Board members of the Wissahickon School District have voted to fire a principal who admitted to leaving antisemitic remarks on the voicemail of a student’s father.
The board voted unanimously on Dec. 23 to terminate the contract of Philip Leddy, principal of the Lower Gwynedd Elementary School. District Superintendent Mwenyewe Dawan had recommended that Leddy be fired after a hearing about his conduct on Monday.
The district has also scheduled an in-person meeting with Jewish parents to discuss the incident and set up two training sessions for school employees on recognizing, preventing and responding antisemitism, to be conducted with the help of the Anti-Defamation League’s Philadelphia office.
“What was reported were comments that were extremely, extremely horrific and problematic, and I’m grateful we’ll be able to engage further with the district moving forward to bring education that’s desperately needed,” Andrew Goretsky, senior regional director of the ADL’s Philadelphia office, told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
In the voicemail, reported on by Philadelphia-area TV stations and shared on social media, Leddy, talking to another school employee, is overheard referring to a “Jew camp,” says the man he just called has “Jew money” and says “they control the banks.” When the employee wonders if the father is a lawyer, Leddy says, “the odds probably are good.”
Leddy apparently did not realize that he failed to hang up after leaving a message for the parent. According to a letter from Superintendent Dawan to school families, Leddy “self-reported” making the remarks on the parent’s voicemail.
The school employee he was speaking to, who did not counter or object to Leddy’s remarks, was placed on paid administrative leave, subject to further investigation.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia said it was “deeply disturbed” by Leddy’s comments, which it said “rely on well-known antisemitic stereotypes that reduce a parent to caricature and signal hostility rather than respect.”
“For a family entrusting their child to a school community, hearing this kind of language, particularly from a principal, is profoundly unsettling,” the Federation said.
Goretsky noted that previously, Leddy had promoted diversity and inclusion in the school district north of Philadelphia, which has an enrollment of about 5,000 students.
“In this particular case, we have a person who’s done inclusion work as part of his role, and yet said these things. That is particularly concerning,” he said.
The voicemail follows other incidents where parents have complained of alleged antisemitic or anti-Israel viewpoints being expressed in the Wissahickon School District.
In June, the school board eliminated a World Studies class at the Wissahickon Virtual Academy that critics said presented a one-sided, pro-Palestinian view of Israeli history.
In November, Jewish parents brought attention to a booth at a school fair where students from a local Muslim Student Association chapter placed a Palestinian flag at the table and offered other students the chance to wear a keffiyeh. One student at the booth wore a stole that bore the phrase, “Jerusalem is ours,” written in Arabic.
In a message to Lower Gwynedd families announcing Leddy’s replacement, Sue Kanopka, Dawan said the district will partner with the Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council to facilitate “structured conversations, focused on listening, understanding impact, and moving forward together. This session will be designed to listen, learn, and better understand the experiences and concerns of our Jewish community members.”
The first session with Jewish families is set to take place the evening of Jan. 13 at an undisclosed location.
Dawan said the training sessions with the ADL will take place on Jan. 16 and Feb. 13.
Goretsky, who said an ADL staffer previously held a training session in the district, said details of the upcoming sessions are still being worked out and will depend how many staff members participate.
“But training is only one aspect,” he said. “Institutions have to look at not just training, they have to look at what policies they have in place … to deal with any potential systemic antisemitism that might exist.”