Watch live: Three public school district leaders to face questions from Congress over school policies on anti-Semitism

Leaders of some of America’s largest public school districts face questions Wednesday from a House of Representatives panel about incidents of anti-Semitism at their schools.

A Republican-led House education subcommittee called for testimony from Berkeley Unified Schools Superintendent Ford Morthel of California, New York City School Chancellor David Banks and the Montgomery County School Board President Karla Silvestre of Maryland.

“Anti-Semitic incidents have exploded in primary and secondary schools following the horrific Hamas attacks. October 7 attack. Jewish teachers, students and professors were denied a safe learning environment and forced to deal with anti-Semitic agitators due to inaction by district leaders,” said Rep. Aaron Bean, a Republican from Florida, who chairs the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on K-12 Education, told CBS News.

A senior committee official told CBS News that the committee did not issue a subpoena, but it did ask school district leaders to appear voluntarily.

In a written statement shared with CBS News, the Berkeley United School District said Morthel “did not seek” to testify but accepted the invitation to appear.

A Berkeley school spokeswoman said: “We strive every day to ensure that our classrooms are respectful, humanizing and joyful places for all of our students, where they are welcomed, seen, valued and heard. We will continue to center our students and take care of each other during this time. »

Each of the three school districts has a large number of Jewish students. Each of them has been the subject of complaints regarding the handling of alleged incidents of anti-Semitism.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Louis Brandeis Center, The Free Beacon noted, filed a lawsuit against the Berkeley school system, alleging that some children suffered “severe and persistent harassment and discrimination on the basis of their membership ethnic Jewish, of their common ancestry and national origin, and whose reports to administrators remained ignored for months.

The Zionist Organization of America recently filed a civil rights lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools, claiming they failed to properly respond to anti-Semitic incidents in their schools. The school district did not respond to a request for comment on Silvestre or the board president’s planned testimony.

The Montgomery County Public School District’s publicly published policies on religious diversity state: “Every student has the right to their religious beliefs and practices, free from discrimination, intimidation, or harassment. »

New York City also faces a civil rights lawsuit from the Brandeis Center that alleges “a failure to address persistent anti-Semitism against teachers.” When asked for comment on his chancellor’s planned testimony, the New York Public Schools spokesperson referred CBS News to comments Banks made at a public event earlier this month.

“Exclusion and intimidation go against everything public education stands for,” Banks said. “We cannot allow acts of hatred, whether physical or mediated by anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

“It causes even more pain and puts up even more walls,” Banks added. “We must oppose it collectively.”