A Seattle teen feared for her life in a locked classroom as a mob of students pounded on the door, “threatening to physically assault her based on her Jewish identity,” according to a recently filed lawsuit.
The incident was the culmination of anti-Semitic harassment the student, referred to in the complaint as M.K.L., had endured for months, leaving the now-15-year-old with “terrifying nightmares and flashbacks,” the June 12 suit her parents filed against Seattle Public Schools alleges. School officials repeatedly failed to address the harassment and refused to turn over surveillance footage, according to the complaint.
They’ve also said there was never video of the mob outside the classroom. But the plaintiff’s lawyers cast doubt on that claim, with one accusing the school of failing to preserve the footage.
“We know that they have cameras because they’ve also released some other unrelated footage,” one attorney, Seth Rosenberg, told the Washington Free Beacon. “They seem to have kept the things that aren’t helpful and apparently not kept the things that are.”
M.K.L., “terrified that she will be attacked by her former peers,” has not returned to campus since hiding from the mob, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit comes as the Department of Education aims to resolve nearly 200 anti-Semitism complaints that piled up during the Biden administration, which instead focused on cases involving pronoun usage and “bans” on age-inappropriate school books.
Nathan Hale High School students began harassing M.K.L.—then a freshman who received special education for an anxiety disorder—on a daily basis for being Jewish following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, according to the complaint. Over the school year, she was told to “kill herself” for being Jewish, was surrounded and had her face spat on while enduring anti-Semitic sentiments, and repeatedly saw swastikas drawn throughout the school, including on her folder and softball team’s bench.
M.K.L.’s parents told both the principal, William Jackson, and the vice principal, Makela Steward-Monroe, about the harassment their daughter faced, but they “failed to meaningfully intervene,” the suit alleges. Their “inaction resulted in more and more brazen antisemitic incidents” and refused to provide results from promised investigations or security footage.
“The school administration never attempted to mitigate this hostile environment for M.K.L. and other Jewish students, including not taking the cursory step of emailing the student body to address the swastikas appearing all over campus,” the complaint states.
On May 22, 2024, one or two students would enter M.K.L.’s classes, trying to get her to come into the hallway. The teacher for her final period “became suspicious that those attempts to pull her from class were a real threat to M.K.L.’s safety,” the suit alleges. When class was ending, the teacher saw “a group forming in the hall and pulled M.K.L. aside to stay back and then locked the door, keeping M.K.L. inside with her.”
Roughly 20 students gathered outside the classroom, and for “5 long minutes … yelled threats, banged on and rattled the door, and used antisemitic slurs” while calling for M.K.L. to come out, the suit reads. Others texted her, saying the kids “were going to assault her.”
M.K.L. texted her mother, “I rlly rlly rlly need you,” then called her father, who said he could hear the mob trying to enter the room. He spoke to the teacher, who told him she was protecting M.K.L. “from getting beaten up.”
“It is impossible to overstate how terrifying this incident was to M.K.L. and her parents,” the complaint states. “M.K.L. believed that if the students were able to access her inside the locked classroom, these students would have physically attacked her, and she feared for her life.”
After about 20 minutes, security escorted M.K.L. to the office. The next day, Steward-Monroe told M.K.L.’s parents the school couldn’t continue to escort her in the halls.
Her parents pulled her from school for the rest of the year over safety concerns.
A previous attorney for M.K.L.’s parents, Lara Hruska, requested surveillance footage of the May 22 incident soon after, emails provided to the Free Beacon shows. Months later, in October, the school district denied that video existed.
Hruska pointed out that Steward-Monroe told M.K.L.’s parents that she’d relied on video to count students gathering outside the classroom, suggesting it had been deleted. A school representative said Steward-Monroe couldn’t explain the discrepancy because she’d been on leave since August.
Just over a week after the May 22 incident, Jackson refused to see M.K.L.’s parents in-person to discuss their daughter’s specialized education program, opting instead to meet over Zoom, even though he was down the hall, according to the suit. He turned his camera off when they asked about the May 22 episode.
Jackson, the 2023 Washington State Secondary Principal of the Year who emphasizes the importance of “anti-racist practices,” has since left Nathan Hale. He’s now the director of teaching and learning for the nearby Bellevue School District.
Jackson declined to comment. Steward-Monroe did not respond to the Free Beacon’s inquiry. A spokeswoman for the district released a statement saying the school system would “review and address these allegations” and that it “remains dedicated to creating an inclusive and equitable environment for all students, and does not tolerate racism, discrimination, or violence in any form.”
The Free Beacon also reached out to elected officials who represent Seattle Public Schools—all of whom are Democrats—but none responded to requests for comment. Those include state senator Javier Valdez, state representatives Gerry Pollet and Darya Farivar, “Squad” member and U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.
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