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Jewish families, who filed a lawsuit against Sequoia Union High School District administrators, teachers and board members, say administrators ignored Jewish students’ complaints of harassment and antisemitism, failed to intervene when teachers taught historical inaccuracies and broadcasted a student-created call to pro-Palestinian activism.
The lawsuit was filed by the families of six Sequoia district students at Menlo-Atherton and Woodside high schools who are represented by The Deborah Project, a Maryland-based legal group dedicated to addressing antisemitism in educational institutions, with pro bono assistance from the law firm Ropes & Gray, according to a press release.
The Deborah Project had previously sent a public records act request to the district seeking all instructional materials containing the words “Zionism, Zionists, Israel, Israelis, Palestine, and/or Palestinians” taught since Sept. 1.
Sequoia Union High School District spokesperson Naomi Hunter told this news organization she could not comment because the district has yet to be served with the lawsuit. Federal court records indicate administrators were served on Nov. 18.
Superintendent Crystal Leach did not respond to a request for an interview.
The lawsuit cites multiple examples of antisemitism by teachers and students at both Woodside and Menlo-Atherton high schools. The lawsuit also alleges that district administrators “egregiously” failed to address a rise in antisemitism after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“People say ‘oh we’re just criticizing Israel.’ But it isn’t. It’s attacking the Jewish state and demonizing and delegitimizing Jews and the Jewish state: turning them into murderers, people who commit genocide, people who murder babies and steal land from others,” said Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project.
“All of that has been percolating into people’s minds both through the media and the education system. It crept in slowly but now it is here in full force. It’s a very hideous form of Jew hatred and the fact that it was launched following what happened last fall [referring to the Oct. 7 attack] is unbelievably painful and awful,” Marcus added.
The Deborah Project has also been involved in cases in Mountain View and Berkeley.
The suit, filed in federal court, names Woodside and Menlo-Atherton high administrators, district administrators, members of the district Board of Trustees and teachers. The lawsuit does not name the district as an institution.
One of the lawsuit’s most damaging claims is that teachers often used their position to spread antisemitism and rarely faced any discipline from school or district administration.
Woodside history class
The lawsuit claims that Woodside history teacher Gregory Gruszynski “exploited his position of trust to spread antisemitic and ahistorical pro-Hamas propaganda under the guise of teaching 10th grade World History.” It states that Gruszynski repeatedly displayed political pro-Palestine political messages in his classroom, taught biased and inaccurate lessons and singled out the only Jewish student in his class, L.K., when teaching about the conflict.
“She was humiliated by him,” Marcus said.
Gruszynski did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
“Gruszynski began a World History lecture by asserting, ‘[L.K.] is someone who doesn’t think Israel is an apartheid state,’ using a tone that implied L.K.’s position was preposterous. Gruszynski continued, ‘Maybe now others will think differently,’ suggesting that he intended to prove L.K.’s purported error to the rest of the class,” the lawsuit claimed.
The lawsuit claims that Gruszynski “seemed to relish taunting her and exploiting his power to silence [L.K.]’s questions.”
The lawsuit states that L.K.’s father, Sam Kasle, repeatedly attempted to obtain the teacher’s curriculum yet Woodside administrators refused to provide the material.
California Education Code 49091.10 states: “All primary supplemental instructional materials and assessments, including textbooks, teacher’s manuals, films, audio and video recordings, and software shall be compiled and stored by the classroom instructor and made available promptly for inspection by a parent or guardian in a reasonable timeframe.”
The material that was eventually released shows that to receive points on assignments and tests, students had to answer multiple choice questions with controversial answers. On one quiz, to receive credit, students were required to define Hamas as a “political party continuing to fight against Israel” and say that all of Palestine is occupied by Israel.
Hamas is designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
“L.K. understood that if she had instead responded to Gruszynski’s test questions with factually accurate information, Gruszynski would have marked those answers as incorrect, resulting in a low or even failing grade. In this way, Gruszynski forced L.K., a Jewish student, to condemn Israel and disavow her beliefs in order to receive a passing grade,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit also claims the material was never approved by the school district.
The lawsuit alleges that Woodside Principal Karen van Putten defended the teacher and refused to discipline him. After sending at least 17 emails about the teacher to administrators, Kasle filed a formal complaint.
The investigation substantiated parts of the complaint but implied the student and Gruszynski’s relationship was productive and stated that Gruszynski believed their relationship was positive.
Menlo-Atherton Ethnic Studies course
The lawsuit also mentions former Menlo-Atherton Ethnic Studies teacher Chloe Gentile-Montgomery over her lesson on Nov. 3, 2023 which the lawsuit called “hamas propaganda.” Gentile-Montgomery is not a party to the suit.
Gentile-Montgomery declined an interview and to comment on allegations in the lawsuit citing online bullying and harassment she faced.
A slide from the lesson included an image of a puppet which the lawsuit claims refers to a “centuries-old antisemitic trope” that Jewish people control some global institutions.
Another slide said “Israel is a country created on Palestinian land. The United Nations says this is illegal.” The lawsuit claims this is “unequivocally false.”
The United Nations partitioned the British Palestinian mandate into a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, in 1947, according to the U.S. State Department.
The lawsuit also claims that Gentile-Montgomery said Gaza is an “open air prison” and displayed a Turkish propaganda video.
According to a lawsuit, a student, referred to as W.K., attempted to discuss the inaccuracies with Gentile-Montgomery but she called him a “biased Jewish freshman” and walked away.
