Two Virginia parents are alleging their three Jewish children were expelled from an elite private school because they complained about antisemitic bullying directed at one of their sixth-grade daughters. 

The Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Virginia — which was honored in 2015 by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth as one of the “Top 10 Schools in the World” — has since pushed back on the claims. 

The complaint filed with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights alleges that Brian Vazquez and Ashok Roy’s three Jewish children were expelled from the Nysmith School on March 13 because “they complained about the school’s unwillingness to respond to anti-Semitic harassment of their 11-year-old daughter.”

The filing included a photo of a group of children holding a large cartoon drawing appearing to depict Adolf Hitler. It was part of a social studies class project in which students were assigned to draw a composite of a “strong historical leader.” 

“The school had allowed anti-Semitism to take root in her class,” the complaint says. “That photo, featuring the unmistakable face of Adolf Hitler, was shared with the entire school community. It was followed by a pattern of persistent and severe anti-Semitic harassment of Complainants’ young daughter.” 

“I want to be clear: Virginia is not New York,” Miyares added. “We have a fantastic governor in Gov. Youngkin, we knew from Day One. We saw those images of what happened at Columbia, and we said that’s not going to happen in Virginia. We have a very, very different governor and candidly a very different attorney general than what you have in some of these other states.”

“We want to protect our students, and so we have no tolerance for any school, whether it’s a college campus or it’s K-12, that is specifically targeting Jewish students,” he said.