This week representatives of Jewish schools from across the country have spoken of the enormous security levies required to hire armed guards, telling the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that parents are footing the bill, which comes on top of tuition fees, and which totals millions of dollars annually.
Some parents are also volunteering to provide “extra eyes and ears” around schools at drop-off and pick-up time to help armed security guards, the inquiry heard.
Emanuel School principal Linda Emms told the inquiry that there was a daily police presence at the school’s gates.
“Our parents have worked incredibly hard, particularly with some of our younger students, to get their children to see the police as their friends and as being there to protect them.
“And I watch some of them come in, and they will fist bump the police as they come in in the morning and say hello to them. And it’s lovely, because but it’s really sad that we have parents who actually have to do this, because that’s how they’re actually reassuring their child that it’s okay that there’s actually police at the front gate every morning.”
Emms reported that financial assistance to families had almost doubled in a year due to rising security levies.
“I don’t believe that our parents should have to be 100 per cent responsible for paying for security, which is over and above what any other school in New South Wales would need to have,” she noted.
The inquiry heard government funding only covered about 30 per cent of a school’s operational and capital costs of security.
Emms also spoke of what she called the “normalisation of the abnormal” with regards to the antisemitism endured by her school community, noting students had been targeted by antisemtic comments during sporting events and yelled at from passing cars, among other harrowing incidents.
“People aren’t stepping up anymore and saying ‘you can’t say that’. And that’s what I mean by normalisation of the abnormal,” she said.
The school leader said the heads of 45 independent schools were recently hosted at Emanuel, and many were shocked by the level of security they witnessed on campus.
She said if non-Jewish schools were forced to pay for armed guards, “I have no doubt the Australian community would be in uproar.”
Bialik College in Melbourne charged an $840 security levy this year for every student of the Jewish school, board president Tyson Wodak told the Commission – fees that had increased 230 per cent since 2022 because of rising security demands.
He called on authorities to boost Jewish schools’ security funding, noting students at the two public schools next to Bialik College can play basketball on the weekends and weren’t greeted by armed guards everyday.
“I want my school to be funded to a point that it would be as safe as the school we are literally next door to,” he said.
Parents at Mount Scopus Memorial College, Victoria's largest Jewish school, were charged a $1130 security levy per student in 2025.
Principal Dan Sztrajt said the school absorbed further safety costs, with the security bill for each student estimated to total $3000 in 2025.
Sztrajt said he spent 10 to 15 per cent of almost every school day concerned about security, assessing “are we able to run this excursion? Can this happen?”
“It pains me tremendously to think of the horrendous opportunity cost that that security focus takes away from our school,” he added.
Last year the principal of a Jewish school in Sydney described a string of shocking antisemitic attacks that targeted her students, recounting the ‘relentless drip-feed of hate’ that had derailed learning and seen leadership forced to operate “like a counter terrorism unit”.
Speaking at the parliamentary inquiry at the time, Moriah College principal Miriam Hasofer warned that “open antisemitism targeting schoolchildren has become ambient”.
“What was once repugnantly un-Australian has become disturbingly routine,” Hasofer said.
“The unacceptable has been normalised. Thirty years after I graduated, I now stand at Moriah’s gates each morning welcoming students and checking in with our security team….
“…but I still stand there alert, watchful, on edge, and no school principal in this country should have to do that,” Hasofer said.
“…Something has been unleashed. Antisemitism found its voice – loud, unashamed and emboldened…”
The school community had endured nearly two years of “relentless, targeted abuse”, Hasofer said, noting that a girl in Year 9 was chased along Queens Park Road by a woman repeatedly shouting, "Eff the Jews. Effing c-word. Free Palestine".
“This was a child walking to school. She was terrified,” the principal said.
In June 2025 two men had exited a vehicle near the college and spat in the direction of the campus, before proceeding to make “obscene gestures” and exposing themselves on the school’s security cameras, she added.
These were “rude, vile and targeted, meant to intimidate Jewish children”, Hasofer said.
The principal also noted an online attack that occurred in October 2023, when an anonymous message was sent to Moriah’s Instagram.
It read, ‘Your school is nothing but a disgrace. I hope all the children, parents and staff get cancer and die a slow, painful death. Praise Hitler’,” Hasofer reported.
“These are a handful of many incidents. Each one is horrific on its own, but together they form a relentless drip-feed of hate.”
The royal commission was called after 15 people were killed and dozens more injured when two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah event at Sydney's Bondi Beach on December 14.
Hearings underway in Melbourne this week are probing security risk assessments and the relationship between law enforcement agencies and Jewish security groups.
