February 23, 2024 • 14 mins
Whether it was anti-Semitism or just really poor journalism, Sasha decided to say something about what noticed in the Westside High School student paper. This is not the first time she has called out local education, and I hope it's not the last.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Scott Vordie Lucy remember the pandemic.It was two weeks to flatten the curve
and that was done and everyone waspretty cool with it. But there was
a superintendent of Omaha Public Schools,doctor Cheryl Logan, at the time,
that had a few more policies inplace. And among those who criticize some
(00:20):
of what they saw happening in opsrelated to the pandemic, related to some
of the education read some of thesocial activism, and everything else seeing in
there, there was a student whowent and addressed the school board. Her
name was Sasha Good Evening. Myname is Sasha Ennenburgh SA s H A
D E N E N B Er G. Please do not grant doctor
(00:44):
Logan a contract extension. The districtis much worse off than it was a
couple years ago. It is absolutelytime for new leadership, not for cementing
the olden place. From the informationI have just last Friday, doctor Logan's
and minutest ordered the high school orderedthe high schools to redo all of their
classes, making a minimum class sizeof thirty five, and to make the
(01:10):
leftover teachers available to be transferred toother schools. People who teach children understand
that new class sizes will destroy educationgrossly. Overcrowded classes will also worsen behavioral
problems and increase security concerns. That'sjust the opening thirty seconds of this three
(01:30):
minute screed delivered to the school boardagainst the superintendent. In the wake of
that speech, the teachers fled thatdistrict. About eight hundred teachers over the
course of two years left Omaha PublicSchools. Another ones on the way I
learned last night got the information thata beloved instructor in an Omaha Public High
(01:55):
School is leaving. And when astudent said why, he says, I
can't take it in OPS anymore.Well, there's there's new leadership coming to
the district. But that student,Sasha Dennenburgh, left OPS well along with
all the teachers, and joins usnow here on news radio eleven ten kfab
Sasha, good morning, good morning. We're pulling you out of school here
this morning. You are still ahigh school student, but you've switched from
(02:20):
OPS and gone to West Side.Yeah, District sixty six, And I'm
sure they were very happy to haveyou up until just a couple of weeks
ago. Well, you couldn't justgo to school and sit there and be
quiet and get on TikTok and learnhow to dance and do stuff like everyone
else. You had to. Youhad to cause trouble, didn't you again?
Oh for a meaningful cause? Yeah? Okay, what was it that
(02:43):
you saw and where did you seeit that caused you to issue a response?
So? Yeah, So October seventhsparked a war between Israel and Kamas,
and my school published some articles thatwere biased and a lot of inaccuracies,
and that sparks a lot of antiSemitism in the district and in the
(03:07):
world. And when you say yourschool published some articles, who published what
where? So? West Side Wiredis run by students, and some students
published articles in support of Palestine andsupport of Hamas, and I just wanted
to respond to that and educate people. And the title of my article is
(03:29):
west west Side Students' opinions on theIsrael Hmas war should be should be out
of fact? Should be created outof fact? So a lot of my
article is the history and the facts. Now, it's okay for people to
have opinions, right. This wasan opinion piece put in the West Side
(03:52):
newspaper and it starts off by sayingGaza is home to one of the world's
most current genocides, where more thantwenty five thousand civilians have been killed since
October seventh in the name of expellinghamas a Palestinian terrorist organization. The daily
death rate in Gaza, two hundredand fifty is currently higher than any other
(04:13):
major twenty first century conflict. Nowthis is just laid out there as fact,
describing what Israel is doing to Palestiniansas genocide. Yeah, and there
was no disclaimer or anything. It'sjust like, here's a student with an
opinion put it in the school newspaper. Yeah. Well, that article was
not an opinion piece. That recolewas a featured article interviewing a Westside alum
(04:38):
who organizes pro Palestine protests. Butsomething I do want to note is that
opening line claiming genocide that was publishedonly a week after the International Court of
Justice ruled that Israel was not committinggenocide. Yeah, so, okay,
this was I didn't realize this wasn'ta column or a student opinion piece.
