Brookline schools’ superintendent Linus Guillory apologized on Wednesday for a message sent to community members in response to the attacks in Israel which he acknowledged “fell short.”
The Public Schools of Brookline’s initial response to the attacks, an email sent to its community on Monday, raised a furor among Israelis, Jews and a number of elected Town Meeting members in town.
They criticized Guillory for vaguely referring to “violence … escalating rapidly” in Israel, and failing to directly condemn Hamas’ actions or offer support to Jews or Israelis impacted by the attacks.
Another version of the email sent to staff in the school district, which was seen by Brookline.News but has since been removed from the school’s site, included resources like a site called Decolonize Palestine and a report from Human Rights Watch detailing claims of persecution by the Israeli government.
Critics of the letter said they were offended and shocked by the note’s tone, and many sent letters to Guillory asking that he retract the note or apologize.
“The Israeli and Jewish community in Brookline is so strong and prevalent,” said Orly Bogler, who moved to Brookline from Israel three years ago and has two children in Brookline schools. “People were expecting a different narrative. More support and more understanding.”
“I thought it did not show compassion,” said Shai Schubert, another Israeli who lives in Brookline. “When you see a slaughter of hundreds, of women and children in their homes, you should be able to call it for what it is. … I think there was a lack of being able to show empathy, to something that is traumatic as this.”
Town Meeting member Shira Fischer, whose brother lives in Israel, wrote to Guillory that his message was “tone-deaf and disrespects the memory of the 900 Israelis killed in the past 3 days.” (That number has since grown to more than 1,200.)
Another Town Meeting member, Jonathan Klein, wrote that the list of resources was “extremely biased overall, and completely inappropriate in light of the very real trauma among so many in our Brookline community with connections to individuals who have been murdered, kidnapped and tortured over the past three days.”
In a follow up message sent Wednesday, Guillory apologized.
“Our district messaging on Monday to the community fell short of our values and for our community in two ways,” he wrote. “First, by not directly naming and condemning the attacks perpetrated by Hamas on innocent Jewish and Israeli civilians as acts of terror. Second, the resources we included in our initial message for staff were unbalanced and did not rise to the standard to which we hold ourselves for educator support in presenting balanced perspectives. For both of these failures, we apologize.”
He went on to condemn the attacks and acknowledged that the district’s initial message “compounded” pain in the community.
The School Committee is planning to discuss the response in its meeting on Thursday evening, according to its agenda.