SUNRISE, Fla. – A Muslim group is calling for a federal investigation into a Fort Lauderdale private school after it fired a math tutor over social media posts relating to the Israel-Hamas war and subsequently expelled her son.
The Council on American Islamic Relations is asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the school and held a news conference Thursday in Sunrise. Its call for an investigation focused on the expulsion, rather than the firing, its attorney said.
Recommended Videos
The Pine Crest School reported terminating an employee on Nov. 19 after social media posts that were “hateful and incendiary” to a degree that the school “will never” tolerate.
Maha Almasri said she was the employee and the platform was Instagram. She said she worked as a math tutor and the account was personal.
One of the posts was a graphic that disputed the ongoing war had not started with the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 but in 1948 with the Arab–Israeli War.
“The purpose of my post wasn’t to offend anyone,” said Almasri, who is Palestinian American. She said she wanted “just to shed light on the humanitarian crisis happening in Gaza.”
“This is not a Muslim issue, it is a constitutional issue when a school administration takes retaliatory measures against an innocent student because his mother made non-violent, non-disruptive comments on her social media platform that criticized atrocities against innocent civilians in Gaza,” CAIR’s attorney, Omar Saleh, said in a statement. “Pine Crest administration unfortunately can’t stand to hear it because it ‘makes others uncomfortable’.”
The school issued a statement after Almasri disputed the stated cause of her firing.
In the statement, the school reported that she refused to remove the posts even though she knew these “were causing significant fear and disruption among students and parents” and allegedly then decided to post even “more inflammatory content.”
Almasri said that wasn’t her intention.
The school also reported the situation “impacted the eligibility of her child to continue as a student at the school.”
Her child, 10th-grader Jad Abuhamda, spoke at Thursday’s news conference.
“Prince Crest school was my home,” he said. “To have that taken away from me for no reason at all, is heartbreaking. I’m disappointed and sad.”
His academic future is unclear.