This was put out there is here'sthe news, here's the black and white
(04:59):
factual news. Israel's committing genocide.Against innocent people in Gaza. That was
put out there as just like sayingtoday's Friday. Yes, now you saw
that in the school newspaper. Whatactions did you take? So I contacted
the school board or I contacted theadministration, and I said, hey,
(05:21):
this isn't I don't think this iswhat we should be telling the school,
telling the whole high school. SoI said that I would write an opinion
editorial, and that's what I did. I talked about how Gaza or Gaza
is the size of Omaha and receivestwo billion dollars each year and that's four
(05:44):
times the budget for the city ofOmaha. But every Gazen there's a lot
of Gazans who are still living inpoverty. And that's because of Hamas,
the terrorist organization that governs Gaza,and they take that aid and they build
rockets to shoot at Israel. Andit's just kind of flipping the script and
saying, here's actually what's happening.Let's look at what's happening. So you
(06:08):
saw that this piece was put inthe West Side paper, and you said,
I want to write a rebuttal piece. And it seems like that which
they required of you in terms ofwhat you were allowed to write and some
of the disclaimers and language that theyput in there before your piece even started.
They had you jumping through a lotmore hoops than they did the original
(06:29):
student who published what I think isopinion here about genocide and Gaza. How
did it work? You said I'dlike to write a different piece, and
they didn't just say, okay,write it up, send it to us,
we'll print it right. Yes,So I did think some of those
measures were to protect me because thereis a lot of anti Semitism and some
(06:51):
people, especially that we've seen throughriots and protests, are respond violently with
pro Israel activism. So I dothink some of those steps were to protect
me and make sure my article wassolid. But yeah, there is some
pushback on the Israel point of view. What is it that they made you
(07:13):
do before you wrote this article?Well, I personally, I wanted to
talk to a lot of people inOmaha and people who led the ADL,
and I'm an intern with Stand withUs. So I talked to my internship
and they kind of helped guide me. So I chose myself to go through
(07:33):
a lot to make sure my articlewas as good as I wanted it to
be, but yeah, they sentit to some professors. And now the
aforementioned piece that I read that wasin the west Side Wired just started with
this opinion that there's genocide going onin Gaza. There was nothing in there
before that, the opinion that theylet you finally publish, and it took
(07:56):
a couple of weeks, right andlooking at this and reviewing it starts off
with the content in this article reflectsthe views and opinions of the author and
is not necessarily affiliated with the viewsor opinions of west Side Wired and West
Side Community Schools. This document hasbeen fact checked by a University Middle Eastern
(08:16):
Studies professor, which I'm sure you'reokay with. You wrote, did you
want to write this as the viewsand opinions of the author or did you
intend to write this as from ajournalistic perspective? Let me tell you a
different let me have people tell youa different side of this. Yeah,
so I knew from the beginning thatit was going to be an opinion editorial,
(08:39):
Okay, But yes, they didadd that disclaimer in there even though
it's published as an opinion editorial,and I think they added that to a
Palestine view, but that disclaimer wasonly put in place when I decided to
publish my Israel article. We're talkinghere with Sasha Denenburg on news Radio eleven
ten KFAB. What year are youat Westside? I'm a junior junior at
(09:01):
west Side, and you've written thispiece for the west Side school newspaper in
response to another student of yours,a couple of students who also go to
school with you, who wrote avery different piece. And this is all
under this umbrella, as you've noted, and I've seen that you've gone to
rallies in response to what happened tothe Israelis on October seventh, and what
(09:24):
is happening not just in Gaza,but also the threats made against Jews here
in this country, especially in collegecampuses. There's a lot of really scary
things going on. When you wrotethis piece against what someone else wrote on
your school newspaper, you go toclass with these people. Was there any
(09:48):
conversation between you and the original authorsof this piece. Yes, so I
did talk to one of the authorsand she was very professional about it.
She was not at all mean oranything. So I do have I do.
I would say I have like agood relationship with some of them.
