September 8, 2022: Board of Education Meeting

001peace good evening um i'd like to thank you all for being here and on need to read the sunshine law the executive session of the wayne board of education regular meeting of september 8 2022 was convened in the conference room of the wayne board of education 50 nellis driveway new jersey the statement of compliance setting forth date and time and location was read in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act and the roll call was taken the meeting was recessed and is now being reconvened unfortunately we have three items of business that were not able to be finished during the executive session so we need to go back into executive session for a very short time and then we will come out and we will resume the meeting please take the roll

002call mr moffat i'm sorry i need a mover mrs kazan mr bubba and please take a little help mr bubba here mr fatale here mrs kazan mr pavlak here mr prasakos present mrs uh put up here and mrs wenting here okay so we'll be back as quickly as possible thank you very much [Music] let's go [Music] okay channel a picture um thank you very much our meeting is reconvened um by the way everyone welcome back to a new school year yes school has started [Applause] okay our next order of business will be the flag salute followed by a moment of silence um i would ask for you to keep in your thoughts um we lost two of our own uh deroda thomas from the accounts payable in the business office and lisa mcguire who is

003in the transportation department she was one of our paras and bus aides and they passed away recently so thank you now the flag salute followed by the moment of silence i pledge [Applause] and the allegiance republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay it is constitution week and mr fatale will be reading our proclamation approval of resolution to proclaim constitution week whereas september 17th 2022 marks the 235th anniversary of the dra of the drafting of the constitution of the united states of america by the con constitutional convention and whereas it is fitting and proper to officially recognize this magnificent document in the anniversary of its creation and whereas it is fitting and proper to officially recognize the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate the occasion

004and whereas public law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the president of the united states of america designating september 17th through 23rd as constitution week now therefore be it resolved that the wayne board of education does hereby proclaim september 7th through september 23 2022 to be constitution week thank you okay um dr toback so good evening everybody we're happy to report we had a great start of the school year and we hope that all the positive momentum that we have will continue for the remainder of our school year it was great to see so many smiling faces on the first day of school our buildings look great and the classrooms have returned to being the warm and inviting environments they were before the pandemic i want to thank all of our

005employees for a job well done to prepare our schools for reopening and also to all of our teachers for creating such an exciting and positive opening in addition to our constitution week proclamation we have two major presentations that we'll be sharing with the board of education in the community this evening the first presentation has to do with our enrollment well the second presentation includes the feedback from the community about the proposed health and physical education lessons that we've been discussing for many months these lessons are included with item r3 which is a resolution the board will be voting on regarding the lessons previously presented that meet the requirements of the new health and physical education standards the meeting is a public work session it would normally be held at 15 hours but it was moved

006to council chambers to make sure we fully accommodate any members of the public wishing to speak because it is a public works session you will likely witness more discussion and interaction between the board and the administration because the meeting is broadcast live i did want to take a moment for a safety reminder at the start of the school year each of our schools experiences a variety of traffic problems and eventually we get into a drop off and pick up routine this year we also have the complication of construction bad weather on the first day of school bigger problem at the start of the school year is that none of our schools were designed to accommodate a massive influx of vehicles all at one time in other words not all students can be dropped off five

007minutes before the first spell without a major traffic problem over the past few days i received reports about parents involved in some seriously unsafe driving including a driver crossing into oncoming traffic and cutting off other drivers turning into wayne hills this morning i spoke to chief mcniff of the wayne police department to request additional officers to issue tickets for unsafe driving but please be careful at drop off and pick up and please arrive early to avoid traffic backups a few minutes of time save to drop drop off is not worth the tragedy in addition to the presentations there are a number of other important items on the agenda one item is emergent education item essentially which includes our dual credit agreements for seton hall university and lincoln tech in this case the agreement with seton

008hall allows high school students human anatomy and physiology honors one in two credits the lincoln tech agreement provides our students with college credits for work in auto occupations steering suspension and breaks both the renewals as we continue to expand and look for partnerships that will benefit our students one thing that makes this agenda a little bit different from your average agenda is the large number of policies that are included there are two policies that require immediate action the first is the new policy regarding bullying our next meeting will include a presentation about the latest changes to the hiv policy and the accompany changes in state law the other is the mandated policy regarding substance abuse otherwise the policies are first readings the board of ed will not be taking final action this evening these policies

009influence many areas of operation and define how the district will respond to things is ranging as far from sports related concussions to facilities and maintenance repair among many other areas as we settle into the new school year we're also excited to continue our focus on student and staff male wellness which includes wellness weekends on this weekends represent a break away from school responsibilities during each of three wellness weekends students do not have any obligations to the school district which means no homework no tests or quizzes and no due dates scheduled directly or before before or after a wellness weekend we hope this will lead to healthier students employees and families wellness weekends for the 22-23 school year are scheduled for november 23rd to 27 february 17th to 20th and may 26-29 for the hiv report

010i'm happy to report there are no hiv cases okay okay so everybody can hear me right you mean back so um one of the annual activities of the board of ed is to look at our enrollment and consider what our enrollment trends mean now and also in the future so enrollment has a major influence on schools because it's the basis for staffing decisions and a basis for facilities work staffing and facilities are two large cost centers in our budget our annual report to examine our enrollment after the pandemic is also a very important thing because a lot of school districts are suddenly surprised by dramatic changes in their enrollment [Music] enrollment is also a major consideration as we look at wayne in the coming years and the construction of approximately 4 000 affordable housing units

011so a famous quote from the movie a field of dreams is that if you build it they will come and that's a great quote for this report especially when we consider the impact of our early childhood center and the implementation of full-day kindergarten enrollment also drives class size so i'm including elementary class size as part of my report in addition to discussing enrollment at all 15 of our schools i will also be discussing enrollment at psa county technical institute which affects our high school enrollment okay so we'll start with the discussion about our enrollment trends for our high schools so you can see the numbers are there board members you should have a copy so you can see exactly what our enrollment is as of now now our official enrollment report and the information about

012our enrollment is collected on october 15th so that is the day where official numbers come in so the numbers that we we have here might be a little bit different than our official numbers very close what you can see is obviously that wayne hills is a little down with enrollment and you can also see there are significant differences at each of the grade levels with the exception of 11th grade where the enrollment at wayne hills is just a little bit higher and you can see the numbers in total there's a significant difference right so i mean valley is a little bit bigger than than wayne hills at this point well that might change in the coming years okay so as far our as our secondary enrollment information you could see that our middle school enrollment

013is for the most part stable you can see at george washington middle school one of the big factors that will affect enrollment at that school in the future is a very small sixth grade class of only 149 students okay so the other thing that i was interested in discussing tonight was our enrollment at pcti because like i said that does have an effect on our high school enrollment and you can see that for 22 23 we're projecting about 216 of our high school students will be attending pcti and you can also see the different majors that are offered and you can also see basically the academies the stem academy for biomedical is a big attraction along with the engineering academy which is part of the reason why we're interested in developing some of our own

014academies for our students so the financial impact is also significant in that the tuition that we pay to pcti is around twelve thousand dollars per year per student in addition to the fact that they receive all the state aid for each student that attends the good news is that we are unlike many of the other high schools in pasay county in that when you you talk about the percentage of students attending pcti it's actually fairly small even though 216 seems like a large number of students there's more students that are attending from pacific valley for much smaller schools so the reality is that the impact of the academies in particular even though the numbers seem a little higher are relatively small compared to what is experienced in some of the other local high schools okay

015so let's go on to okay so this is an overall look at our total class sizes so you can see that our elementary enrollment is growing and you can see also we had the pandemic right so the pandemic is likely to affect enrollment in our case one of the important things to consider and one of the things the board needs to look at is in my opinion another demographic study and the reason why is because mr haber completed your demographer completed a study last year and what he did was for 21 22 and for 2223 with kindergarten in first grade he projected enrollments in the low to mid 300s as you can see our numbers are well beyond that there's over there there are hundreds of additional students in that group and why is that

016significant it's significant because the kindergarten and the first grade are your baseline in other words those classes kindergarten goes first first goes the second second goes to third so if you look out over 10 years and you consider the impact of 100 different 100 additional students at each grade level you're talking about another 200 students plus the next year plus the next year plus next year if this enrollment trend continues so that's the idea if we build it they come and now we have a significant enrollment in our kindergarten from last year which is now first first graders and you have a good enrollment number for this year of kindergarten students well beyond what was projected okay so that's a little bit of a surprise okay um and so this is a slide that shows

017our enrollment by classes and so you could see the board of ed has established guidelines and so at the very top of the table you can see 20 22 23 26 you see those are the class size guidelines that's the maximum number of students that should be in each of our classes and you could see that with a handful of exceptions our numbers are very close to all those guidelines and there's no there's no outliers that are well beyond the class size guidelines that the board established okay so that's that and um okay that's it so board members do you have any questions or any topics regarding enrollment that you'd like to discuss at this point good mr sacos are we going to do another study uh to see what um enrollment is projected to

018be out in a few years or the next five years i think it's very important for the board i would recommend strongly going back to mr haber or another demographer of the board's choosing to look at the situation that we have as of now mr haber did warn when he made his presentation that there was a lot of unknowns one of the matter of fact the two unknowns he mentioned was the impact of the pandemic right and he also talked a little bit about the construction or the the addition of full-day kindergarten and how that would affect enrollment at the time that was unknown now we have a pretty good idea we have much better idea so it's hard to say but like i said his baseline is very different than the baseline he used

019when he did his projection so depending on what the demographer finds and because the compounding factor that you have when each grade level is bigger than what was projected you could have a significant difference in the actual projected enrollment 10 years from now which is part of what he did correct me if i'm wrong but when we did the initial study um last year year before whenever this begun uh we still were up in the air on some of the new developments that hadn't been finalized so those numbers could be different and unless i'm mistaken and everybody's just lying to me there's been some sort of real estate boom and since then and i don't think people who buy houses in wayne are senior citizens so uh i'm assuming they're being bought by families and

020that could have changed his uh results as well so yeah i definitely agree we need to move forward with an update and you know update with a three to four year forecast again uh not just a one year thank you anybody else we have questions thank you very much thank you dr tobat [Music] good evening everyone thank you for coming out tonight um i i just wanted to start by sharing uh obviously we're here to share out the feedback from let's talk and i wanted to recognize our teachers it was a hard task and we had a great group of very committed teachers doing some of the hardest work this summer and many of them are parents in the community and i commend them for considering all of your feedback and and doing their job

021in the most appropriate way possible um they had a job to do and they came out and did it and it wasn't easy work so um regardless of the ideas the input their feedback it was a job that they did really well and i'm very appreciative and gracious for their work this first slide shares the analytics in terms of the number of participants we had 126 participants overall there were 173 dialogues generated 68 of those expressed positive responses 70 expressed concerns and 112 replies were sent by the wayne township public school administration the way the software works is in a guided conversation like this you're encouraged to generate templates to and look at common themes so that the answers are consistent if there was a question or a comment or something that required a completely

022different response we did our best to respond respond and answer those questions in terms of who participated two percent of the participants were students seven percent were employees 85 percent are our parents and 9 community members the the software generates a word cloud of the most frequently used words that populated in comments um you know so what what i was able to glean from here the larger words are the words that surface the most is that we're a group of parents who really care about our kids and we're mindful of their age their curriculum and what they're being taught at each age and and recognizing that different families have different feelings and viewpoints about what instruction should look like in school this slide details some common thoughts there were as i shared it looked like

023you know there was almost an even split in positive end concerns that were expressed and we tried to capture through the software things words and phrases that populated most frequently this first quote was set in a variety of different ways i i don't want the school teaching my students the names of sexual parts that's the parents responsibility uh i i know that many people share the sentiment and we recognize that it's a topic addressed differently by different families an opt-out option is available for any parent who does not want their child to learn about this in health class they just wanted to reinforce that message a second quote why is fourth grade appropriate the appropriate grade to teach about masturbation uh there was a lot of concern surrounding this word and and the grade level

