Two Virginia parents are alleging their three Jewish children were expelled from The Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Virginia because they complained about antisemitic bullying directed at one of their sixth-grade daughters.
Brian Vazquez and Ashok Roy filed the complaint with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights.
The filing included a photo of a group of children holding a large cartoon drawing appearing to depict Adolf Hitler. It was part of a social studies class project in which students were assigned to draw a composite of a “strong historical leader.”
Fox News reports:
“The school had allowed anti-Semitism to take root in her class,” the complaint says. “That photo, featuring the unmistakable face of Adolf Hitler, was shared with the entire school community. It was followed by a pattern of persistent and severe anti-Semitic harassment of Complainants’ young daughter.”
The parents say they met with the school’s owner and headmaster, Kenneth Nysmith, about how their daughter was “being harassed and bullied because she is Jewish, including persistent taunting about the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 Israelis and 251 others being taken hostage, and a campaign of ostracizing her because she is Jewish,” the complaint says.
The sixth-grade girl told her parents that the children had placed pro-Palestine stickers on school-issued laptops and lockers, and pointed at their stickers and taunted her for being “Israeli.”
“In front of her classmates, the bullying children looked at their daughter, and called Jews ‘baby killers,’ and said that they deserve to die because of what is happening in Gaza,” the complaint says. “Pointing at the other children, the bullies told their daughter that everyone at the school is against Jews and Israel, which is why they hate you.”
“Nysmith promised to take action – but did nothing,” the parents alleged. “A few weeks later, after Mr. Nysmith decided to hang a Palestinian flag in the Nysmith School gym, the harassment of their daughter grew more severe.”
After telling the headmaster that the harassment their daughter was experiencing had become much worse, the parents claim Nysmith “told them to tell their daughter to ‘toughen up’ and abruptly ended the meeting,” the complaint says.
Two days later, the complaint alleges, Nysmith “retaliated – notifying Complainants in an email that all three children were expelled effective immediately, days before their mid-semester report cards, and long after the application periods for other local schools had passed.”
The couple’s three children had been enrolled at the school since 2021, were high achievers and had no prior disciplinary action, the complaint says.
The family’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lang of the Brandeis Human Rights Center, told Fox News Digital in an interview that his “real concern is that this is an example of antisemitism becoming normalized in our society.
The complaint alleges that the Nysmith School for the Gifted violated the Virginia Human Rights Act by engaging in unlawful anti-Semitic discrimination and retaliation.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, whose office is investigating the complaint, previously told Fox News that “what’s been alleged is beyond disturbing,” and, while the lawsuit involves pre-teen students, “the level of harassment of Jewish students on our college campuses is now trickling down to K-12.”
The school has strongly denied the allegations