I'm glad to hear that, becauseyou know, when something like this happens,
(10:11):
people immediately go, oh, thisauthor has got a bunch of bias
and this is slanderous and discussed.And then what you sometimes come to find
out is you have a very youngjournalist. And this is true whether it's
the West Side School newspaper or CNNor MSNBC, you've got a young journalist
who and this has happened for Kfabas well. I'll throw us into this
(10:33):
who did not realize that something thatwas written came off a certain way and
were very embarrassed and apologetic. Idon't know if that was the case in
terms of embarrassed and apologetic, butyou've stuck your neck out there, and
this is when there's a lot ofstudent activism. Have you received any blowback
from your fellow students or anything interms of online or social media for standing
(10:56):
up for Israel in this way?Yeah. So I published this article yesterday
at one pm, so there hasn'tbeen a lot of time at school to
have people come up to me.I have heard, well, not if
you're skipping class to come talk tous on the radio. Yeah. No,
I have heard from some classmates thatthey learned a lot and that that
was my goal. I'm very happyabout that. But obviously there are people
(11:20):
in our district who are anti Semitic. There has been incidents of I mentioned
in my article that at the middleschool some kid stood up, raised his
hand and said, Hyle Hitler infront of my Jewish friend. So there
is a very present problem in ourdistrict in a way. Is that anti
Semitism or is that a dumb middleschool boy because I have a dumb I
(11:41):
have a dumb middle school son,and I see his friends and they're going
to choose the dumbest possible thing todo without putting any thought behind it.
So I we do see a veryvery big increase in anti Semitism after October
seventh, So I think this spread. I also say this, the spread
of disinformation kind of promotes that narrativeof hatred. So I think that this
(12:07):
definitely adds to the anti semitism.Yeah, and then it's up to what
the adults are going to do whenthey see things like this happening. What
happened to that middle school student whostood up and yelled Hyle Hitler in front
of Jewish students. Yes, soI don't think anything has happened to him
yet. I could be wrong,but I don't think the teacher heard.
(12:28):
The student who shared this with medidn't want me to share the name or
so I'm letting the family deal withthat. It's been a couple of years
now since you left Omaha public schools. When you look and see what's going
on at your former school, talkto former classmates, what's your assessment of
what's going on with OPS? Andare things better at West Side? So
(12:52):
I do have I do still havefriends in the OPS district, and they
say that they're they're happy I movingto West I love modular scheduling. So
that's pretty great. Okay, good, Well, that's good. A little
more time to sneak out and cometalk on the radio. Do your teachers
know where you are right now andthey let you come here? I think
so? Are they listening right now? Probably not. Let's try that again
(13:16):
this time, say yes, welistened to you every day. Are they
listening right now? Yes? Ohthat's so flattering. Cool. Thank you
to the West Side teachers, Asasha, I've been a fan of yours since
you went and delivered that speech acouple of years ago to the Omaha Public
School Board. It takes a lotof guts to be able to do some
of these things that you've done atthis very young age, to go talk
(13:37):
to the school board against the superintendent, to point out some of the things
from a student perspective that teachers won'teven do. I get emails all the
time from teachers and various school districtsgoing off you only knew. I was
like, well, come on hereand tell me. Oh no, I'd
lose my job, I'd get introuble. I don't need that kind of
hassle. You went and did it. And then when you saw this happening
(13:58):
at West Side, with this reportedin such a way as just to say,
as a true fact, genocide againstinnocent Palestinians without being an opinion piece,
you did something about it. That'simpressive. Yeah, yeah, so
it is. It is kind ofnerve wracking to publish something like this.