024the standard mentions the word masturbation but our lesson does not address it um so if you look closely at the lesson you'll see that we had to address each standard but we did it in a way through the help of our teachers that seem the most appropriate and reasonable in terms of the overall sentiment of the community quote three the few changes made are sound logical and contain information to keep all students healthy uh again just you know emphasizing that the curriculum writers made every effort to consider the ideas of all of our stakeholders when they were creating these lessons it was a sensitive job for them to do and they were very mindful of this the fourth quote as an educator community member and former district parent i appreciate and support the state's health

025and peace standards and wayne's attempt to meet the standards i've read through all the lessons that were shared recently i do not have concerns with the content including each lesson however i do not believe all the standards are being adequately adequately and and you know this is something important to consider because these comments were flagged in some cases um you know parents may choose to continue the conversation in greater depth at home and we're just touching on these standards in the most reasonable way possible and and the last quote i wanted to share is i have no issues with the proposed curriculum and do not understand why some parents are trying to prevent this from being taught in our schools and again just representing and considering feedback from a variety of stakeholders we did create

026an opt-out form and at some point next week depending on action that's taken tonight dr toback will put out an announcement um this form would be made available to any parents who made the decision to up their kids out of the lessons that are in grades one two four and five again um that that is an option available uh mr solido can you do me a favor can you just open the opt out form for me i just want to give them an opportunity to view it we tried to make it as detailed as possible so that you have all the information there right in front of you you can you can scroll down and what you you would be asked to complete one for for each student then you would check off the grade

027level that your child is in um you can go to the next slide you know you might have to just type in the word test or just put something in there just to advance it but what i wanted to share is that we linked the lessons right in for each grade level so you you have an opportunity and recognizing many people may have been away during the summer and have not had an opportunity or time to look closely at the lessons and view the initial presentation maybe check grade two this is an example thank you so you'll see here and you can scroll down a little bit scott um you have the the lessons those are the new health and pe lessons those are all clickable links and then you have an option to check

028out to check off the boxes for any that you would like your child to be up opted out of and then the final page is a signature and again this is just an example tonight this form is not yet available just an example to show you what the opt-out form could look like any questions from the board yes are we going to be keeping statistics of the amount of students that opt out per grade level yeah okay so as we evolve through this curriculum and move forward you know see something you know yes thank you i don't know if you're my son sorry my mic was off my apologies um when i received the uh email from the district the first email was 145 pages the second one was uh i think 19 pages i

029filtered through all of them and i came up with different numbers some of the dialogues continued um you may have submitted a comment they weren't a whole 145 pages some of them moved over into two pages so when you say number of dialogues that's a much higher number than 68 and 70. so what were the other dialogues it was the conversation was continued so we sent a response and then additional questions came in from a participant and then we responded additional times with that sent to the board because like i said my numbers are different i'm just curious how that um it was my understanding that each day new printouts were generated and those were shared out well the first one was 145 and the second one was 19. it's only 165. um i can

030verify tomorrow okay and and the way i calculated from my reading i came up with different yays and a's and then completely off topic but i don't know how yours were analyzed as far as whether they were just concerned expressions i used the report that's generated from the software okay if it was off topic it probably didn't filter in because you know the way i uh viewed it there were 51 who were just out now no which means that you know basically there's no discussion of what they did or didn't like about the curriculum it was just a hard doubt and 72 of them were positive responses that were you know pleased with the curriculum thanking you know whoever wrote it and um understood the uh process and and were happy with the outcome and

031ready to uh send their kids off to class and then there were 35 that were kind of a mixed bag where they might have had an issue with one portion of the curriculum but again that was like less than a dozen people that zero so those generated into express concerns because if there was any if they if you said i i'm right so they're comfortable with the content however delighted yeah that's the way the analytics okay and and i printed out some of them as well and i thought there were some very interesting comments but you know it was it was a good exercise and i i was happy to be able to read them all because it definitely shows me where everybody stands thank you any other questions [Music] don't seem to be any

032from the board thank you very much mrs freischmann thank you okay next mr moffat revisions to agenda items thank you we have a few tonight first is under emergent t emergent human resources t1 approval of mentor payments revised number two rescind danielle olivieri ad heather sheehy and their three editions under ex-emergent legal the first one is approval of settlement agreement recommendation reads as follows resolve at the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent hereby approves the settlement agreement and release in the matter of student id number one seven two eight three zero zero five two one as attached by reference and further authorizes the board president and secretary to execute same on behalf of the board the business administrator and superintendent are authorized to take all further steps required by the terms of

033the settlement to further implement sane x2 i will be adding the under approval of hip determination and the action reads as follows resolve at the board affirm the superintendent's decision on hib case number 159 slash 2021-2022 and finally add x3 approval of hib determination uh resolution reads as follows resolve that the board affirms the superintendent's decision on hibs case uh 148-2021-2022 and that concludes the changes to the agenda time thank you mr moffitt the next item of business is open to the public for comments on agenda items only agenda items are what you see in the packet uh at the end of our session there is also a time for open comments that can be about anything uh the agenda item comments are three minutes long the time set aside is 30 minutes uh there

034are no seconds each person gets one opportunity to speak so this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residents are to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to three minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employer or student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to this evening or at a subsequent meeting under old business thank you i'll move madam president so do you consider the health and education is that an agenda item i just want to make sure before i speak okay um wayne is producing an inferior product that's number one oh i'm

035sorry rosalie sabatino is this on i'm pretty loud wayne is producing an inferior product and they're failing this generation in a more egregious way you are now the groomers for gender identity and transgenderism you're no longer educating as relevant to our test scores math and reading or write down the tubes i i don't hear about science i really don't hear about anything else so you're teaching you want to teach sexually explicit material to minors which violates their civil rights what will you do when you damage them because of confusion we have suicides from opioids in this town if any of you bothered to come to the candlelight vigil where 300 parents were there um now we're going to have to add confusion about sexuality i i honestly dr toback don't know where your head is

036you've ruined us from common core forward excuse me ma'am your comments are made oh i am so sorry i am excuse me [Music] joan palmino 741 alps wrote we send our kids to school with the feeling that they will be exposed to the knowledge and information they will need to negotiate their lives wisely they will need all kinds of knowledge it is imperative that within that core of knowledge is an awareness of the society around them this will enable them to be accepting of all lifestyles and also if they happen to come from a family that is one of the alternative family structures they will not feel different they will realize that they are just one part of the whole of the human experience to deny young people this valuable life lesson is to continue

037the misunderstanding of the differences among us that lead to hate misguided fear and sometimes violent consequences [Applause] good evening donald challa wayne valley 2012. the new health and physical education standards are here to prepare young students for the types of conversations and activities that pre-teens and teenagers often encounter in today's world sometimes kids are more comfortable listening to a teacher asking them questions rather than their parent every student every parent they all have different set of circumstances the new student learning standards give students the opportunity to get the facts but if some parents don't want that for their child so be it they have the option to out opt them out of it only their child not the whole class not the whole district i'm happy to see the new diversity and inclusion components in

038the curriculum this will certainly go a long way in preparing students for the real world including college and the workforce where they will meet people from all walks of life that has certainly been my experience i applaud the hard work and the foresight that the administration has put into presenting the new health and physical education lessons as well i think i think you guys did a great job when you add it all up all the lessons across all the grade levels that's a lot of information it's a lot to take in uh the administration did a great job organizing it presenting it in such a way that parents can easily scroll through find what they're looking for what they're curious about what pertains to their student their grade level topics etc i'm grateful for that

039that level of uh that level of organization there i mean some districts they might just have had like a big file dump and said you know good luck that's that's not what you guys did and i want to thank you for that uh and multiple avenues of constructive criticism awesome and i think you guys also did a great job with the lessons i want to say thanks to the diligent boe members who follow the code of ethics and by doing so keep our schools well funded and out of legal trouble thank you to the administration and teachers for their patience and hard work in these trying times and i want to say the educational success of all the students in our school district is in part depending on us the community to empower our district's

040educators to do their best work i'm happy to see parents and educators united and an agreement that in order to be pro-education you have to be pro-educator thank you all very much [Applause] okay good evening alan a sarge 61 brandon when i was in third grade here in wayne in 1983 i remember something that happened quite vividly the teacher wanted to count the jews and non-jews in the class when the counting was done there were less jews than non-jews which is not unexpected but the teacher did look right at me and said see these are the results i don't remember the purpose of the exercise but it was wrong and i wish as an eight-year-old i had the wherewithal to speak out like i am today an exercise like that that made me at eight

041years old questioned my faith in my religious background what's happening now with what's being called the new health standards is the same thing regardless of whatever curriculum eventually gets approved it'll cause young kids who don't need to be exposed to any of this in the classroom to question themselves their sexuality and sexual acts it's unnecessary and inappropriate for the classroom in any school district in any state no matter what the new jersey governor has to mandate and since all this hasn't opt out isn't that a clue that all this is wrong in the first place when i've come up here to speak i repeatedly asked you to put yourself in our places and some of you have kids who i know are the same age of my daughter and can you in good conscience say

042that you're okay with the health standards matters that haven't been addressed as i can remember is reading writing and math did you forget you told us that thirty percent of wayne students are failing math since common core began did you know that elementary math books say common core even though i was told that wayne doesn't use common core i'm told it's called new jersey state standards give me a break all of this has nothing to do with whatever tag you want to put on it about being sensitive enough or accepting of others it's solely about what's appropriate in the classroom and what should be left in the home it's not about your feelings or politicians feelings or unions playing games with my child and all the children here don't hide behind we won't get money

043or we have to because the government says so that was true there never would have been a revolutionary war sadly i know your minds are already made up but if you have to do something make it so bare bones that no one can even tell what you did wayne township public schools is better than all this and you're all better than this don't do what you know is inappropriate for a classroom setting concentrate on what matters the three r's thank you [Applause] hi my name is tom vandenberg i actually want to talk about sports or a logical policy involving sports called moving the goal posts imagine you're trying to score in soccer and you try to kick the ball the goal posts keep getting moved the goal keeps getting moved every time you try to

044get a goal keeps getting moved now let's think about the curriculum we heard that in second grade students we talk gender theory where is the gender theory in second grade you know what it's not there the lesson plans were watered down because the school board of educa our wayne board of education has power and they can make it appropriate let's talk about masturbation it's not in there mrs reichman said so let's think about eighth grade we heard that it was gonna be a how-to guide a karma sutra for you know oral sex anal sex and vaginal sex you know what it's not it's about stis if you can get sexually transmitted infections and if anything it's discouraging students from engaging in these acts so the our board of education made these lessons very appropriate yet

045we're still getting complaints from many people to my right two speakers tonight complained why you have no specifics you come to book club you haven't read your book you come here you haven't done your homework you don't talk about a single lesson you get an f that's all i gotta say thank you [Applause] excuse me madam president if i could if i could ask for the crowd to please hold their round of applause after each speaker this way we can get through this we all know where each side of the aisle stands i don't think we need to have the round of applause after each speaker thank you i'll make this brief my name is olga cicchulo i live on alps road all three of my children went through the wayne school districts and system

046they got a great education i have to then recognize that people are bringing up math and english scores i don't know if anybody's remembered but we just went through a pandemic where children were taught at home because of their health risk the teacher's health risk so every school district is behind in all the scores because of you can use that as some sort of catalyst of not educating kids about certain health issues and not use i don't know incendiary words or phrases or things to make people mad i think the board has done a good job giving people having the sensitivity giving people the option that if they didn't agree with it to opt out leave their children out of it i don't see anybody forcing a child not to get this curriculum but then

