Kerry Sautner - "This Is A Playbook Move We Have Seen Before."

A Right To Know Request revealed that Lower Merion School Board President, Kerry Sautner, received an email from a parent expressing concern about anti-semitism. Sautner told Superintendent Frank Ranelli that the email was “a playbook move we have seen before.”

At Monday Night’s (September 15) School Board Meeting, Kim Lipetz directly confronted Sautner and told her, “It’s unacceptable to send an email to our new superintendent stating that you know this playbook that we use all the time.”

Sautner shot back, responding, “I am more than happy to address the misinformation that is out there, whenever you want to speak…but we need, as a society, to be careful about misinformation and disinformation.”

This is the email sent by a Lower Merion High School parent to members of the Lower Merion School Board.

From: [Redacted]
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 4:19 PM
To: Melanie Schlaff [email redacted]; Anna Shurak [email redacted]; Sarah Thomas [email redacted]; Abby Jenner Rubin [email redacted]; Shya Kashik [email redacted]; Jason Herman [email redacted]; Kimberly Garrison [email redacted]; Todd Ridky [email redacted]; Kerry Sautner [email redacted]
Subject: Fwd: Urgent Concern: Antisemitism and Student Safety, following the ZOOM meeting yesterday

To LMSD School Leadership,

Yesterday morning, during school hours, my [redacted] urgently reached out to me to say that a speaker on a Zoom call with a number of an only youth civic organization that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. And you gave him a platform in the schools?

I want to take a minute to process this, to sit with my daughter and understand what happened. I also need to process how the District made the decision to give that speaker a platform. You invited her to speak. She’s in school. She’s a Jew. She is watching what you are doing. She’s crying. She is hurt. She is angry. She feels unsafe.

This is not a hypothetical for her! She is sitting in your school while this happens to other Jewish students across America, every day. She is watching a school that is supposed to be there for her safety and support invite a speaker to advocate for her deportation. To advocate for her genocide. To advocate for the murder of Jews. She is supposed to learn? She is supposed to feel safe? How?

I don’t know how to explain this to her. I don’t know how to reassure her. I don’t know how to help her feel safe in a school that would choose to legitimize this.

My daughter is a [redacted] grader. She should not be in tears at school, in fear for her life because LMSD brought in a speaker to call for genocide against her and all Jews.

Would you bring in a speaker who says Black Americans should be deported? That we should kill Christians, Muslims, gay people? Of course you would not! And yet, you did this to Jewish children.

How can I tell her she is safe in her school? How could you – which is worse – mandate she return to the office while the person who was just given a platform by LMSD is advocating for her death? And it is not just her. Every Jewish student is now unsafe. Every student is now unsafe. Because what you legitimized is hate speech. Because what you legitimized is the call for genocide.

Do you understand what you have done? Do you understand the danger you have put her in?

This is the textbook definition of antisemitism – applying a double standard to Jews. I say this with full awareness and after over a year of engagement with school staff: you would never bring in a speaker who says Black Americans should be deported. You would never host someone who advocates against the LGBTQ+ community, or who says trans people should be denied medical care or forcibly deported.

But when it comes to the Jewish people – to our one and only Jewish state – you’re willing to give the mic to someone who literally promises its destruction. From the river to the sea is not a metaphor. It is a slogan that has been adopted by Hamas, which has a charter that calls for the murder of Jews worldwide.

Eighty years after my grandparents survived the gas chambers – after their families were murdered in Europe – you welcome this person into my child’s school and present this speaker as if she should somehow have an “open mind” to “both sides.” Both sides of her extermination. Both sides of her deportation. Both sides of her murder.

Her friends whisper in the halls about what she faces. Violence, torture, persecution, murder, erasure of our people – including their memories.

Do you see the impact this has had? Do you see the impact in your school, ask them and demand accountability.

Do you as leaders know you have the right to say no?

You as school leadership should have said no. You should not be booking in your school. Period. That person is promoting genocide, ethnic elimination and targeting.

Why? Because it is open in the world – calls for the destruction of Syria, Egypt, Iran, China, Russia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, or even North Korea? Anybody who says “from the river to the sea” is calling for the murder of Jews. And you gave them a stage.

I don’t know whether you understand what has happened here and what it means to your Jewish students. I demand a measure of accountability before my daughter feels unsafe ever again.

I want you to understand I highlight this is not an isolated incident. My eldest daughter has also faced antisemitic checking at school. She has been told if you speak Hebrew, you are not safe. She has been told that if you are a Jew, you are not safe.

She has been told she is not safe in her school – the one place where she should be safe. Do you know what it is like to explain this to her? To have to explain this to my child?

It is not acceptable. I cannot accept this. I need you to know this is not acceptable.

It is not free speech to mention that Israel should not exist. It is hate speech. Hate speech against Jews.

Do you see the impact of this? Are you ready to understand what this means for my child and other Jewish children?

Do you realize that LMSD has created a school environment where my daughter no longer feels safe, no longer feels like she can walk through the hallways without hearing calls for her murder?

With about 20% of Israel’s Arabs are ultra-Orthodox, and the rest include secular Jews, Christians, Druze, Circassians, and others – your schools should not be making this mistake. You should not be allowing your school to present this narrative.

When their friends families being slaughtered by terrorists – it is not education. It is propaganda. Why do you think that Israel fully exists?

This is Kerry Sautner’s email to Superintendent Frank Ranelli, suggesting that [the parent’s email], “this is a playbook we’ve seen before.”

Kerry Sautner was not available to comment on this story.