Queens high school riot: Classes resume after teacher targeted for Israel support
NEW YORK CITY - One week after a student pro-Palestinian rally disrupted classes at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Schools Chancellor David Banks visited his lama mater to set the record straight and announce new measures to ensure an inclusive and safe environment for everyone.
Dozens of students took to the hallways last week, waving flags and banners after a teacher posted a social media photo of herself at a pro-Israel rally with a sign that said "I stand with Israel."
"Honestly this is a very Muslim population, school, populated with a lot of Muslims who just felt a way about their teacher, but it wasn't nothing violent per se. It didn't start off that way to be honest," one student, speaking anonymously, told FOX 5 NY.
The teacher said she felt threatened as the railing, students, waived, banners and flags, and shouted throughout the hallways, demanding that she'd be fired. She was safely escorted out of the school by the NYPD.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams called the incident a "vile show of antisemitism."
"[The riot] was motivated by ignorance-fueled hatred, plain and simple, and it will not be tolerated in any of our schools, let alone anywhere else in our city. We are better than this," Adams said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams condemned the riot in a series of photos on "X."
School Chancellor David Banks says the teacher did nothing wrong.
"She was completely within her rights, on her own time," Banks said.
Banks says only about 400 of the school's nearly 2500 total students participated in the pro–Palestinian rally, and that a day later some students alerted staff about a future planned rally.
Chancellor Banks says there will be zero tolerance for any anti-Semitism or Islamophobia in the New York City Public Schools.
Videos on social media showed a water fountain ripped out in the hallway and shattered tiles in a bathroom.
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The teacher, who withheld her name, released a statement to the Post, in part, saying, "I have been a teacher for 23 years in the New York City public school system — for the last seven at Hillcrest High School. I have worked hard to be supportive of our entire student body and an advocate for our community, and was shaken to my core by the calls to violence against me that occurred online and outside my classroom last week."
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Uniformed officers helped oversee arrivals Monday morning and Project Pivot, a violence prevention program, will begin outreach with students this week.
The incident last week comes as tensions have escalated in the U.S. with the death toll rising in the Israel-Hamas war.
In Brooklyn's Fort Hamilton neighborhood, a teacher is under fire for an exchange on his Instagram page, where he apparently wrote "Let Gaza burn. There are no innocents if this is what is allowed to continue."
Over the busy holiday weekend, more than 1,500 demonstrators shut down the Manhattan Bridge demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
Protesters, including Jews and Palestinians, staged the massive sit-in underneath the bridge’s iconic arch, waving a 50-foot-long banner that said "Let Gaza Live."
Drivers got out of their cars and watched, with some even taking videos as traffic piled up.
According to police, three arrests were made at the scene. Two people were charged with disorderly conduct and another person was ticketed for reckless endangerment.