047other people are trying to force other families not to get it at all one side is willing to hear other people's points of view and if they want to opt out their children respect that the other side is not respecting the families that want this taught to them thank you very much good evening reed paul 182 linden road here in wayne i am also a parent two kids who went through the entire system first through twelfth grade pines lake school skyla colfax school wayne hills class of 2016 and 2019. there's anything i felt that was weak in their education it was the previous health curriculum it was more something we joked about at home because we just felt it was really didn't offer very much and i think this curriculum is an improvement upon what

048we had before thank you roger gunnell's 22 lauer um do we all understand the amount of mental incapacity it takes my son is seven years old under no circumstance am i going to talk to my seven-year-old boy about masturbation and whatever word you use if it's a duck it's a duck i don't care what words you use i don't care it's listen it's it's in the powerpoint presentation i'm not you're not up here i am so be quiet excuse me sir you cannot talk to them well then you need to shut her up then excuse me i'm not going to pull up with this excuse me audience if we could at this point conversation we're going to ask everybody tonight to control themselves please give the speakers the opportunity to comment during their three minutes

049let's hold the applause off let's hold the comments off everyone will get a chance to talk and make sure my tom has reclaimed for all that yes sir so we were here last thurs the last meeting and they talked specifically right there on the on the powerful presentation masturbation so as far as i'm concerned it's still there so let's talk about the number four no significant number four four is where new jersey lands out of the 50 states and teen pregnancy and then we're going to teach kids about masturbation and this sexual stuff that just should not be in any curriculum that's designed for the home and the doctor's office what second graders concern on masturbation i'm unaware of a second grader that's concerned about masturbation i don't recall anyone ever having to be taught

050how to masturbate what academic need is being satisfied answer the question what academic needs being satisfied while i'm aware of need for math science and reading i'm unaware of an academic need to teach masturbation and other inappropriate content the truth is there is no academic need but what it is doing is satisfying a political narrative being pushed by the left prove me wrong explain the need so let me ask you this what happens when a non-parent adult teaches an unexpected child about masturbation let me tell you what happens the man in that uniform right there is going to find me he's going to arrest me what makes it different for the school what makes it different and then i get reported i get i get arrested tried and convicted as a as a sexual predator

051and now i gotta and i gotta go put on a list and i gotta deliver cookies and and flowers to everybody's neighborhood that's exactly what my god happens there is no there is there is no need for it everyone knows it you can no longer hide behind the title educators to carry out these repugnant and evil deeds you can't no more because we're going to hold you accountable whether you really want it or not we're going to be right there at every turn there's two sides to this but you better pick your sides because parents aren't going away we're going to fight this all the way we're going to fight it because it's our town it's our kids in our school system and kids do not deserve this they do not need to be brought

052into this level of education this early in their life and and taint and and infect their innocent minds i'll leave you with this and everybody remember this right now the bible says that it's better for a man to tie a millstone around his neck and cast himself into the sea than to harm the hair of a child matthew 18 6. anybody know much a millstone weighs 3 000 pounds good evening my name is sandy excuse me sandy i'm going to interrupt you for a moment can we please stop the side conversations thank you please proceed sandra okay and i am a wayne resident um what i want to do tonight is talk to you about specifics i'm not going to say things in general of the proposed lessons but i'm actually going to read to

053you something that i sent in to let's talk i actually sent a handful of specific questions to let let's talk i i don't know if i was supposed to get a response or not i did get somewhat of a response from maybe two of them but then i didn't for anything else so that's why i just want to make you aware because i don't know if there was any discussion about this and i don't know if you're actually voting tonight on the lessons that also is is not clear to me so i just want to talk about what i want to say so hello my comment refers to the proposed grade 5 lesson plan to fulfill the learning strand 2.1.5 ss h .123 describing gender role stereotypes and their potential impact on self and others

054differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity demonstrate ways to promote dignity and respect for all people so as per the lesson plan the following activity will be conducted this is directly from the the slide show the music video i am me by willow smith show the music video i am me by willow smith before writing the poems and then after writing the after the video ask what do you think is meant by your validation is not important to me um and i just want to say because that is what the the singer says in her words she says that um and then it's pro it says in the lesson plan if a student asks if willow smith is a boy or a girl you're you might answer quote does it matter this is for the

055teacher to say say quote the individual is who they are and you are who you are so i would like to comment that this music video does not align with the learning standard how can this be demonstrating dignity and respect for all people if a teacher is instructed to suppress the truth from a child that may ask if willow smith is a boy or a girl i think that's rude and disrespectful and clearly is meant to leave a child feeling confused about their surroundings i want my child to feel safe and aware of their surroundings how possibly is this video a healthy way to teach that if a student asks if willow smith is a boy or a girl it absolutely matters to tell the child the truth that she is a girl if a

056student in any of the district schools thought that a boy was going into the girls bathroom or vice versa and tells an adult would the appropriate response be quote does it matter the fact that this messaging and this lesson plan is being advocated by the committee of teachers that put it together in conjunction with the superintendent and assistant superintendent that have presented it leaves me with many questions and concerns about school policy and safety in the wayne township public schools so just to clarify are boys allowed to use the girls bathroom or can girls enter the boys bathroom and use the urinals or if the message is to treat people according to their gender and identity and not by the truth truth being their biological sex then what's to stop a child from entering the

057wrong bathroom can't the student just say you know your validation is not important to me i'm going to use whatever bathroom i want to use after all this is the messaging that in that the adults in the district are promoting by showing discussing and validating the message from willow smith please remove this inappropriate lesson i don't think it'll it doesn't align to it and your time is up that's that's fine i will come back uh thank you [Applause] hello uh evan cavallo 29 sunset terrace i wanted to commend you all for the uh your attention the fifth grade curriculum concerning the part about relationships violence and setting boundaries i think it's a really important issue it's very prevalent especially on college campuses i say this is somebody who within the past decade graduated from a

058wayne public school and graduated from rutgers university so in trying to be constructive about my comments um i have one piece of feedback on that piece of curriculum it does focus a lot on how to set boundaries and the importance of it and i think that is a very important issue but i think you should also discuss how to not only set boundaries but how to accept someone else's boundaries i didn't see that directly in the um i guess in the material maybe that's something that was already considered but i didn't see it so those are two different conversations facilitating that dialogue is important but generally even outside of that piece of feedback i do think it's a really important issue and it not only helps to protect yourself but it can help you be

059a better bystander and those are things that are important to learn in a young age so thank you for that cindy simon wayne i'll second his comments on the boundary stuff one of the things that's wonderful about the united states is we can disagree and clearly there are folks in this room who disagree with each other and that's perfectly fine one of the great lessons of the constitution that i teach when i teach american government classes is that even in the strongest of disagreements the folks who wrote that figured out a way to compromise and the compromise here is that the curriculum is published for everyone to see which it is and that people are able to opt out i know that there's folks on the opposite side who don't even want any of this

060taught there are folks on the other side who probably would like even more detail than is already there this is the compromise i know that board members worked to get it to something that was going to be as acceptable as it could be um the other thing that i i do want to say here is that you know i was in school in the 1980s and that was another time where they kind of expanded the the sex ed curriculum um i didn't get the full thrust of it because i ended up going to a private religious high school where sex ed consisted of don't you get married then do which is not particularly informative because they didn't tell us what we weren't supposed to do or do for that matter um but one of the

061things that happened in the 1980s 80s was hiv and aids and there was a concerted effort not only by the far left liberals but by people on the conservative side to educate people on how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and that includes all methods of getting them so i'm glad that that's included in the curriculum hey everybody so mark faber wayne resident so everybody talks about the opt out being the compromise and that's very good my question last week was what are the guarantees that are going to be put in place that ensure me that if i choose to opt out for my children that this is not going to spill over into other areas of the curriculum what would the penalties be for a teacher who decides to teach this content outside the realm

062of these specific classes because that's the concern that i have it's not just that this is these few lessons because again i'm fine with opting out of it do i agree with it no but if other people want to let their kids learn it that's their choice but i would like to know what guarantees you're going to give me that my kids are not going to be coming home learning about this stuff from a teacher who decides that it's their moral responsibility to share their beliefs and their life's choices with my children that's something that i've seen and it happens quite frequently as i'm sure you're all aware if you watch tv you watch tick tock with all the teachers that are on there talking about how they feel that this is important and i

063have my pride flag and i have my you know this flag and look again i'm not against people feeling happy about who they are but again when we have these topics that are not supposed that we're saying we're allowing people to choose not to expose their children to there needs to be a guarantee or some type of preventative process that will stop teachers from taking it upon themselves to go outside of this scope and i would like to hear from someone what that plan is and what the repercussions will be to discourage teachers from doing this thank you good evening all my name is ari daniel i'm from out of town i live in 501 kings point trail in franklin lakes i'm a trustee for the franklin lakes board of education k28 and i'm speaking

064on my own behalf of the tax paying citizen in the state of new jersey you're all facing a very tough problem we face the same problem and i like to agree with the teacher uh two speakers before before me so that everybody has a voice this is a great country and we count for that from all over the world like myself for that the problem that we're facing is a type a problem what you teach cannot be untaught and therefore the opt out is really a tough proposition although it's been set by the legislator i think like 40 some years ago on the other hand opt-in is also challenging physically to accomplish i would like to say however that after seeing the superintendent presentation of participation it's kind of disappointing wayne is i think five

065to six times larger district than my town's district and we had further more involvement of the reach for feedback when we sent to the community to kind of give a feedback about what we're going to do so i'm not here to offer anything but i think that out of i think 50 000 residents in wayne more or less you got 150 response it doesn't really represent and it's a tough call whatever you you choose to do so i applaud you for your efforts here i think when you consider a type a problem think about that what you teach cannot be unlearned when you put a confusing concept to a child's mind it distracts him think about the board think about your administration think about the curriculum writers how much effort did they put in these

066standards instead of focusing on math on science on english in a state that is the best state for public education in the united states we can do better than that you can do that better than that we can do better than that as people and we can respect everybody who wants that kind of education for their children you're their parents i mean talk to them about it what's stopping you and if it stops you opt them in thank you [Applause] pamela mesic wayne role models that's what we're trying to be emulate and bring into our children's lives even within the school system last meeting someone criticized about not having specifics so someone addressed the willow smith video i went and watched it as a parent as an educator i was obviously concerned what kind of

067role model because the children are going to be googling her right after they watch that video if they're not already so i began to research well what what was going on in her in her life at that time you know daughter of big celebrities and what has happened in her life and i'm not sure if you're aware she was cutting herself she has had huge mental issues mental health issues depression anxiety gender gender dysphoria if you want to call it uh and androgynous she considers herself a palladian this is there i've watched her interviews i've listened to her speak and this is then going to be a role model because we're using it in our schools with the curriculum and then that's going to open up discussion that the students are going to say well

068what about cutting and and so these issues that she has openly put out there are going to be open for discussion so then are are parents supposed to sign waivers you don't you can't talk about this or that it gets complicated so i understand we thought the curriculum curriculum could be reviewed in an hour i dare to disagree with that because you have to look into what's behind it so especially the videos which captures the attention of our young children you need to see who the are these role models do you have any videos say with tim tim tebow you know maybe encouraging abstinence you know uh whose people that live chase lives or are history makers instead of just celebrities children that have been cutting themselves and experimenting uh all across the sexual board

069we have to we have to consider that and and the fallback that that's going to bring thank you madam president it has been a half hour we reached out a lot of time i'd like to make a motion to let the last two speakers speak and then close the first public session second carol swift excuse me just a moment sorry carol okay okay we don't need a roll call please proceed thank you thank you carol swift 31 iroquois trail wayne new jersey i went through the wayne school system my son went through the wayne school system i've been teaching in garfield and orange new jersey for 15 years and what i've seen is through my life my uh my son came home saying mom girlfriend of mine a friend of mine who's a girl has

