Schools and universities across the Bay Area said they were bolstering security measures — and in some cases canceling classes — amid so-far unsubstantiated threats of pro-Hamas violence.
Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City and South Peninsula Hebrew Day School in Sunnyvale said they would be closed Friday amid concerns that Jewish institutions could be targeted, Jewish Weekly reported.
Stanford Law School announced it would be holding all of its classes Friday on Zoom in the wake of students’ fears around safety on the “Day of Jihad.”
The closures come just days after a former Hamas leader made a global call for violence Friday.
Other schools in the Bay Area, like those in the Palo Alto Unified School District, announced they were beefing up campus security. A preschool in San Francisco also said it had arranged for increased security at its doors Friday.
Officials from Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco said they would be increasing security and limiting campus visitors Friday and through next week, but that they encouraged students — in spite of the fear — to attend classes in person Friday.
Jewish Community High School officials said that they had been in contact with security and threat assessment experts at the FBI, San Francisco Police Department and other federal organizations such as the Secure Community Network — the national organized Jewish community’s security team.
“At this time the overwhelming consensus as expressed by the national director of SCN is ‘there is absolutely no evidence of a specific, credible threat against any place in the United States or locally,’ ” they wrote.
Reached by phone, officials from Brandeis, a K-8 Jewish day school in San Francisco, said they had no comment.
San Jose and San Francisco police officials said this week they are closely monitoring any potential security threats and will be actively patrolling places of worship in their cities out of an abundance of caution.
“At this time we do not have any information of any imminent threat of violence,” SFPD spokespersons wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Earlier this week, at least two Jewish schools in the Bay Area urgent parents to consider deleting their teenagers’ social media apps, fearing that online images from the war in Gaza could be destructive to their students’ well-being.
Reach Annie Vainshtein: avainshtein@sfchronicle.com
