unaware that “Ant” Smith, a former SDP teacher who went to jail for flipping over a police car, was repeatedly invited back into the classroom by his former colleagues. Smith, who justified Oct. 7 by saying it was “chickens coming home to roost” and believes that Jews control the media, is now part of leadership at the W.E.B DuBois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction.
This school is not a public school but a radical activist organization that, according to its own words, aims to create a “revolutionary pipeline” into K-12 schools. The Movement School’s lead “coordinator,” Geo Maher, has mused that “all I want for Christmas is white genocide.” It also runs workshops for teachers, in conjunction with SDP teachers, for middle and high school students. Jimenez is on the Movement School’s advisory board, and his wife is on the board of the Abolition Law Center, the Movement School’s financial sponsor.
The pattern is consistent: A key administrator, Jimenez, who was operating with minimal supervision, enabled a group of fringe activists, both SDP employees and employees of outside organizations, to run wild. Conflicts of interest between SDP employees who held positions in outside organizations were rampant. Those who should have been supervising Jimenez and his allies failed to hold them accountable, despite parents’ complaints, national news stories, and a federal Office for Civil Rights resolution.
After the congressional investigation was announced, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) urged the SDP to take the investigation “very seriously.” It seems the district has. Watlington told Congress that Jimenez is being terminated and that the SDP is implementing a standardized social studies curriculum written by national experts. This is necessary and significant progress.
PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS PLAN RALLY CELEBRATING HAMAS’S ‘RAGE AND RESISTANCE’ ON OCT. 7
But Philadelphia’s lessons need to be understood to put a stop to this recurring pattern. Such an ecosystem, with such little accountability, should never have been allowed to develop. Policies to blame are numerous: The SDP did not require sufficient transparency for curriculum or teacher trainings, it did not enforce social media policies, and it did not take into account conflicts of interest. But more fundamentally, it failed to fulfill the student’s fundamental right to a certain level of education, rather than indoctrination.
Watlington also told Congress, “Our goal is to teach students how, not what, to think.” That’s an admirable goal. But the fact that the SDP failed for so many years should haunt not only Jewish Americans, but anyone who believes that children should not be pawns for political advocates masquerading as teachers.
Clifford Smith is a former congressional staffer and an attorney.