070some questions about she's afraid that she's you know caught something this that the other thing in high school i started talking to this girl this girl had no idea about her own body about stds or anything else that she was a product of wayne schools in the late 2000s 2000 teens this is not acceptable i was actually telling her things from when i was in junior high school in wayne in the 1970s so and then when we come to sexuality i had a second grader gentleman talked about second graders the other day i mean earlier tonight i had a second grader who now that we've been in this pandemic i could see what they were looking at on youtube when they were supposed to be on our software doing english class and i had a

071second grader who was looking up women kissing each other this was not in our curriculum this is because children talk to each other this is because children have an idea of what's going on in the world and they get curious and instead of learning about things in school in a way that is structured they go online and they start looking for stuff and they start talking to each other and at various times people have said teachers said to me when my son was in school well where did he learn that and i said here at school because he never saw it on television he never saw it you know at that point we didn't have internet um he's learned it at school he learns it from other kids and these and a lot of us

072i think have learned things if we look back in our histories we've learned things away from school that was misinformation and it did confuse us and we ended up looking it up or talking to people who knew nothing as opposed to having a curriculum like you've set up to have information that is valuable and will straighten out some of these things and let kids who know that there's something going on for instance inside them that doesn't match what they see on on common entertainment uh and so forth help them understand what's going on within themselves and help other other students understand not to bully as my son was bullied not to bully students who seem to be different in some way and this is a step forward as far as i'm concerned thank you okay

073thank you thanks mike good evening norman robertson i'm a wayne resident just very quickly a couple of points last time when i was here i had asked the question but of course i couldn't get it answered during the course of the meeting whether or not parents or anyone who's interested would have an opportunity to ask questions about the process about the substance and so forth when it came to the superintendent at the end the question was never answered it's been answered tonight and the answer is no so every time you call yourself transparent just remember that this is one of the most important things that will happen this year secondly mark brought up a very good point about opting out in the nature of other subjects i'll give you a hypothetical let's say you have

074a math teacher and the math teacher starts out not in math but introducing himself to the class and introducing his preferred pronoun maybe he's a transgender individual maybe he's not a transgender individual maybe he's an ally as an ally he's just a guy with another opinion and he should keep his politics at the door and i think everyone should keep their politics at the door that's where they should be parked because it's important if we want critical thinkers uh it's not a good idea to adopt curricula that goes against that thought number three you had something called cross the line i guess it was in the fifth grade and a lot of talk came back on that you got a lot of feedback on that at the last meeting and it was withdrawn and and

075we could say that that is uh the way the system should work but at the same time we have to understand that that was the product of somebody that we all call experts all the time we are always told as parents that leave it to the expert there was a guy who used to be used to be governor of virginia that said that out loud uh and he's still the ex-governor of virginia so as far as across the line is concerned there's nobody more expert about their own child than their own parent i think one of the things you might want to consider is writing some guiding principles you were the ones who are uh the board are the people who are have the power to approve or not approve curricula you should give some

076guidance for instance you all signed a a document when you came in you didn't just raise your hand you signed a document which was notarized to support the constitution of the united states should that be a guiding principle there are a lot of people on the left this is that think that it shouldn't so that's the sort of thing that you should do and and lastly i just want to note in passing that i heard something tonight that i'm not prepared to talk about because i want to get both sides but it has to do with voting i'm very very concerned thank you yes we've closed thank you um we're going to get into our committee reports for the evening we're going to get into our committee reports for the evening thank you mr bubba

077okay oh i'm sorry um technology met tonight with mr prasakis who i thought was doing this but doesn't matter myself and dr burchard we talked about the opening of schools technology department work through the summer prep rooms for opening day they also handed out chromebooks in an effort to make life easier for our students we also changed our password policy for second graders to make it easier for parents and for students to log in let's see we also discussed the start strong the testing coordinators will be meeting next week to prep for the fall start strong assessment which they changed the dates on so that should be within i think by the middle of october now they have to be done october 1st that was it sorry thank you and then we also talked about

078the cam the school security camera project is moving along and should be completed shortly and that is all tonight thank you mr bubba mrs kazan thank you finance committee met this evening with myself mr fatale mr pavlak administrators bill moffett and cheryl lydick we discussed the financial reports on the agenda which are standard we reviewed the contracts that were on the agenda and the withdrawals from reserves that were budgeted for our science labs as well as the unexpected maintenance reserve withdrawal to repair the ac at the central office we had a purchasing update so far running smoothly despite supply chains things seem to be arriving on time and moving smoothly the business office is in a bit of a personnel crisis we have unfilled positions so if you know anybody check out our website uh

079we have some accounting positions open uh we're currently using a uh interim uh manager uh who's working out well who used to be a former business administrator in another district because we can't afford to have uh a lack of staffing in that department it's too crucial and that's temporary if we're having trouble hearing you could you move up to your mic okay i mean it's on uh i've never been told i'm soft-spoken uh we discussed a new ticketing system for games football games where you can purchase your tickets in advance that new system is going to go live shortly there's a bit of a fee involved so students will be three dollars adults five dollars and they'll still take cash at the gate if you uh are unaware of the system but i'm sure something

080will be showing up shortly on our website and i just want to point out because it was a generous donation from wayne mazda backpacks for our students and we really appreciate our corporate partners and our community business partners and for all they do for our students and that's just one small example but thank you so much thank you mrs kazam i'll be reporting on the ed committee meeting that occurred today at 5 00 pm um mrs wentek and myself were in attendance along with our administrators mrs reichen my mrs reichman mr mcmanelli and mrs clark um we had a district update of the curriculum we examined the standards and criteria for entrance into track 1a which occurs when students are going into the middle school we had a review of various policies as for example

081student the qualifications for student representatives and we have student representatives that will start later this school year and also give the public as well as the board updates as to what's going on in at wayne hills and wayne valley high schools we went over every student succeeds which is a title one program we learned about a policy about professional response responsibilities and teacher plan books care of school property substance there was a substance abuse policy and guidelines for student testing as well as a banning of vaping devices guidelines for student journalism rights things that are slanderous dangerous and profane are all violations of student policies we examined an anti-hazing policy we have had title one changes in hib harassment intimidation and bullish bullying policies um and so there are new and new jersey department of

082education requirements for reporting and dealing with hiv we will be required to have new student id cards and on the back we will have to show the telephone number of suicide hotlines we talked about title one family engagement some of our schools are title one schools and the requirements um are different for the title one schools we have volunteer clubs um [Music] the culture club and the healthcare club will be launching at wayne hills uh we also talked about dual enrollment with lincoln technical institute and that is the end of my report for the education committee thank you very much okay next is action on our agenda items for the evening madam president i've moved the whole agenda second okay mr pavlak moved uh motioned mr bubba seconded uh do we have a roll call

083please and that would be on oh i'm sorry you're right mrs kazan uh board members any discussion on any of our agenda items thank you okay mr prasakos yeah um i don't believe item u.4 is still relevant it's an april 22 policy i think the world has changed since since april it's regarding the i can't hear it's regarding the district record keeping for covid um you know things have changed since you know even august so i think it's going to be a burden for the district for for record keeping so i excuse me could i get a clarification please from dr toback or mrs reichman about you for approval of policy 1648.15 record keeping for health care settings in school buildings i assume that's an update but i don't want to do that just give

084me one second okay thank you so we're just gonna give us a few seconds but i believe that that policy is relevant because collection of data and reporting of data is required we still have to do it the pandemic is has not been declared to be over so although for example we have 25 cases already of covid affecting the district okay so um but that does have to be reported to our local department of health and that has to be reported to the state but we're going to give us a few more seconds he's waiting i'll chime in thank you madam president uh just for everyone for clarification we are voting on the health and pe standards this evening and yes this is the final vote in case there was any further confusion and what

085i want to say about that is quite a bit i think the board the administration the staff has done their job with regard to writing this curriculum taking all of the concerns of the community into consideration and following the standards that the law provides we gave a review and response period had an opportunity to comment we read each response i know i did i want to thank those who voiced their opinions uh it was helpful i want to thank those for whether they liked it or didn't like it the fact that you provided feedback is how this system should work um that's a good thing and the outcome was clear those who don't want it just don't want just don't want it and that's why we have the opt out option uh they were basically

086hard-nosed um and i mentioned this earlier during the presentation it is unfortunate and i agree with the gentleman from franklin lakes who decided to join us this evening um we have 7 500 students that was a pretty meager uh response quite frankly but you know you can take that different ways i'm not gonna weigh in with an opinion on it because i don't know why people didn't respond i'm sure everyone has their reasons but at this point i believe we've done our work uh never ever in my tenure here in nine years have we spent this amount of time on 12 classes i mean think about it on the average day in 15 schools how many classes are conducted on a daily basis and we are spending this inordinate amount of time on 12. we've

087never been this transparent i'm glad that we were obviously it was a community concern and we should be but the bottom line is we've done it we need to get back to focusing on the important matters of academic recovery i'm not going to call it reading writing in arithmetic because we never abandoned those things that's that's a narrative that some people choose to use which is misplaced those things continue have always continued and will continue to continue in this school district we've heard you loud and clear we've made the change one gentleman said an expert wrote across the line well yeah there are still some people that agree cross the line should be in the curriculum but again we are trying to be cognizant of what the community wants it doesn't mean we agree it

088means we compromised and that's what was happening here but at this point it's time to move forward turn the page and get back to the business of running the school district we have a new year ahead of us we have the goals that have been set very important goals and i'm looking forward to us all getting back to that business thank you mr fatale i just wanted to comment when it was brought to our attention how are we going to ensure that teachers are going to stick to their subject and not have a spillover as far as my understanding goes that there are consequences and i do think that it will be up to this board to ensure that those consequences are enforced if a teacher does veer off what they are supposed to be

089teaching as it is important that we do pay attention to what is going on in the classrooms and we do pay attention to what our children bring home every day uh and i hope that the board is on the same page as me that we will ensure that this will not happen to the classrooms in in each classroom i should say thank you mr pavlov uh just to um piggy tail and not piggyback on mr uh tao's statement a teacher does not have a math teacher cannot teach about sex in their classroom that teacher does that they're answering to those people over there that's not acceptable so there are things in place to stop that and that is something i would ask the administration and i'll yield my time to dr toback i'm not trying

090to take your time no but i did want to point out that there is a policy regarding inappropriate staff conduct so of course facts matter please speak up okay so that is the facts matter each case is sensitive to the facts but the bottom line is there is a um there's a policy that anyone can google for the school district inappropriate staff conduct and something like that situation would be addressed under that policy and the procedures that are included with the policy okay just a quick question or response to your question the record keeping is still required um i i can tell you in my time here we have brought the administration has brought teachers to task on teaching outside the curriculum thank you um wayne public schools curriculum has been posted online for a

091long time if you go to the district home page you can find our curriculum actual lessons are different this is unprecedented this is the first time we have ac presented actual lessons within a curriculum for the public to view and so that we could get feedback i know there was a debate about opt-in opt-out the bottom line is if you have a problem with one of the new health and pe lessons that is being taught and you do not want your child to participate they can be excused from that particular class and that's not across the board there are many curricular areas where a child cannot be excused so this is the soft landing that has been built into this particular lesson packet on health and physical education i want to thank our administration our

092administrative team of secondary and elementary directors and lead teachers and staff that put time a lot of effort into bringing these lessons and getting them done in august which was the request so that people could see them before the school year started and that occurred at our last meeting so i want to go on record as saying thank you so unless someone else has a comment or talking point we'll go on with mr padillac's motion that was seconded and we'll have a roll call vote on the agenda thank you mr moffatt yes ma'am uh taking a vote mrs wentick are three abstain yes to everything else mr bubba yes mr duffy yes mrs kazan yes mr pavlak i'm going to vote yes to the agenda not because and especially with the art item r3 that

