JTA — The school board president in a heavily Jewish suburb of New York City is facing calls to resign after flyers promoting a student-led Israeli culture club event were torn down and later found in a boys’ bathroom urinal last week.

The flyers advertised an “IsraelFest” event to celebrate Israel’s 78th Independence Day this week at Scarsdale High School. Among those posting photographs of the vandalism was the daughter of the board president, James Dugan. She added a caption: “Keep up the good work.”

The incident quickly drew condemnation from leaders within the school district of the heavily Jewish New York City suburb, including Superintendent Drew Patrick, who wrote in a letter to the community that the vandalism “places our collective sense of community in jeopardy.”

“We live in a time of rising antisemitism, political polarization, and a degraded civil discourse,” Patrick wrote. “I want the community to know that we take these complex challenges seriously and work to confront them every single day.”

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Patrick said the district had already been developing a “clear, written set of guidelines regarding student speech and dress at school sponsored student activities,” which will be introduced at a Board of Education meeting on May 11.

Scarsdale High School Principal Kenneth Bonamo also decried the incident in a letter to the community on Friday, adding that the student government’s Instagram post advertising the event received “two replies criticizing the event using vulgar language.”

Bonamo said the school’s investigation into the incident was “active and ongoing,” and that officials were “currently interviewing students and reviewing camera footage to identify those involved.”

“The Israeli Culture Club was well within its right to plan this type of an event, for which they sought and received administrative approval,” Bonamo wrote. “Denigrating the club’s efforts in this way is wholly inconsistent with our values, both as a matter of basic fairness to support appropriate and approved student activities and because these actions constitute antisemitism.”

The event promised “Israeli food (and pizza), drinks and desserts alongside Israeli music and games,” suggesting no focus on current events or geopolitics.

The incident comes as younger Americans increasingly adopt anti-Israel stances,  setting up clashes in places like Scarsdale, where many Jewish families have connections to the country and to Jewish communities. In 2024, two stores in a Scarsdale shopping plaza, one of which had a sign reading “We stand with Israel” in its window, were targeted with anti-Israel graffiti.

In his letter, Bonamo added that the school had received “concerns that the unlabeled map in the flyer seems to include disputed territories as part of the State of Israel.” The map did not delineate the West Bank and Gaza.

“This is a core conflict in this debate, one that is worthy of exploration in civil discourse, but responding in this way is still not appropriate,” Bonamo wrote of the map.

An online petition calling for the students responsible for the vandalism to face “meaningful disciplinary action” as well as for Dugan’s ouster collected nearly 1,000 signatures by Tuesday morning.

“When a Board member’s immediate family is directly connected to the approval, encouragement, or defense of antisemitic behavior, it undermines public confidence in the Board’s ability to lead fairly and credibly during moments of crisis,” the petition read. “For that reason, we call for the resignation of any Board of Education member whose household is implicated in supporting these acts.”

A separate petition calling for the school board to reject calls for Dugan’s resignation drew over 100 signatures.

Dugan appeared to address his daughter’s post in a letter to the school community on Friday, writing, “Recent events have provided a profound teaching moment for me as a parent and have impacted me and my family.”

He added, “As a parent, I will focus on healing my family. But as a school board member, my focus will continue to be on our students, our schools, and our educational program.”

The incident follows others at high schools in the region that have unsettled Jewish students and watchdogs. In February, a New York City high schooler was arrested for allegedly sending an email threatening to “kill all the Jews in this school,” and earlier this month, students at a Connecticut Catholic school were punished for making antisemitic posts about a rival hockey team.

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