According to an email obtained by the Fairfax County Times, on Feb. 13, Nysmith told parents that “as soon as the news broke, I reached out to our commercial real estate agent to learn more about the situation and explore whether their facility might be a feasible option for us.”

During that time, the headmaster told some parents that the Nysmith School would be absorbing students transferring from the King Abdullah Academy.

https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/lawsuit-nysmith-classmates-told-jewish-sixth-grader-jews-are-baby-killers-who-deserve-to-die/article_fb7d0bc7-6efc-40fc-a4b7-5441a649d5f5.html

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s went to a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?

I thought King Abdullah School was financed by the Saudi Government and the parents paid a small amount of tuition. If that is the case, perhaps absorbing those students meant payment from Saudi Arabia for a large portion of the tuition cost at NYSmith. Were the families diplomats etc?

Stop the presses. Nysmith's attorney agreed that the children needed to be removed from the school:

Nysmith declined an interview request from WTOP, but said in an email that the allegations are untrue.

The school’s attorney was briefed on all the details of the case and agreed they needed to be removed from the school, he said.

https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2025/07/fairfax-county-parents-spoke-up-about-antisemitic-bullying-they-say-it-got-their-kids-expelled/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Teaching degrees matter and I wonder if the teacher simply had a degree in her/his subject field and not a degree in teaching. You have to be proactive and think about whether an assignment is developmentally appropriate and appropriate for your class and give plenty of supports. It is basic common sense even that taking a photo of a bunch of children possibly smiling around a drawing of Hitler is a poor optics.

I remain astonished that people think a "tHeaching degree" is somehow relevant to the decisions here. If it's basic common sense not to have kids draw a big giant picture of Hitler (let alone take a photo of them doing this), and it is, then you should not need a teaching degree to know you shouldn't do this.

The teaching degree helps you plan an appropriate lesson and trouble shoot and be proactive. The kids did not understand the assignment.

Wrong. I have a Bachelor's and a Master's in Education. There are plenty of teachers with no common sense. It is very hard to teach common sense.

Honestly, I don't care how smart these kids are --Machiavelli is a pretty tough subject and not appropriate for young kids. Reading "The Prince?"

The poster may--or may not--illustrate the problem. The real problem was the director who could not admit that he did not know how to stop- the bullying. That might have required ticking off other sets of parents. He was not prepared to do that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Teaching degrees matter and I wonder if the teacher simply had a degree in her/his subject field and not a degree in teaching. You have to be proactive and think about whether an assignment is developmentally appropriate and appropriate for your class and give plenty of supports. It is basic common sense even that taking a photo of a bunch of children possibly smiling around a drawing of Hitler is a poor optics.

I remain astonished that people think a "teaching degree" is somehow relevant to the decisions here. If it's basic common sense not to have kids draw a big giant picture of Hitler (let alone take a photo of them doing this), and it is, then you should not need a teaching degree to know you shouldn't do this.

The teaching degree helps you plan an appropriate lesson and trouble shoot and be proactive. The kids did not understand the assignment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s went to a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?

I thought King Abdullah School was financed by the Saudi Government and the parents paid a small amount of tuition. If that is the case, perhaps absorbing those students meant payment from Saudi Arabia for a large portion of the tuition cost at NYSmith. Were the families diplomats etc?

It’s just Nysmith. Not NYSmith. It’s the family’s last name.

Anonymous wrote:
Teaching degrees matter and I wonder if the teacher simply had a degree in her/his subject field and not a degree in teaching. You have to be proactive and think about whether an assignment is developmentally appropriate and appropriate for your class and give plenty of supports. It is basic common sense even that taking a photo of a bunch of children possibly smiling around a drawing of Hitler is a poor optics.

I remain astonished that people think a "teaching degree" is somehow relevant to the decisions here. If it's basic common sense not to have kids draw a big giant picture of Hitler (let alone take a photo of them doing this), and it is, then you should not need a teaching degree to know you shouldn't do this.

Anonymous wrote:First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s went to a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?

I thought King Abdullah School was financed by the Saudi Government and the parents paid a small amount of tuition. If that is the case, perhaps absorbing those students meant payment from Saudi Arabia for a large portion of the tuition cost at NYSmith. Were the families diplomats etc?