093i agree with it i'm voting on in the affirmative because we have an obligation where as mr robertson said we took an oath and we swore to uphold the constitution as well as to uphold the ethics of the state of new jersey and the decision of the school board of the state of new jersey and let's remember the school board of the state of new jersey is appointed by the governor all right so anything coming from there is coming from the politicians who appointed those people to there so remember that in november all those people sitting down in trenton who are forcing this down our throat mr prasakos no on r3 yes on everything else mr fatale oh god in regards to r3 the state really put us in a tough position here it's unfortunate

094that we are as divided as what we are right now and it really it really bothers me to the mere fact that even people have attacked members of this board including myself where they've even gone on social media and have talked about sexual mood acts about my children because of this and that is not right it is not right how this town has been so divided and constantly every day we deal with this unfortunately we did take an oath of office and mr robertson and mr pavlak did talk about that and it would be ethically wrong if i did vote now so i have to vote yes mrs put up i vote yes thank you motion carries the next portion for this evening are open comments you can comment on anything it does not have

095to be an agenda item please let me read my paragraph i would appreciate it this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on any topic residents are to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to five minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public excuse me i'm speaking i'll wait thank you members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employer a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings under old business there is also another caveat this

096meeting is for board of education business this is not a pep rally and this is not for campaign rhetoric i hope i make myself clear thank you please proceed uh i'll move to open this session madam president thank you thank you michael goddessman wayne new jersey in speaking tonight i'd like to make an attempt to bring us back into focus there's been a lot of distractions through the curriculum process and i'll be the first to admit that at times i may have been part of that distraction but at no time was it my intention to do anything other than to dispel misinformation and try to present facts based upon which parents could make logical and reasoned decisions the entire process that we are involved in is designed to make sure that our children and grandchildren

097and that means all of our children receive the best education possible minds will disagree on how to accomplish that and everyone's entitled to their opinion as long as they respect the right of others to give a contrary opinion everyone has the right to come before the sport and speak and they have the right to do so without being subjected to interruption cat calls or disruption everyone has the right to speak and not be fearful that they will be attacked as a result of their beliefs and subjected to innuendo the liberties in our country and the right to freedom of speech should ensure that everyone can speak without interruption development of the curriculum has been an arduous process there have been claims of lack of transparency well that has been dispelled because the curriculum and the

098actual classroom uh the actual classroom lessons have been published development of the excuse me the claims that parents have not been involved in the process and have not been able to speak well that's been dispelled because our board of education created a place where parents could give and submit their input in addition to allowing them to do that at numerous board meetings there have been arguments by some that a curriculum claimed to be non-age appropriate or objectional is being forced on students that is not a problem because parents have the right to opt out and they have so for forty plus years no one's forcing parents to submit their children to a curriculum that they consider objectionable many parents have opted out over the past forty years and there has never seemed to be a

099problem uh with that so why is it different now it's not in every situation in order to reach a compromise each party feels that in part they have won and in part they have lost that is when we know that a compromise has been reached but who should be the true victors in this battle our children and our grandchildren who will all be the recipients of what we all hope will be the best educational system we can provide and as parents and grandparents we all feel that we've been doing just what our job is to protect our children and grandchildren i believe that under the circumstances and after all the acrimony our board of ed administration and teachers have done an admirable job in creating a curriculum that is inclusive diverse and age-appropriate and i

100commend them all for their efforts i do make one final request in the united states right now as the school year begins we have over a 200 000 teacher vacancy rate teachers are leaving the profession by the thousands the number of high school students and graduates choosing education as a degree is down 35 percent why is this happening many reasons but part of the reasons is the teachers are tired of being attacked it is time to accept teachers and educators as not the enemies of parents they call your children their kids not to usurp your status as parents but because during the seven to eight hours a day that they are with your children they treat them as their own it's time to stop vilifying and denigrating teachers to start treating them again as professionals

101and to recognize the teachers teach the curriculum they're given to re-establish and reinforce a foundational element of our public school system an element that has proven again and again to result in excellent school systems in our state that's the collaboration between parents and teachers working in cooperation to ensure that your children and their students succeed so to borrow a quote from the scripture of isaiah it's time for us all to hammer our swords into plowshares and to have parents guardians and teachers once again work together for the betterment of all of our children and grandchildren thank you you can always go outside thank you miss putta good evening dianne douthit i live at wayne new jersey our kids are now 20 somethings attended the wayne schools they got a great education thank you to the

102board of education to the administrators and especially to the teachers who gave their all for our kids and i know the teachers in the classroom right now are doing that for other people's children over the many years our kids were students we found the most effective way to participate in our schools and our kids education was to get involved in the pto and in other parent organizations and to serve on committees alongside teachers and administrators if we had any concerns we also found the most effective way to deal with them was to voice these concerns directly to our kids teachers in a respectful way and also to listen to what these very experienced educators had to say i also had the great privilege of being a teacher in the wayne schools for almost three decades

103again as a teacher i can tell you that working with the parents for the benefit of my students was one of the best ways to get things done and to make the classroom a positive and exciting educational experience for every child that entered my room i'm a little confused uh i i completely understand why parents want to participate in their kids education why taxpayers might want to come up and voice their ideas and their concerns but why is anyone coming here to wane from other places people that are not wayne residents and commenting on our curriculum they have no stake in our community they are not taxpayers they do not have children in this community if our school system deteriorates it's no skin off their nose but our kids in the wayne schools your kids

104and our property values will take a hit if our school system deteriorates please keep that in mind also please keep in mind these teachers that some are disparaging consider the students in their classroom to be their kids and i'm speaking as somebody who recently retired and as the parent of a teacher who now tells me about his kids they call them their kids because they understand the sacred trust that is placed on them when your child enters their classrooms during code rail drill code red drills every teacher contemplates what they would do to protect the kids in their care does anyone really believe that our teachers would do or say anything to hurt these children they'd protect with their own lives now parents certainly have the right to opt their kids out of the health

105and phys ed standards but parents don't have the right to decide what other parents kids in the wayne schools should or shouldn't learn thank you [Applause] hi again um alan e search wayne new jersey just have a couple questions i won't be up here long and if these were answered before i just i didn't hear so plea please forgive me um piggybacking on what mr um faber said earlier about teachers so i just use the term go rogan in in the classroom um because it's going to happen unfortunately i'm not disparaging any teachers but it will happen um so i just i just have a couple questions here and maybe you can help me out with them and answer them when the when the session is done what do you specifically define then as inappropriate

106conduct in a non-health classroom can you elaborate on the process of reporting what we feel is inappropriate conduct as i don't know the process can you elaborate on what some of the consequences are and i think it's it's inevitable that there will be a he said she said controversy you know a kid comes home tells her parents this was said by the teacher or the teacher forced me to say this um and it made me feel uncomfortable so then we process the complaint and then who do you believe do you believe the parent or do you believe the teacher how do you cooperate with the parents when that happens you know so i just hope you might be able to answer the oh actually i'm sorry i i had one more and this is just

107a social media question i don't know if it's true so i'll ask you because maybe you're aware of it is what happened with the anthony wayne teacher true thank you hi my name is sandy and i am a wayne resident um i just wanted to say that i am disappointed that everybody i guess well the vote did happen um i thank you to the one board member that voted no on that and and i only say that i i say that because i came up here with with a specific concern and i did not make a general statement i i didn't go off topic i actually read to you from the lesson plan and for that reason alone i i felt like okay well nobody seems to care nobody nobody commented on that you you

108have a lesson plan here that in fifth grade that you're telling the kids it doesn't doesn't matter what they someone asks the teacher is that a boy or a girl and you're you're telling them doesn't matter it doesn't matter that that was the response so what it bothers me too because um the state did not tell wayne township public schools that these specific lessons that you showed us with the presentation were the ones that we have to implement okay they didn't say that so i i feel like we had leeway and because we still had people with concerns and in fact miss reichman showed us a presentation where it was 68 positive feedback and 70 were concerned so the concerns to me were higher than the positive feedback i was hoping that you would again

109take into consideration what the public was saying go back see if you need to discuss to retweet anything and that's that's the unfortunate because you were not locked in with these specific lessons um but you know i what i was going to bring up i know it doesn't matter now because they were voted in and these are the lessons so and i have a child in second grade so whether i opt out or keep the child in i'm sure it's going to be spoken about throughout so did i really opt out if i opt out i don't know probably not so so and this is a this is a printout of the second grade lesson again this is specific so in second grade for health and wellness it it says because it's it's going to

110[Music] talk about specific body parts so they throw in very quickly people sometimes call the lower leg the shin bone but the real name is the tibia okay great and then the next slide says there are parts of the body that we sometimes refer to as our private parts this is the part of the body a bathing suit covers the name for a girl's private part and i don't want to say it but it begins with a v and the boy's private part is p you know what that is so here we are saying in second grade that a boy a boy's private part right begins with a p and the girls begins with a v when the students go to fifth grade then they are then given this lesson they're shown the music video

111by willow smith and it's prompting the teacher to have a discussion on whether or not it's a boy or a girl so we go from validating second graders to know that a boy has a p and a girl has a v but in fifth grade we tell them it doesn't matter well well wouldn't they just look down and see if they have a p or a v and that would give them validation i you know i i don't want to raise my tone here but this is so mind-boggling these specific lessons were not locked in you it would have been very considerate to at least make it look like some of you cared and said okay next next month we'll have a meeting we're going to go back discuss one more time so is there

112really an opt out probably not and just for the record i'm a traditional person i was grown up in a traditional family i'm still raised by a traditional parent and i want my children to be traditional i'm not trendy and i'm not going to give in to the trends call me whatever you want because apparently i've already been told some things in the audience that's who i am and you're supposed to be inclusive with your new mission statement i don't feel included i i don't feel included for my children because of my traditional values again i don't believe it's going to be opt out whether we opt out really technically it's not because you know we're going to hear it and and the excuse well your kids are going to hear it anyway through social

113media television not my kids i don't let them watch that we don't do any of that at home so well thank you for your time and it is unfortunate what happened this evening [Applause] janine wayne new jersey um i wanted to just mention about the opt-out thing that we keep talking about i know everybody in this room probably heard about what went on in school and it wasn't even an opt-out situation and i even heard about it i don't have a kid in middle school i don't know with some teachers and pronouns and everything else opt out isn't going to work it doesn't work in in anything so whether or not you want your kid to learn about something it's going to still happen and even what sandy just mentioned everything that that is an

114issue second grade to fifth grade is really confusing between yeah you're a boy and a girl or no it doesn't matter but i actually had another thing that i wanted to talk about on the survey that was sent out i did send an email and i don't know if everybody talked about where the list came from that everybody who got a copy of that survey that was sent about a month ago by eda ferrante the wea president still wondering where that list of emails came from i think somebody said something about they they got a list from the registered voters or something maybe was that ever i guess figured out where it came from where the the people who got that survey or fake survey so to say where it all generated from and what

115the information that was actually answered by the people who did answer it what is it being used for i'd like to know i sent an email hi brittany coral 36 lawrence road i realize that my comments are going to be made in light of the fact of the decision that was made and i myself like many others are disappointed at the lack of bravery and integrity just to stand up and say hey maybe we should re-examine some of these standards a little more closely but i would just like to reference what an earlier speaker said when she told a story about her son and a teenage girl that he had met who had quote no idea about her body or sex or the like she was seemingly mortified by this can i ask what kids

