[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 63 (Tuesday, April 8, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2470-S2471]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      New York City Public Schools

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I saw something last week that I didn't 
believe. I read the article, and then I searched the internet for other 
articles saying the same thing to confirm that it was true, and it was 
true. I am still in disbelief.
  The largest public school system in America is in New York City. I 
love New York City. I think it is the greatest city in the world. And 
the New York public schools publish a monthly newsletter. It is 
called--let's see what it is called--the Office of Student Pathways 
Newsletter. Every month, the public school system in New York City 
sends this newsletter. They blast it out to teachers, and they blast it 
out to parents--not just in New York City but all across the country.
  In the latest newsletter they blasted out, they had one of those 
bullet points that they made in the newsletter that is kind of--when 
you look at it on the internet, it is kind of pale blue. You can click 
on it, and it sends you to another site.
  The bullet point on the newsletter that the public schools of New 
York sent out was called ``Guidelines for teaching about genocide.'' 
``Guidelines for teaching about genocide.'' And if you clicked on this 
phrase in the newsletter, it sent you to another site. Do you see what 
the site was? ``Stop Gaza Genocide Toolkit.'' ``Stop Gaza Genocide 
Toolkit.'' The administration of the New York public schools, the 
largest in the country, is sending this out to its teachers and its 
students and to the world.
  If you take a look and you say ``What is in this toolkit, this `Stop 
Gaza Genocide Toolkit'?'' it contains the biggest bunch of anti-Semitic 
rot you can imagine. The toolkit, among other things, breaks down how 
to mobilize pro-Palestinian campaigns on social media. It tells you--it 
tells our students and our teachers how to boycott and encourage 
divestment from pro-Israel organizations. It encourages readers to 
print out ``Palestine'' yard signs and calls our kids and our parents 
to action.
  Now, the head of the public schools in New York was embarrassed once 
people started going: What is going on? Why are you publishing this 
anti-Semitic, anti-systemic rot accusing Israel of genocide, after it 
was Israel that was attacked, after it was Hamas that started the war? 
The chancellor, Ms. Melissa Aviles-Ramos, said it was just a 
``troubling oversight.'' That is what she said: ``troubling 
oversight.''

[[Page S2471]]

  But then the article goes on to say that it has been discovered that 
a similar version of the toolkit--this oversight--was published in the 
newsletter in the prior month. It was in the October-November 2024 
newsletter. That document called on all the teachers and all the 
students in the New York public schools and everybody else reading the 
newsletter--it called on them to participate in ``rage week'' and 
``resist genocide'' by mobilizing on Saturday, October 5, for a ``day 
of action'' ahead of the anniversary of Hamas on October 7, 2023. That 
was the date of the terrorist attack on Israel, which apparently the 
administration of the public schools wants to celebrate.
  Here is what one of the teachers in the public school system said 
when she discovered this: It is systemic rot.
  ``It's the systemic rot,'' said Karen Feldman, an educator of over 26 
years, who resigned. She resigned.
  It should not go unnoticed that in addition to this oversight--we 
know it wasn't an oversight; I mean, pigs may fly someday, but I doubt 
it; this wasn't an oversight--now we find out recently that New York 
State education officials have rejected President Trump's 
administration's demand to do away with certain diversity, equity, and 
inclusion efforts that call for quotas, racial quotas, which are 
illegal in the United States of America under recent Supreme Court 
precedent. These State officials wrote President Trump, and this is 
what they said:

       [T]here are no federal or state laws prohibiting the 
     principles of D.E.I.

  I don't understand that. Racial quotas are illegal. You can't use 
race in America, according to well-settled law, to hurt a person or to 
help a person. But these officials at the State level--not the local 
level--they said no State or Federal laws prohibit the principles of 
DEI, and they said that they are aware of no jurisdiction--no 
jurisdiction--that the Federal Government has to withdraw funding.
  Well, you know what, I hope we find out. I hope we find out. This 
kind of stuff makes me want to jump out of a moving car, and this is 
the kind of, in the words of the teacher who resigned, systemic rot, 
rank anti-Semitism, that in New York they are sending to our teachers 
and to our kids and to the world.