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- Residents of a Texas school district voiced their frustration Monday with an administrator's comments about the Holocaust.
- A Jewish man told the school board he was "bullied relentlessly" when he was a student there, NBC News reported.
- The district imposed new guidelines to follow a state law requiring teachers to present balanced views on "widely debated" issues.
Jewish residents went to a Southlake, Texas, school board meeting on Monday to voice their frustration with a district leader who reportedly said that she wanted school libraries in the area to have books with 'opposing' perspectives on the Holocaust, according to NBC News.
Jake Berman, who is Jewish, told the board that he was "bullied relentlessly" while he was a student in the Carroll Independent School District, to the point that his middle school principal recommended his parents pull him out of school to avoid harassment.
"I received everything from jokes about my nose to jokes about gas chambers, all while studying for my bar mitzvah with a Holocaust survivor as my primary tutor," Berman told the board, as quoted by NBC.
Jewish residents packed the school board meeting in response to a previous report from the news outlet, which detailed a secretly recorded meeting between teachers and Gina Peddy, the district's executive director of curriculum and instruction.
NBC reported that Peddy told teachers that they should include books in their classrooms with "opposing perspectives" on the Holocaust in order to be in compliance with Texas House Bill 3979.
The bill, which went into effect on September 1, requires teachers who are discussing "widely debated and currently controversial" topics in class to approach the subjects "from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective."
The school district implemented new guidelines this month to be in compliance with the law and cracked down on books that teachers are keeping in their classrooms.
Cara Serber, a Jewish Southlake parent, told the school board her immediate reaction to Peddy's comment was to be upset, but she was willing to give the administrator the benefit of the doubt, according to KTVT.
"(I) think that she was the mouthpiece of the administration and she got caught off guard and it wasn't fair to her," Serber said.
Carrol Superintendent Lane Ledbetter offered a public apology for Peddy's comment at the meeting and recognized that there "are no two sides to the Holocaust" before the board moved into executive session to discuss additional action, KTVT reported.