116did 20 50 100 100 years ago how on earth did they survive without someone to speak to them about sex masturbation and gender identity it's a miracle that any of us are even here i mean how did these poor ignorant souls somehow manage to procreate despite lacking an explicit knowledge in explicit education and anatomy and sexual function obviously i'm being sarcastic but the fact of the matter is that this is reflective of the fact that education in this country has been on a downward spiral for quite some time now one need only engage in conversation with the average millennial or gen zer to see how far we have fallen how lacking the vocabulary the grammar the general knowledge of important people ideas and events gone are the days of wholesome education of classic literature languages

117like latin and greek and history and speaking of wholesome i would like to return to earlier comments made regarding willow smith and the fifth grade lesson plans another speaker remarked that children are curious indeed they are it would only be natural for children to leave a lesson plan with with following the video of willow smith after listening to her song and her music video sadly what they would find upon googling her is even less appropriate for the classroom setting i'd just like to read a few lyrics from her song i fell in love with an emo girl as we all know the rabbit holes that follow after googling she's got makeup by the mirror in her bedroom thigh high fishnets and some black boots nose pierced with cigarette perfume half dead but she still looks

118so cute she's a monster in disguise and she knows all the words to the trap songs takes pics with cherry red lipstick she says she only dates guys with a big i fell in love with an emo girl all i want is an emo girl she puts eyeliner on her dark skin she tells me lies but she knows all of my secrets and when we drive in the car and i say who is this man she says you won't understand it's some next choker on her neck kiss me holy f i'm bleeding on your blink t so so many regrets you tell me you're depressed baby girl that makes two of us is this the pinnacle of what we can achieve in education i just asked is there not some better choices out there seriously

119i'd like every single person to consider are we really going to put this in our kids education and their lesson plans is this what we want them to learn this is the best we can do and we wonder why we are falling behind like to countries like china donald trump was right time to wake up [Applause] cindy simon um so we don't like kovid to be gone we'd all like to get back to the way things were before coveted so i come up here on behalf of the eighth grade and probably the fifth grade too um they would very much at least the ones i've spoken to like to go to washington dc this year and some eighth graders have asked about it and been told it may be too late to do anything about

120it and it's unlikely i think we probably can get agreement from everybody up there that if it is possible and i can't imagine why it wouldn't be to bring back the eighth grade class trip and also the fifth grade environmental trip hi mark faber wayne resident so i somebody mentioned something that's trendy and i actually like facebook i don't know if you guys use it much but i like to watch all the videos that pop up on facebook so i look for trends and i look at things that are going on out there and the question i have for you as a board is where do you guys personally draw the line now i don't want to know the answer i just want you to think about the question because there are trendy things that

121are going on right now where things that are not moral in my opinion people are trying to make moral so by changing the term pedophile to minor attracted persons is something that's there and there has been a teacher that's been recorded by her students defending these people saying that they were born this way they didn't choose this so they should not be vilified this is a teacher in a classroom telling her fifth or sixth grade class that they should not vilify these types of people another interesting one that i saw was a roving reporter that was asking people about incest now he asked people you know if your friends decided that they wanted to have sex with a sibling would you be okay with that and they said no and they said because you know

122they could have children so the guy said to them well wouldn't that make you an incest phobe and the guy's like no no no and so the guy said well you know they decided they don't want to have kids so they said well okay if they decided they didn't want to have kids then it would be okay so the point is is there are people out there that are taking this concept of inclusivity to all new heights there was actually a woman trying to say how normal it is to have sex with your dog these are all real videos that i suggest you google it because it's really concerning now there are teachers that i see on videos like i said earlier who are bragging about how they are trying to make their children believe

123the same things that they believe so my question is to all of you is where do we draw the line now everybody has a different line and that's the challenge that we have here is that there are some people that are okay with certain things there are other people that may be a little bit more conservative but i believe we all have a line that everybody believes should not be crossed the problem today is that if you are a little bit further back on that line you're taught that you're you're called a transphobe or you're called a homophobe or you're called all these are racist now somebody used the term incest phobe and the people folded and they turned around and quickly said okay well that's fine somebody said you know is it okay if

124i change my age and i i identified as somebody at this stage they're like yeah okay that's fine it doesn't matter to me can i identify as a different race that one a few people didn't you know go along with but other people changed it the point that i'm trying to make is that the idea of inclusivity has got to have a limit and the question is where is everybody's individual limit and how far are you willing to go before you'll stop and push back because if these trends continue and these things continue to gain momentum like other trends have in the past these will be coming to your door eventually and i truly hope they don't because that will be really the downfall of our country as a whole but the point is is

125people are being vilified and viewed as you know with all negativity because they have a different view of the world and that's where the problem is today is there is no respect for somebody else's boundaries it's because this is what i believe and this is where we have to go so i'm hoping that you all do have a line and that eventually we'll see where that line is for your individual self as well as protecting the people who do have a more traditional view of the world nobody's telling other people that they don't want these people to be who they are all they're saying is they don't want their kids to be subject to it and for that they're being told that they're wrong and that's the issue that we have today is that nobody's

126opinion is right or wrong but you guys need to protect what they want to be protected and that is the fear that many people have now said with the opt out if you notice i don't know if you saw the post but the president of the wea bragged about how some of our new teachers are going to make excellent activists you have the njea talking about how teaching is activism these situations are going to create problems in the schools for us and for our children if people if these people do push their own agenda so i'm saying please be mindful of what people are doing thank you very much hi maria deluca wayne resident i just wanted to thank the board and the administration for and all of the teachers for all of their hard

127work in putting together the curriculum to both take into account the community's concerns and make sure that the lessons were both age-appropriate and in compliance with the state guidelines that being said i can tell you having been in school in wayne since i was six years old the curriculum has not changed that much there's not a lot different than what we've seen in the years that i went through the school system and i can tell you that because the school system in new jersey is what it is is as good as it is and is as you know um progress and progress may not be the word but has lessons in it that warn of the dangers of teen pregnancy stis etc wayne doesn't um not wayne new jersey does not have the seventh highest

128teen pregnancy i just looked it up it has the seventh lowest teen pregnancy so i just wanted to kind of level set that i also wanted to share um you know a story that my father told me when i was young there was a bad car crash and a man and his son were injured terribly in the car crash and they were rushed to the nearest trauma hospital and at the trauma hospital the surgeon you know all the surgeons rush in and the lead surgeon gets to the victims and the surgeon says i can't operate on on this man and this this boy that's my son my father looked at me and said do you know it was a riddle how can that be how can that possibly be and you're absolutely right it was

129his mother but you know what 71 percent of the people could not come up with that answer including people in medical school why because we don't give girls and boys the same opportunities or the same belief that they can be a doctor or a lawyer when they're young so i i appreciate the fact that we're letting kids know at a young age that just because they're a girl they can be a doctor they can be an astronaut if they're a boy they can be a teacher they can be a nurse they can they can do all of these things to me that's what those lessons represent at that age and i'm glad to see that wayne has adopted that in into the curriculum because i think it's important that people know that they're not limited

130by their gender they're not limited by their nationality they're not limited by their race they're not limited by their sexual preference and i think that we need to promote those ideas and know that everybody has an opportunity to succeed and do what they want to do in their life so i just wanted to share that with you and and thank you and one last thing i want to say i'm really sorry to hear that mr fattel's family was attacked on social media because i think that's horrible and and i think anybody who who supported that or contributed to that should really be ashamed of themselves so thank you ryan battischel 63km lowdrive um i wanted to ask a couple questions around the enrollment numbers to start with um whether or not the uh oh wait

131he's busy um whether or not the enrollment numbers i know but he'll respond and whether or not the enrollment numbers cover the people just uh whether or not they include the delta of the people leaving the district as well or if they are just people enrolling in the district because that would obviously have an impact into the net numbers versus the gross numbers and also i'm interested to see that passaic increased by quite a large percentage on a small number um but still on a on an absolute number increased by 60 students which is uh a comparable number with the entirety of the wayne school system so i'm interested to know if we know why so many of those went to um tech and whether or not that is just outside of wayne or if

132that's a migration of stuff from within wayne moving in that direction and then on the kindergarten increase which seems to be the basis of moving forward with a a new demographic study whether or not we've got a good idea if that is due to a rebound from people who held their kids back from covid and therefore are reapplying now and bringing them back into the school system because now would be the time to do that if they were either not sure that they wanted to get into the cool system then with masks and remote learning and so on or if that was that they were too scared to bring them in and now they're more comfortable bringing them in and that would also cause a increase that would look like a larger increase than beforehand

133so i'm interested to know in those three aspects on the uh enrollment numbers um uh i want to clear up one thing as well because i'm not sure where this comes from mrs kazan has mentioned this before mr gosmen mentioned this as well about the teachers in general i haven't heard any rhetoric around the teachers specifically i know the the all the teachers of the kids that i have had throughout the years here have been fantastic teachers um and at the times that we've even had any issues with any teachers around um you know classroom issues or whatever else everybody has been behind us for all of those including the beginning of last year with my daughter where everybody really came together around all of that so i'm not sure that i've heard any of

134this vilifying of teachers from either side of the room to be honest i have heard a lot of things about the management and the board and what the teachers are then forced to go through and uh teach and get across and so on and it's perfectly possible that some of this is outside of earshot of most of us apart from mr goldsman who seems to be maybe more connected to that in some way but certainly haven't heard any of that on our front um i do think that you know to some of sandy's points beforehand that there is we have got more transparency into these lessons than any other time the the board has seen i certainly appreciate getting involved with a lot of those i've provided a lot of comments back got a lot

135of responses back in some cases some really good dialogue around some of those things not all of those things are necessarily ending where i would want them to and as we've said with compromise you know sometimes i'm going to end up being disappointed with the end result that comes out of there that's the way the compromise works but i do feel that there are some things that would have been good to hear for example the changes that we actually made to the curriculum based on all of those comments and concerns if we made any changes if we were going to make any changes rather than just saying there were a bunch of concerns did we do anything about those and i think that's where some of the other comments today may have come from and

136stuff as well if we could round that out then that might be a good uh opportunity to finish that and then the the last thing is i don't think anybody has also said that people should not learn this stuff i think the question realistically has been whether this is something that the school should teach or whether this is something we want the parents to teach and i think that that's been the primary thing around that and then i've got one last um request out of there which is on the opt-out forms at the moment and i only saw them quickly so i don't know for sure um i don't know if those are just the new standards that went in and if they aren't the new standards can we just highlight that the things that

137are the new sounds good i don't think anybody has a problem with the old standards and people would be very willing to get into their as per some of the previous conversations that we've had but if they are just the new ones then we should just highlight these other you know the new standards that are going in thank you out of town guy again i'm from franklin lakes 501 kings point trail i'm very disappointed actually by the comments made about my interest in this school district and neighboring school districts which i come to learn what they're going to do so i can be better educated as how to do my role i'm speaking on my own behalf although i'm a trustee for franklin lakes board of education maybe i should just not come to whole

138food here anymore or express i don't know fix my tires here um i i just think that um you made a tough decision and and good for you it does seem like you made a lot of effort in it i agree with the gentleman before me to see like the delta of what was supposed to be compared to what we've done might have maken easier on the public that's what i sensed without being too much involved but i think that to come and to say that we don't know where it comes from or it's uh call people that they're i don't know hallucinating or it's not there i'll tell you what happened um i think two and a half years ago kovid happened and when covey happened people started to see what their kids are

139being taught via zoom or whatever you use and when they saw it there was a gap between what they thought the kids are being taught to what the kids were really thought the thoughts and you must address that gap everybody wants the best for the kids i'm not here to doubt anybody's intent but the toughest question is when is the public interest is overreaching beyond the private rights and when the private right has the white and the balance and the opt-out balance try to address it so that's that but the line is being pushed and it's been constantly pushed and we have to pay attention to that we have to pay attention that your goal like you said miss product is that it's a school business meeting and the business of this board and this