Anonymous wrote:Looks like Ken is making a business decision. King Abdullah Academy just closed. There is a number of high net worth individuals looking for private school for their kids. This controversy will get him the support of a demographic that will work for him. Pretty slick but totally ok where ever moral and every relationship is a “trade” chip. Bravo, Ken

KAA cost something like $11,000 a year because the Saudi Government subsidized the tuition. The Saudi’s chose not to continue to do that and shut down the school. I doubt that the parents will be paying Nysmith’s massive price tag anytime soon. I have also heard that the families have worked to found a new school in Loundoun (sp) County. The families are looking for an Islamic school, not just a private school.

So there are a lot of factors at play and I would be shocked if this family did not win their case. It sounds like all of this could have been prevented with properly trained teachers and a properly trained administrator.

Teaching degrees matter and I wonder if the teacher simply had a degree in her/his subject field and not a degree in teaching. You have to be proactive and think about whether an assignment is developmentally appropriate and appropriate for your class and give plenty of supports. It is basic common sense even that taking a photo of a bunch of children possibly smiling around a drawing of Hitler is a poor optics. The assignment was not as simple as chose an evil leader-Machiavelli is more complicated than that, but even if were or they interpreted it as chose someone purely evil-very poor optics and then you have to wonder why did other students decide Obama was pure evil?

If the school and administrator were well trained in addressing bullying this would have been handled well. You listen tot the parents and it doesn't even matter if you think they are lying or if there are 2 sides-monitor interactions and keep students apart and maintain open communication with the family.

Then you have an administrator who sounds like you does not have the proper education to be a principal. He allegedly runs the school more like an emperor and based on his credentials and how he handled this perhaps proverbially the emperor has not clothes.

They must have a Board of Directors to prevent this nonsense from escalating. I cannot imagine any parent investing close to 40,000 in this school now knowing how poorly grievances and bullying specifically is addressed and how disrespectful this man allegedly can be with parents. The house of cards is falling. A Board of Directors could help them restructure, but they don't have that.

I am not convinced they can provide a well-balanced and inclusive education for most gifted kids if everything reported on this thread is true any snob appeal they had is lost.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s wentto a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?

Tells me all I need to know about this poster, lol.

Yes, based on the balance of the post, the writer is clearly illiterate and it’s obviously a fundamental grammatical failure as opposed to a typographical error.

It is clearly an autocorrect error. The rest of the post though, so confident and yet smh

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s wentto a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?

Tells me all I need to know about this poster, lol.

Yes, based on the balance of the post, the writer is clearly illiterate and it’s obviously a fundamental grammatical failure as opposed to a typographical error.

Anonymous wrote:Looks like Ken is making a business decision. King Abdullah Academy just closed. There is a number of high net worth individuals looking for private school for their kids. This controversy will get him the support of a demographic that will work for him. Pretty slick but totally ok where ever moral and every relationship is a “trade” chip. Bravo, Ken

This is gross. Stop blaming anonymous Muslim families for a white (culturally) Christian dude's antisemitism. You don't get to put that on Muslim families.

Anonymous wrote:First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s wentto a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?

Tells me all I need to know about this poster, lol.

Anonymous wrote:First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s went to a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?

In the end, Tommy Boy succeeds in selling shut in a shoebox. Have high hopes for Ken.

First, I agree that King Abdullah Academy closed due to lack of sustainable business. Its clientele may have been wonderful families, but they weren’t some kind of KSA billionaire-types that happened to be in DC for diplomatic or ex-pat reasons. Ken Nysmith is definitely not sophisticated enough to have taken a controversial positional to pick up the scraps of a failed/abandoned PIF project. That’s a certainty.

This is second-generation owner of a family business that worked for a while and now doesn’t. As the child of a founder of a school that positions itself as being a “gifted” school, Ken’s York College degree speaks volumes. It may have been a great fit for him, but it ain’t the outcome that most Nysmith parents are hoping for for their kids. Said differently, he’s went to a school with a 95% acceptance rate, took over his mother’s business and comes across like an unrefined, bombastic and anti-Semitic leader.

He’s Tommy Boy if Callahan Auto Parts was positioned as a school for parents who want to believe that their kids are gifted. Clear the check, deposit the profits, fire teachers who push back, prevent the establishment of an independent board, expel those who oppose. What’s not to like?