I actually sat in my parents downand I said, convince me to publish
(14:18):
this article, because I mean,the reality is that there are a lot
of people who who don't like that. But eventually they said, you do
what's right, and then you dealwith the consequences. So that's what I'm
doing. I'm very impressed and Ilook forward to seeing what you're going to
do to take over the world someday, very soon. Sasha Dennenburg, thank
(14:39):
you very much for skipping school tocome hang out with us here on this
Friday morning. I'll let you getback to class, all right. That's
a West Side Warrior. Sasha Dennenberg. Scott voices mornings nine to eleven on
news Radio eleven ten KFAB
Scott Vordie Lucy remember the pandemic.It was two weeks to flatten the curve
and that was done and everyone waspretty cool with it. But there was
a superintendent of Omaha Public Schools,doctor Cheryl Logan, at the time,
that had a few more policies inplace. And among those who criticize some
(00:20):
of what they saw happening in opsrelated to the pandemic, related to some
of the education read some of thesocial activism, and everything else seeing in
there, there was a student whowent and addressed the school board. Her
name was Sasha Good Evening. Myname is Sasha Ennenburgh SA s H A
D E N E N B Er G. Please do not grant doctor
(00:44):
Logan a contract extension. The districtis much worse off than it was a
couple years ago. It is absolutelytime for new leadership, not for cementing
the olden place. From the informationI have just last Friday, doctor Logan's
and minutest ordered the high school orderedthe high schools to redo all of their
classes, making a minimum class sizeof thirty five, and to make the
(01:10):
leftover teachers available to be transferred toother schools. People who teach children understand
that new class sizes will destroy educationgrossly. Overcrowded classes will also worsen behavioral
problems and increase security concerns. That'sjust the opening thirty seconds of this three
(01:30):
minute screed delivered to the school boardagainst the superintendent. In the wake of
that speech, the teachers fled thatdistrict. About eight hundred teachers over the
course of two years left Omaha PublicSchools. Another ones on the way I
learned last night got the information thata beloved instructor in an Omaha Public High
(01:55):
School is leaving. And when astudent said why, he says, I
can't take it in OPS anymore.Well, there's there's new leadership coming to
the district. But that student,Sasha Dennenburgh, left OPS well along with
all the teachers, and joins usnow here on news radio eleven ten kfab
Sasha, good morning, good morning. We're pulling you out of school here
this morning. You are still ahigh school student, but you've switched from
(02:20):
OPS and gone to West Side.Yeah, District sixty six, And I'm
sure they were very happy to haveyou up until just a couple of weeks
ago. Well, you couldn't justgo to school and sit there and be
quiet and get on TikTok and learnhow to dance and do stuff like everyone
else. You had to. Youhad to cause trouble, didn't you again?
Oh for a meaningful cause? Yeah? Okay, what was it that
(02:43):
you saw and where did you seeit that caused you to issue a response?
So? Yeah, So October seventhsparked a war between Israel and Kamas,
and my school published some articles thatwere biased and a lot of inaccuracies,
and that sparks a lot of antiSemitism in the district and in the
(03:07):
world. And when you say yourschool published some articles, who published what
where? So? West Side Wiredis run by students, and some students
published articles in support of Palestine andsupport of Hamas, and I just wanted
to respond to that and educate people. And the title of my article is
(03:29):
west west Side Students' opinions on theIsrael Hmas war should be should be out
of fact? Should be created outof fact? So a lot of my
article is the history and the facts. Now, it's okay for people to
have opinions, right. This wasan opinion piece put in the West Side
(03:52):
newspaper and it starts off by sayingGaza is home to one of the world's
most current genocides, where more thantwenty five thousand civilians have been killed since
October seventh in the name of expellinghamas a Palestinian terrorist organization. The daily
death rate in Gaza, two hundredand fifty is currently higher than any other
(04:13):
major twenty first century conflict. Nowthis is just laid out there as fact,
describing what Israel is doing to Palestiniansas genocide. Yeah, and there
was no disclaimer or anything. It'sjust like, here's a student with an
opinion put it in the school newspaper. Yeah. Well, that article was
not an opinion piece. That recolewas a featured article interviewing a Westside alum
(04:38):
who organizes pro Palestine protests. Butsomething I do want to note is that
opening line claiming genocide that was publishedonly a week after the International Court of
Justice ruled that Israel was not committinggenocide. Yeah, so, okay,
this was I didn't realize this wasn'ta column or a student opinion piece.