140administration is to make sure the best return on investment on the taxpayers by providing an educated environment an educated society which would in future guarantee less crime more property value better town to live in and this is why everybody pays tax for school even people without kids in school even elderly people or single people they pay tax and that's the way it is make sure the taxpayer get the best return on investment for their money that's pretty much it thank you for your time hello don chala again just wanted to echo something that was said before uh specifically by mrs kazan this is like a total of 12 lessons the amount of total time it seems is comparable to perhaps the length of this board meeting [Laughter] this is the new health and physical education

141standards this isn't the new math standards the new science standards this is happening in one period of well back when i was in bali it was at least nine periods but you know one period not the other periods so the idea that the idea that we've all forgotten about math and reading and writing and science it's it's absolutely absurd and i'm tired of hearing about that and i think it's really disingenuous and it undermines our public education system and it's it's just sad that that talking point is being iterated again and again and again thank you hi again norm robertson i'm a wayne resident i think it was two months ago may have been when they did when mrs reichmann did the the slide show initially i had a question left over from that and

142the question was very simple and it was procedural really and that is whether or not we had to get this in place by september by the beginning of the school year you remember that time and uh and the answer i got was well we work on curricula all throughout the year uh and uh so no there's no specific thing that said we had to do it by september uh and the focus changed and you wanted to do it sooner rather than later and that's okay and i understand that but i'm a little concerned about one thing when i heard one abstention and a couple of folks who seemed a little uncomfortable now i'd known don pavlak for a number of years and i know how valued he is in this community and he's a good

143man and and if i uh before i knew anybody else on the board i knew don and if i ever had a question i would always be able to go to don i knew that mike mike patel i grew up in south patterson so i know the fatale family is an important part of that community so i'm not surprised at all to see you dedicate your life to public service and i got to know harry and saw his beautiful family here he's a first generation american and i saw evie last year and she you know she was educated in a communist system and was very upset at some of the things she saw my question is this and i don't expect you to answer because i don't think you can anyway and that is were

144you told by any chance that you couldn't vote no on this were you told that it was an ethical violation now if that's the case i would encourage all of you especially you madam president because it probably would fall to you to ask counsel for an opinion of counsel on that question did you have to vote well were you prohibited from voting no tonight september 8th three days after uh the start of the school year when we know that this is worked on throughout the year when we know that they didn't require it and and i would ask you please to ask council to give you the site chapter and verse why that's the case if that's the case and i don't assume it's the case it's only something that i'm gleaning from what i've

145seen tonight and something i had kind of caught in the wind the first time i came up find it out always always always if you have to ask your counsel to cite chapter and verse what his opinion is based upon and again i'm not assuming anything here but i am very concerned about that now as for parents i have yet to meet a parent who doesn't believe that diversity is a strength i have yet to me and i've been dealing with the parents primarily on the right side of the issue here you can take that directionally or otherwise it's okay i have yet to meet a parent who doesn't believe in inclusion if one thing can break a parent's heart it's if their child is not included in something so that's something that resonates with

146all parents and it's not a political thing and they also believe in equality because they believe in fairness because they want their children to be treated fairly so when i see uh when i see things coming out of the njea talking about how we need to stand up to maggot republicans and things of that nature which is how the president of the nga greeted our school year or if i see something from another association more locally uh talking about this or that uh candidate for office being a homophobe or or they have homophobes behind them and stuff like that you know that's not the sort of rhetoric that helps anything uh and and i've been stressed i only came to this in the first place because of what i was seeing coming out of virginia

147and and i had every intention and i'm not even sure don knows this but i i had every intention that once i did my research once once i did my study i was going to ask him what about wayne but then i found out that you know wayne was heading in a direction that we needed to be concerned about and that's why i got it but but the the first thing i mentioned is the most important and that is i would be very very concerned if you were told and i don't assume you were that i'd be very concerned if you were told that in some way shape or form you had to vote yes or you couldn't vote no or that there would be any kind of an ethics complaint with respect to that

148because that itself would be ethical violation in my opinion thank you my name is claude reed claudia reed i'm a i live in wanakeeu passaic county and i am a taxpayer and i do care about other people's children for their own sakes but also how they will affect our society and i wanted to know if you were aware that the town of garwood rejected this new sex ed curriculum and also the town of warren did not adopt the new curriculum are you aware also that middletown new jersey revised their k-5 curriculum to require parents to opt in rather than to opt out if they want their child child excused from the revised sex ed their parents were will be told in advance what will be taught and must give their child permission to attend the

149day's lesson now two weeks ago at the meeting here we heard that that was not possible i don't know whether it's in a state law that you can't opt in but apparently this town of middletown has turned it around so that you have to opt in to get the sex ed and i'm wondering if that's something that can be considered in the future i'm i'm disappointed that the board just sort of quickly voted for this radical sexual and gender identity curriculum to be taught to young children i was a little relieved to hear mrs reichman say that though the masturbation masturbation is in the standards apparently the state standards but the lesson does not mention it but i'm wondering what's to keep an individual teacher from mentioning it or is it something that's brought up

150in fifth grade or sixth grade um it's the other uh my other concern is children do talk to one another and they i mean if they hear this information in these classes what's to keep them from talking to the children that the parents have opted them out of those classes in reality i think they're those children are going to hear some of these very really extreme going back 10 15 20 years ago you would never even hear we nobody even heard of some of these things this gender identity and and fluidity and you can choose your own gender and it's just it's it's really pretty shocking that this is being taught and i think in the interest of all children this is not something that schools should be focusing on reading scores science math these

151are english these are the traditional subjects that have been taught and compared to world scores we we've dropped we're we're not we're certainly not number one i think we're something like 14th or something and it's it's really sad that that children have to be as young as first and second grade have to hear um about being being able to talk about their name the body parts and and um fifth graders gender role stereotypes and the game crossed the line which two weeks ago you heard quite a bit from people here that they didn't want their children hearing this and i don't know whether you considered that game at all leaving that out um but i think it's it's it's not the business of other children to be hearing some child talk about their personal life

152before the whole class and and then later not only would that maybe be embarrassing but it makes the child more vulnerable to being picked on or bullied later and so i don't know whether there's any opportunity in the future that this is going to be addressed again i don't know whether you have to you vote for this every five years i think it is um but at least maybe cons i wonder if it can be considered uh to making it an opt-out opt-in decision for parents rather than an opt-out thank you pamela wayne we talk about statistics hiring organizations to review things committees and not just based on feelings so i just wanted to pull up a quick analysis from 2022 that stated at least 181 k-12 educators including four principals were arrested on child

153sex-related crimes in the u.s in the first six months of 2022 ranging from child pornography to raping students now before you roll your eyes and speak in a condescending tone and in your final comments saying this is nonsense it could be reviewed in 12 hours i was one of those students growing up so why are the parents so particular and grinding out daughter can you please ask the speaker to address her comments to the chair and not constantly at me and mr geppert i have a legal question considering ms masak considers me her favorite target and i am a subject of a lawsuit with this woman do i respond or do i ignore her what is your legal advice on i'm looking at everybody i don't know what she you just rolled your eyes just

154now people are filming it because they're none of your business yes miss put up i like my time i'd like my time i'd be happy to look straight ahead miss put up thank you she shouldn't flatter herself i'm not point giving her that time i'll be happy to direct it to you so parents are spoken to in a condescending fashion when it's final comments by board members in general at different times and we can't comment back so i did i would i felt i would be remiss not to address there are statistics i was one of those statistics i can validate it's true i understand grooming and the reality of it we p victims don't go around touting their stories openly while they hear people being rude and condescending so we're here because we care

155and because it's a reality in the education system we love our schools my son just graduated i was grateful for the education and for the teachers he had but there were things that happened things do happen and we're here to address it 181 educators in the first half of 2022 the board has to be aware that by including this information and voting yes one more child because when it's spoken about in the classroom and they're they're taught to trust their educators right there are kids right so the walls of of propriety come down they become comfortable with uncomfortable topics that gives leeway for more discussion more connection in inappropriate ways it's a reality the his statistics are there and the victims are real so please don't speak in a condescending tone or say things are

156nonsense or it could only be why did we spend two years about this because we give a damn and there are children and we don't want them to go through what some of us have gone through and we want to protect them [Applause] i'll close the meeting my name is barbara rigoloso and i just had i just want to make a few comments on what i've been seeing at these meetings i think it's really sad that the room is divided i think it's really sad that half people sit here half people sit there and then we just pick on each other and bully and boo um we talk about the kids being bullied what about the moms or dads giving their opinions sincerely from their heart the poor woman just had questions and she she

157was actually so nervous and giving her story it's terrible this is not wayne this is not the wayne that i know this is not the way my seven kids went through this is this is some this is cuckoo land this has to change the eye rolling the comments i always tell my seven kids my job i have a job and two things to keep you safe and to keep you healthy so anything that falls in that category that's me that's mom i'm gonna go and i'm gonna fight for what i think is right it may not be right to you may not be right to you but it's right to me so if i feel like i have a concern i think i have um the right to come up in front of my board

158and say hey listen i'm worried i'm concerned i'm scared this is new we don't understand it and when you don't understand things you get scared so i think it's your job administration board of ed to explain what are we going to do with this curriculum you have to implement this curriculum we're nervous we're scared this is new stuff we never had this before it has to be talked about [Music] and by the look on your faces i'm not sure you believe what you're selling either i think you're scared and i think you're nervous so maybe we can work together and try to make this thing work or maybe get rid of it one last thing we're very very thankful to our teachers so please please please don't spread that negativity in our community my kids

159are so successful and if it wasn't for my teachers and the administration that would have never happened because what you did in class i implemented at home and then we we work together as a community i've been in this community for 35 years we have to stop the negativity our goal as parents and board of administration and i mean board of education and the administration is to do the best thing for all the wayne children and i think that's our goal i think that's your goal i think that's your goal and i think that's your goal but let's work together listen to us explain to us it might have to be explained three times but right now i just want to tell you we're nervous and we're scared and that's all i'm going to say

160hello my name is tommy denberg um i do want to ask um and kind of bounce off of what mr robertson said um i would like to know what in the curriculum ms wenting uh mr i i would like to bounce off of mr robertson i would like to know what in the actual lesson plans that were published that were just voted on um offended or in some way bothered ms wenting considering she abstained uh mr fatales since he made certain comments mr powbach as well and mr prasadka since he voted against it i mean we haven't gotten any specifics and i think that you know this this has been voted on and it was a very much a compromise um so i'm just beside myself i mean why let this debate you know we've

161been talking about like pushing back why let this debate keep going and keep dividing this community right like why draw it out why keep drawing it out when are we actually going to actually come together so i'm just trying to oh it's okay i mean i honestly um you know i was bullied in high school for being gay and the only reason i found out about what was going on in wayne um you know i went to randall carter i went to george washington i went to wayne valley the only reason i know about it is because my friends said there's a group of anti-lgbt people who are going on an anti-lgbtq book campaign and then it turned into you know an anti-lgbtq campaign against the lgbtq inclusive health and phys ed curriculum i'm just

162so tired of it i really want to be my last board of ed meeting i actually want to enjoy my life i don't want to come here every month and be part of like a creepy community that get off on being negative it's really troubling that shows the worst of wayne not the best so please enough with this like negative campaign against people like me who are different let this end thank you [Applause] madam president i moved to close seeing no one coming to the podium mr duffy thank you okay dr toback do you have any comments this evening okay so um i guess i do have um some comments first of all um good news for ms simon i know that you brought up concerns about the fairview lakes trip and also the eighth

