The school board of the Wissahickon School District, which educates 5,135 students in six schools in the Philadelphia area, voted unanimously on Tuesday to fire the principal of an elementary school who allegedly referred to “Jew money” and to Jews controlling banks, among other slurs, in a voice message that he left for a Jewish parent.
Philip Leddy, then principal of Lower Gwynedd Elementary School, appeared to be unaware that the message was still recording when he spoke of “Jew camp” and said that the odds were “probably good” that the Jewish parent was a lawyer, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
“What is most concerning is not only the language itself, but the mindset it reflects,” the Federation said on Dec. 19. “The comments 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,” it said.
The Federation added that the incident didn’t “occur in a vacuum.”
“It follows a series of troubling events that have left Jewish families in the Wissahickon School District feeling unsafe, unwelcome or unheard,” it said.
