Police every day': How school is different for Jewish Australian kids

The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion hears from Jewish school leaders about how they need to implement extraordinary and expensive security measures. It is estimated that 18 Jewish schools collectively spent $58 million on security between 2022 and 2025. ( ABC News: Billy Draper ) Paying for armed guards at school would alarm and outrage most Australian parents, but for Jewish families, that's the reality from their child's tender age. "We have a police presence every day, Emanuel School principal Linda Emms told the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion yesterday.

"I watch some of the students come in and they'll fist-bump the police as they come in … and say hello to them, and it's lovely, but it's really sad that we have to have parents to do this. The commission heard evidence from schools about how this impacts students and the school's operation in surprising ways. An antisemitic graffiti attack took place at Melbourne's Mount Scopus Memorial College in May 2024. ( ABC News: Stephanie Ferrier ) Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt estimated that 10 to 15 per cent of his total work hours go toward security — a huge time impost for a principal running a busy school.

"These conversations are a part of every aspect of our school community, Mr Sztrajt told the commission. Parents are slugged with security levies each year, which principals say have increased by as much as 250 per cent since the Hamas terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023. The commission heard government funding only covered about 30 per cent of the operational and capital costs of security, with parents paying an annual levy in some cases exceeding $1,000. Schools are worried the rising cost will push parents away. Linda Emms says a police presence is required at her Sydney school every day.

( Supplied ) "Many of our families are making sacrifices financially to have their children at a Jewish school, Ms Emms said. "They're there because they believe in a Jewish education. Many are also there because they don't feel comfortable with their children being in other school systems at present.

Tyson Wodak, the president of Bialik College, an independent Jewish school in Melbourne, told of the impact that security had on the students, including on his own two children. "Internalising, I fear, that that's something that is necessary for them and that they are separate from other parts of the Australian community. Former High Court justice Virginia Bell is leading the royal commission.

( Supplied: Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. ) While the Jewish school representatives said they would prefer not to need security, the reality is they do, and they said it is parents as well as the schools themselves that are shelling out. The Australian Council of Jewish Schools (ACJS) estimated that 18 Jewish schools had collectively spent $58 million on security between 2022 and 2025. "There's a somewhat tongue-in-cheek line by members of the Jewish community that it's expensive to be Jewish, and it is, said Stephen Rothman from the ACJS.