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Park City schools hold student trainings to prevent antisemitism

Row of blue school lockers.
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Secondary schools in the Park City School District held workshops to combat antisemitism this fall. It’s part of an effort to foster a greater sense of belonging.

The district worked with an organization called Tribe Talk to conduct workshops at Treasure Mountain Junior High and Park City High School to prevent antisemitism and hate speech. Students participating in Latinos in Action, student council, National Honor Society, and current issues classes all attended small workshops.

Interim Superintendent Caleb Fine said during the workshops, Tribe Talk presenters place kids into small groups to talk through real-life scenarios that have occurred in schools across the nation. The students also identified antisemitism in social media posts and talked through appropriate responses.

“When the student leaders are speaking kindness and promoting an environment where all students feel like they belong, we're going to make much faster progress at the end game, which is eliminating all hate speech from our schools,” Fine said.

The workshops are one of many steps the district is taking to create a welcoming environment in its schools.

A federal investigation found over 180 incidents of harassment at Park City school during the 2022-2023 school year. During the investigation, a survey found 43% of district staff were aware of antisemitic conduct.

The district then signed a joint resolution with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in March 2024 to resolve the investigation, agreeing to update its reporting procedures along with other administrative policies.

Since then, the district has made strides into coming into compliance with the resolution.

However, Fine said the district wanted to do more than just focus on federally-required reporting systems and policies.

“Education is not at the heart of the OCR resolution, but we actually believe that that's where we can make the greatest impact in the long run because we want to be more consistent,” he said. “We want to make sure that every family knows that we take every complaint seriously, but we want to eliminate it as well. We think the elimination is through education.”

Fine said other work to prevent hate speech and antisemitism is ongoing at Ecker Hill Middle School, Treasure and the high school through assemblies and advisory classes.

The Alnoba Lewis Family Foundation funded the antisemitism workshops. Fine said teachers Jessica Lanoue, Jake Jobe, Josh Goldberg, George Murphy and coordinator Amy Campbell facilitated the trainings.