The lesson sparked a petition and outcry at a school board meeting.
Gentile-Montgomery was a probationary employee at the time and her contract was not renewed.
Woodside student-produced video
On March 21, 2024, Woodside’s student-produced TV program, Woodside Live, aired a segment as part of KQED’s Call for Change project. The segment encourages students to take a stand against Islamophobia and also appears to encourage them to join the pro-Palestinian movement.
In an email from Jewish parents to van Putten, they claim: “Airing this video to the entire school implies that the faculty and administration endorse this particular movement. … This is not a ‘Call for Change,’ but rather part of the ‘Free Palestine’ movement that is seemingly being force-fed to the entire school, in every classroom.”
Woodside Live is played in every classroom during dedicated time in Woodside’s bell schedule.
In her response, van Putten said, students decided on the topic and created the video with the assistance of KQED staff and the help of their adviser. Van Putten said that administrators do not review and would never censor the program’s materials before they air.
Woodside Digital Filmmaking instructor Joshua DeBets did not respond to a request for comment. Van Putten did not respond to a request for an interview.
“Ultimately, van Putten’s word-salad response demonstrated a complete lack of accountability and a continued failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment,” the lawsuit read.
The video still appears on Woodside Live’s YouTube channel.
Swastika-like symbols at Woodside
After the Oct. 7 attack, two swastika symbols appeared on Woodside High’s campus. The lawsuit claims that despite van Putten’s statement that an extensive investigation was conducted by school administration and the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, administrators quickly accepted the student’s claim that they were not Nazi symbols but spiritual symbols from Japanese Buddhism. The lawsuit claims the Sheriff’s Office has no record of receiving any report relating to the incident.
Update on Nov. 26: Sheriff’s Office Director of Communications Gretchen Spiker said in a statement to this news organization, “After a thorough review, we were unable to find any record of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office being contacted regarding this matter.”
This news organization asked the Sheriff’s Office to confirm whether it investigated the incident and was told it is looking into it.
The lawsuit claims that in a private meeting with one of the parents who filed the lawsuit, Woodside High administrator Wendy Porter admitted that the student likely was aware of the symbol’s connection to the Nazi party.
This news organization asked Porter and van Putten to clarify information about their investigation but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Claims of antisemitic teachers
The lawsuit says a substitute teacher at Menlo-Atherton High, after learning a student, who the lawsuit refers to as W.K., was Jewish, proceeded to tell Holocaust jokes to a group of students; when concerns were brought to Menlo-Atherton Principal Karl Losekoot, he said that the student could either receive an apology or transfer to another substitute. W.K. chose to receive an apology but the lawsuit claims it was insincere and the substitute continued to work at the school.
The lawsuit claims Woodside High School math teacher, Abdulhadi Kaddoura, approached a Jewish student after class and asked her what she was doing. When she said she was waiting for friends, the lawsuit claims Kaddoura acted surprised and said, “You have friends?” He then said he could tell she was Jewish by her nose.
Kaddoura did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit claims a teaching assistant told a Jewish student, S.B, that she should stop wearing her Star of David necklace “to avoid becoming a target of antisemitism, and that she would ‘get what she deserved’ if she continued to wear it.”
The lawsuit claims that a Menlo-Atherton math teacher’s lesson “gratuitously invoked anti-Israel headlines” to teach geometry and text from Naguib Mahfouz’s Nobel Prize in Literature which contributed to a “hostile environment for Jewish students.” The lawsuit states that the teacher was never punished.
Antisemetic incidents by students
The lawsuit alleges administrators at Woodside and Menlo-Atherton failed to discipline students who said antisemetic statements directed toward Jewish students before Oct. 7 and continued to avoid disciplining students as their behavior escalated.
According to the lawsuit, on March 19, 2024, a group of Woodside students called S.B an ethnic slur. When the student reported the incident, an administrator promised S.B would not be in the same class as one of the students involved. According to the lawsuit, S.B is currently in multiple classes with that student.
The lawsuit details five other instances where school administrators failed to act when a student said something antisemetic. The lawsuit claims that by failing to act, administrators violated the students’ civil rights.
Suit claims administrators fail to respond
The lawsuit claims that Kasle emailed the superintendent and board multiple times but never received a response.
Eventually, Kasle and seven other Jewish parents, filed a formal complaint against Woodside about multiple antisemetic incidents. The lawsuit claims that Associate Superintendent of Human Resources Todd Beal confirmed he received the complaint on April 23, 2024.
State law requires districts to finish an investigation and write a report within 60 days of receiving the complaint unless the complaining parties agree to extend that time. The lawsuit says the families have yet to receive the report and the district has yet to take action despite over 200 days passing.
“Every one of these parents tried to go through the system, tried to use the procedures they were supposed to. I was speaking with them for many, many months. It wasn’t for a very long time that they became utterly frustrated and realized that nothing was going to change through the system,” Marcus said.
“They were being ignored with benevolent smiles. The pain of their children was being ignored. The fact that falsehoods were being taught was being ignored. For God’s sake, Holocaust jokes were being told by teachers to students,” Marcus added. “The complaint as a whole seems pretty awful but each step was awful, and nothing was done.”
Among other actions, the lawsuit asks the court to order the district to fire staff members who were engaged in antisemetic actions, conduct a comprehensive review of all course material, implement policies to address antisemitism and appoint a special master to oversee and monitor the district’s progress.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Chloe Gentile-Montgomery and removes reference to her current employer. It also clarifies that she is not a party to the lawsuit.