This was put out there is here'sthe news, here's the black and white
(04:59):
factual news. Israel's committing genocide.Against innocent people in Gaza. That was
put out there as just like sayingtoday's Friday. Yes, now you saw
that in the school newspaper. Whatactions did you take? So I contacted
the school board or I contacted theadministration, and I said, hey,
(05:21):
this isn't I don't think this iswhat we should be telling the school,
telling the whole high school. SoI said that I would write an opinion
editorial, and that's what I did. I talked about how Gaza or Gaza
is the size of Omaha and receivestwo billion dollars each year and that's four
(05:44):
times the budget for the city ofOmaha. But every Gazen there's a lot
of Gazans who are still living inpoverty. And that's because of Hamas,
the terrorist organization that governs Gaza,and they take that aid and they build
rockets to shoot at Israel. Andit's just kind of flipping the script and
saying, here's actually what's happening.Let's look at what's happening. So you
(06:08):
saw that this piece was put inthe West Side paper, and you said,
I want to write a rebuttal piece. And it seems like that which
they required of you in terms ofwhat you were allowed to write and some
of the disclaimers and language that theyput in there before your piece even started.
They had you jumping through a lotmore hoops than they did the original
(06:29):
student who published what I think isopinion here about genocide and Gaza. How
did it work? You said I'dlike to write a different piece, and
they didn't just say, okay,write it up, send it to us,
we'll print it right. Yes,So I did think some of those
measures were to protect me because thereis a lot of anti Semitism and some
(06:51):
people, especially that we've seen throughriots and protests, are respond violently with
pro Israel activism. So I dothink some of those steps were to protect
me and make sure my article wassolid. But yeah, there is some
pushback on the Israel point of view. What is it that they made you
(07:13):
do before you wrote this article?Well, I personally, I wanted to
talk to a lot of people inOmaha and people who led the ADL,
and I'm an intern with Stand withUs. So I talked to my internship
and they kind of helped guide me. So I chose myself to go through
(07:33):
a lot to make sure my articlewas as good as I wanted it to
be, but yeah, they sentit to some professors. And now the
aforementioned piece that I read that wasin the west Side Wired just started with
this opinion that there's genocide going onin Gaza. There was nothing in there
before that, the opinion that theylet you finally publish, and it took
(07:56):
a couple of weeks, right andlooking at this and reviewing it starts off
with the content in this article reflectsthe views and opinions of the author and
is not necessarily affiliated with the viewsor opinions of west Side Wired and West
Side Community Schools. This document hasbeen fact checked by a University Middle Eastern
(08:16):
Studies professor, which I'm sure you'reokay with. You wrote, did you
want to write this as the viewsand opinions of the author or did you
intend to write this as from ajournalistic perspective? Let me tell you a
different let me have people tell youa different side of this. Yeah,
so I knew from the beginning thatit was going to be an opinion editorial,
(08:39):
Okay, But yes, they didadd that disclaimer in there even though
it's published as an opinion editorial,and I think they added that to a
Palestine view, but that disclaimer wasonly put in place when I decided to
publish my Israel article. We're talkinghere with Sasha Denenburg on news Radio eleven
ten KFAB. What year are youat Westside? I'm a junior junior at
(09:01):
west Side, and you've written thispiece for the west Side school newspaper in
response to another student of yours,a couple of students who also go to
school with you, who wrote avery different piece. And this is all
under this umbrella, as you've noted, and I've seen that you've gone to
rallies in response to what happened tothe Israelis on October seventh, and what
(09:24):
is happening not just in Gaza,but also the threats made against Jews here
in this country, especially in collegecampuses. There's a lot of really scary
things going on. When you wrotethis piece against what someone else wrote on
your school newspaper, you go toclass with these people. Was there any
(09:48):
conversation between you and the original authorsof this piece. Yes, so I
did talk to one of the authorsand she was very professional about it.
She was not at all mean oranything. So I do have I do.
I would say I have like agood relationship with some of them.
