Opinion: In school, treat all faiths equally

BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor

Few people would be against high school students learning about different religions. Visiting a mosque on a high school field trip isn’t a problem, if teachers also take students to a Jewish temple, a Catholic church, a protestant church, a Hindi Mandir and a Zoroastrian temple. Importantly, teachers should remain neutral when discussing the different faiths.

But a lawsuit filed against the Palo Alto Unified School District says teachers at Palo Alto High School went overboard when it came to Islam. Not only did they take them on a field trip to a mosque in Santa Clara, but students were allegedly encouraged to wear Muslim religious attire, including hijabs for the girls, and given Qurans as gifts to take home. Students participated in a Quran-memorization program, the suit claims.

(Can you imagine the howls we would hear in Palo Alto if public school students memorized Bible verses as a class activity. I can hear the shrieking now about “Separation of Church and State …”)

Inflammatory speaker

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the mosque trip was that students had to listen to Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) San Francisco Bay Area. Billoo has a well-documented history of inflammatory public statements against Jews. 

For instance, on Feb. 9, 2025, she reposted the statement that “Hamas deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Billoo has also openly praised Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 assault, in which Hamas terrorists murdered over 1,200 people, including women and children, and kidnapped more than 200 others.

The lawsuit claims that Paly Principal Brent Kline and his teachers permitted a heavily biased perspective to be delivered to a captive audience of students without adequate supervision or balancing viewpoints. It seems more like indoctrination than education.

Antisemitism in nearby district 

This lapse in administrative responsibility didn’t occur in a vacuum; it comes amid a surge of antisemitism in local educational institutions. 

The severe consequences of such negligence were made clear just months ago when the neighboring Sequoia Union High School District settled a major federal antisemitism lawsuit for $325,000. That lawsuit arose from rampant bullying, swastika graffiti, and instances where history teachers used their classrooms to push political propaganda and penalize students who refused to endorse biased views.

The sweeping reforms mandated by the Sequoia Union settlement — which included mandatory staff training, independent pre-reviews of all curriculum materials concerning the Middle East conflict, and explicit policy changes to ban antisemitism — should have served as a stark warning to surrounding districts. 

Instead, Palo Alto High School ignored this warning and exposed its students to divisive political and religious figures under the banner of “social justice.”

Aim for neutrality

Public school districts have a fundamental legal and moral obligation to provide a safe, neutral and balanced learning environment. Teaching religion is OK as long as it is done in a neutral way, with each faith getting equal time.

In this fall’s school board campaign, I hope the candidates have a plan to prevent this from happening again.

Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.