I'm glad to hear that, becauseyou know, when something like this happens,
(10:11):
people immediately go, oh, thisauthor has got a bunch of bias
and this is slanderous and discussed.And then what you sometimes come to find
out is you have a very youngjournalist. And this is true whether it's
the West Side School newspaper or CNNor MSNBC, you've got a young journalist
who and this has happened for Kfabas well. I'll throw us into this
(10:33):
who did not realize that something thatwas written came off a certain way and
were very embarrassed and apologetic. Idon't know if that was the case in
terms of embarrassed and apologetic, butyou've stuck your neck out there, and
this is when there's a lot ofstudent activism. Have you received any blowback
from your fellow students or anything interms of online or social media for standing
(10:56):
up for Israel in this way?Yeah. So I published this article yesterday
at one pm, so there hasn'tbeen a lot of time at school to
have people come up to me.I have heard, well, not if
you're skipping class to come talk tous on the radio. Yeah. No,
I have heard from some classmates thatthey learned a lot and that that
was my goal. I'm very happyabout that. But obviously there are people
(11:20):
in our district who are anti Semitic. There has been incidents of I mentioned
in my article that at the middleschool some kid stood up, raised his
hand and said, Hyle Hitler infront of my Jewish friend. So there
is a very present problem in ourdistrict in a way. Is that anti
Semitism or is that a dumb middleschool boy because I have a dumb I
(11:41):
have a dumb middle school son,and I see his friends and they're going
to choose the dumbest possible thing todo without putting any thought behind it.
So I we do see a veryvery big increase in anti Semitism after October
seventh, So I think this spread. I also say this, the spread
of disinformation kind of promotes that narrativeof hatred. So I think that this
(12:07):
definitely adds to the anti semitism.Yeah, and then it's up to what
the adults are going to do whenthey see things like this happening. What
happened to that middle school student whostood up and yelled Hyle Hitler in front
of Jewish students. Yes, soI don't think anything has happened to him
yet. I could be wrong,but I don't think the teacher heard.
(12:28):
The student who shared this with medidn't want me to share the name or
so I'm letting the family deal withthat. It's been a couple of years
now since you left Omaha public schools. When you look and see what's going
on at your former school, talkto former classmates, what's your assessment of
what's going on with OPS? Andare things better at West Side? So
(12:52):
I do have I do still havefriends in the OPS district, and they
say that they're they're happy I movingto West I love modular scheduling. So
that's pretty great. Okay, good, Well, that's good. A little
more time to sneak out and cometalk on the radio. Do your teachers
know where you are right now andthey let you come here? I think
so? Are they listening right now? Probably not. Let's try that again
(13:16):
this time, say yes, welistened to you every day. Are they
listening right now? Yes? Ohthat's so flattering. Cool. Thank you
to the West Side teachers, Asasha, I've been a fan of yours since
you went and delivered that speech acouple of years ago to the Omaha Public
School Board. It takes a lotof guts to be able to do some
of these things that you've done atthis very young age, to go talk
(13:37):
to the school board against the superintendent, to point out some of the things
from a student perspective that teachers won'teven do. I get emails all the
time from teachers and various school districtsgoing off you only knew. I was
like, well, come on hereand tell me. Oh no, I'd
lose my job, I'd get introuble. I don't need that kind of
hassle. You went and did it. And then when you saw this happening
(13:58):
at West Side, with this reportedin such a way as just to say,
as a true fact, genocide againstinnocent Palestinians without being an opinion piece,
you did something about it. That'simpressive. Yeah, yeah, so
it is. It is kind ofnerve wracking to publish something like this.
I actually sat in my parents downand I said, convince me to publish
(14:18):
this article, because I mean,the reality is that there are a lot
of people who who don't like that. But eventually they said, you do
what's right, and then you dealwith the consequences. So that's what I'm
doing. I'm very impressed and Ilook forward to seeing what you're going to
do to take over the world someday, very soon. Sasha Dennenburg, thank
(14:39):
you very much for skipping school tocome hang out with us here on this
Friday morning. I'll let you getback to class, all right. That's
a West Side Warrior. Sasha Dennenberg. Scott voices mornings nine to eleven on
news Radio eleven ten KFAB
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