163grade trip we did both trips last year and so we intend to do the same this year so february yep um the eighth grade trip was not quite the trip that um we had in prior years but that's because of the limitations that existed at the time we weren't able to do a full-fledged trip without um you know it would have been just something we weren't able to do in terms of the multi-day trip okay um i just wanted to clarify for parents who are listening in and who might have heard a comment one of the members of the community read lyrics from a song that were of course they were quite alarming and somewhat disturbing to anyone who hears that um the the point i'd like to make is that has nothing to do

164with the curriculum that we have okay so that was something that was said but it's not anything that is reflected in our actual curriculum um but it was somewhat alarming and so i just wanted to make sure that parents in the community understood that that is not the curriculum and that is not um that has no connection whatsoever to what we're doing here um i would like also to add that there was some questions from mr robertson i believe about the process the timeline so and so forth so what i can address is basically um if you recall we previously mentioned and there was a debate about when should all this be done and of course the the answer was during the summer everyone wanted to see the curriculum and so we provided the community

165with the actual lessons which is um as miss pub said a fairly unprecedented thing so that way the community knows exactly what these lessons look like um if we're asking people to opt out they need to know what it is that i'm opting out of right so that was similar summer curriculum writing and then the reality is that all the all the curriculum work that was adopted tonight is due for september of 2022. so this had to happen in september of 2022. honestly we've been discussing this probably for somewhere around six months so um i would i would say that under normal conditions that's that's that's a substantial amount of time to be talking about the health and physical education standards if you were to ask me i mean like i said um our time

166in the central office is occupied by talking about health and pe standards and trying to get this right for the community and so um but that's basically where we stand with that um the other thing i want to mention is there was a gentleman that asked kind of like a hypothetical situation wanted to know a little bit more about okay so what happens if a teacher strays from what they're required to do so a previous member of the community asked a similar question and i pointed out that there is a policy the policy has all the steps the board would need to take the investigation everything that would need to happen in the case that a teacher is accused of inappropriate staff conduct so and there's a variety of different ways that um teachers would

167be dealt with if that were to happen um so there are situations that could happen and the policy does address all of that um the policy number is 3281 so if you want to look first there's one for um teachers and there's one for support staff so there's 3281 and 4281. um the other thing that happened i know that um someone asked is what happened at anthony wayne true okay and so this is kind of a surprising situation um and it also relates to mr fatale's situation he described where his family was was basically attacked on social media right something of that nature so um there was a staff member whose identity was revealed on social media with a concern a discriminatory reason okay so what happened is the individual who did the posting actually

168posted the wrong person and so as a result of that posting that person of course is subject to they have some legal issues that they're facing so that's something that happened this week that is what happened at anthony wayne um and otherwise like i said the the reasons given behind the posting were discriminatory things that we can't really entertain here in the district in terms of um like a response um the other thing i just wanted to say there's certainly something that was said about teenage pregnancy rates um just because it sort of struck me as a strange comment that um new jersey would be in a situation where we're kind of worse off than most of the rest of the country that in fact is not true so if you look at the cdc

169website that's easy to see that actually teenage pregnancy rates birth rates are actually are very low in new jersey compared to the rest of the country um let's see what else we have here so i think at this point that that's all the questions i think i'm able to answer at this point thank you dr toback old business board members new business board members mr prosaccos i just want to let people know i took my oath seriously i'm a law abiding citizen and we all answer to the new jersey state legislature and i wanted to to tell you that governor murphy and i quote said any proposed educational content that is not age-appropriate should be immediately revised by local officials i'm a local official so i provided my feedback of what i thought was appropriate

170what i received feedback from teachers psychologists doctors sex therapists the let's talk uh feedback was good i i was surprised that the response was not as high as i was expecting i was expecting a higher response and you know i have a personal perspective um as well you know i was a student um my parents were immigrants and i'm gonna share something uh personal when i was in eighth grade uh i saw an abortion film in my class it was about 90 something degrees i was in my class um teacher put the video i don't know if uh they had an opt-out or a form that my parents had to sign my parents luckily are still alive right now if you ask them right now what does opt out mean they don't know what opt

171out means so for those immigrant students or first generation students that are here in wayne you know god help them right so so that's that's the reason that i i voted no um there's you know content there where you know we had some people say i'm glad that this was this is being covered you know it's going to be helpful in college it's going to be helpful in high school i mean should we be teaching driver's ed in fifth grade you know um i i know it's a little little facetious but um you know that i mean that's that's that's uh an analogy there um i wanted uh you know i had some feedback um as far as the uh ime video um i don't think willow smith is a role model her father just

172assaulted someone on live television a few a few months ago so you know kids can google that was i completely opposed to the lesson plans no i wasn't completely opposed to the lesson plans another um you know someone asked for another example um you know ivf and surrogacy being torn in fifth grade kind of like the driver's ed example you know so um so so those are those are my reasons uh i would have liked to to send it back to the education committee for for revisions but i i understand we need to to get this done um let's see here so i i widened my lens i wasn't you know obstinate you know this is my perspective and this is it i i took everyone's perspective you know and um you know it was

173up to this local board to come up with an age-appropriate curriculum and i want to i want to thank the administration i want to thank the teachers on the committee i i do know that they had hard work and i do know that we did provide transparency um and uh there's also you know uh a pending bill in the senate education committee right now s f two five two four um you know which is looking servicing oh and an assembly similar bill in the assembly so so that was my reasoning thank you mr fatale so uh mr faber i feel like i'm picking on you a little bit but uh you mentioned uh right and wrong and protecting our children and i couldn't agree with you more that it is our obligation as parents to

174protect our children and somebody else's child as well too if we see something done wrong to them as well too morally ethically that is our obligation and i cannot agree more with you and if you saw something happening to my daughter i hope you would step up to the plate and protect her i think i think my son could handle his own even though he's two and a half but you know my daughter you know as a father of daughters i hope you would do the same to answer the question about why i was apprehensive i have taken an oath of office here also in my line of work i have taken an oath of office we have something called brady giglio where if you were untruthful and you are found to be unethical it

175could be held against you professionally i am not willing to risk my lifeline in providing for my family for being unethical after taking the oath of office office to serve as a board of education trust day i am apprehensive because we did work hard on this i'm not on the education committee i got what everybody in this room got when i see a slide about second grade and they talk about private parts and god bless my brothers and sisters in blue in the back of the room i don't know if they've ever interviewed a child who was sexually abused i have and i have sat with them and i wanted something added to that slide in regards to being able for them to describe where they were touched and how they were touched to make

176it open for them so having something added there was very important to me because i have dealt with that sexually abused child in regards to fifth grade curriculum i do think ivf and surrogacy is important because there are plenty of people out there that cannot have children the natural way and they explore that but does a fifth grader understand that i'll leave that up to you to decide but that is the way the state wrote the standard i am not at the state level i am not the one that put that into the standard so we have to even if we don't agree we have to support that standard yes we do it is written in there the willow smith video i think a lot of people have commented on it i would just like

177to also added something from 2012 i think that our fifth graders have evolved tremendously from 2012 to 2022 and i was kind of hopeful that we were able to find something that our students could relate to a little bit more than something that's 10 years old um i use the bad analogy but it's like walking around with an iphone 5. how many of us in this room actually still have an iphone 5. it's obsolete so to answer your question i did have concerns but my concerns might not be what everybody thought my concerns were thank you [Music] this is one tech hi um i wanted to address the health education curriculum as well um you know i thought i appreciate all the time the teachers put into the curriculum and in some great i felt

178the lessons were acceptable but in some they were not and the will smith of willow smith video keeps coming up and that was my issue i've communicated that at the education committee level i've communicated after it went to the board members and the public with the feedback but we are where we are this was my sole reason why i voted uh to abstain i wanted to thank all the teachers and the administration for putting it together i think overall it was okay but that was my one big issue i feel like we could have done a little bit better there so thank you john sorry mr kavla um listen this is probably the most divisive issue in 16 years being on this board and rightfully so i said this is probably the most divisive issue

179in all my time on this board that i've sat here and parents have really come out other than athletics it's not easy i don't agree with the whole curriculum there are parts of it that i think you know what we we need to go to a certain point with i think there's other parts of it that it goes a little too outside the line i'm not sold on the second grade curriculum i don't think you know you really have to look at cognitive development there and you can bring in all the experts you want i'll bring you i'll bring in my 10 you bring in your 10 and they'll fight it out over it so i don't want to hear that all the experts say the experts say we can get experts to say anything

180we want we had to put a curriculum in place let's remember the lesson plans are not etched in stone we can pull this video that video can get pulled out and in fact i would ask that possibly the education committee or the superintendent administration let's take a look at some of the concerns that people have brought up tonight especially there i forget who it was had concerns over the second and fifth grade they brought up the points on them maybe we can take re take a look at them again i think we have our teachers have done a really good job of getting away from what the lesson plans that have been flying around on social media on the internet and everywhere else and you know people you know you get your information and you

181think you know you you think it's reliable i think we have to move on folks not forget about it i'm not saying forget about it but i think this is a curriculum that has to evolve and we have we still have the opportunity to evolve it you have the opportunity to opt out i get that but i think we really need to take a look at this and we need it's going to be massaged lesson plans are massaged every day i massage my lesson plan between my first period class and my fourth period class it didn't work well first period i'm changing in fourth period so a lesson plan is is a living document that moves and we have the opportunity and when we give our teachers the professional and the development now you're going

182to be bringing all the second grade teachers together all the fifth grade teachers together you're going to get new ideas and new ways to present things before it even gets presented there's going to be professional development given to the teachers they're going to be able to look at it they're going to learn how to massage this so that i i voted yes because we had to get something in place and i think there's parts of it that are okay that are good that's i think just parts of it that are not okay so that was my reservation in my vote no what go ahead okay i've already made all the comments i'm going to make on the curriculum that is over with i'm turning the page i will address um mrs rigelowso i know you

183haven't been attending meetings regularly for the past year plus as far as vilifying teachers are concerned i could send you video i could send you facebook posts i could send you emails it's happening it's been happening because you didn't see it doesn't make it so i'm sorry to disagree with you but i wouldn't have said it if i didn't see it hear it witness it live it okay i i don't speak um misinformation it's actually something i'm pretty against overall i i like to speak in facts and and i'm not going to make everybody happy up here but it's um it's part of the job i'm going to please people sitting there sometimes i'm going to please people sitting here sometimes it goes with the territory there's nothing i could do about that but a

184few people brought it up tonight so i'm going to be very clear i wouldn't have said it if it didn't happen and i'm glad we're finally at the end of this chapter and i agree with mr pavlak things could be tweaked throughout the school year that's for the education committee to decide and discuss but for now a decision had to be made or at the start of the school year this is a huge distraction at every meeting it is time to move on we do have to get back to more important business of running the schools this is what you pay your taxes for we need to focus on their education and i hope everyone has a great school year i'm i'm sure everyone is excited to be back i i absolutely adore the back

185to school pictures it's my favorite time of year fresh start new sneakers smiling faces it's and and if you follow me on facebook you'll see my my winner winner favorite first day picture i won't spoil the surprise i'll try to keep this brief um the cross the line game that was questioned was taken out of the lessons um i know there were questions about the music video i didn't know who sang it the first time i saw it i didn't even know if i was looking at a boy or a girl was the person hispanic were they black it could be white but i thought that was the whole idea of the video was to prompt a discussion about perceptions and how you form them about other people and usually the first things are is

186it a boy or a girl and the color of their skin which gives you a clue to their race or perhaps their ethnicity so it leads to a discussion and that was the whole idea could we find a better one we probably could and they'll work on that i trust it um as far as children's learning gaps we have had presentations from mrs reichman right down here and in the ed committee last year they we knew that kids were going to suffer a learning gap coming out of covet that kids sitting at home in front of the computer or having teachers in a classroom that were juggling three devices to try to help the kids in the classroom the kids at home and then be able to show them a lesson was not optimal and

187they pulled it off masterfully for the situation we were in but the district is tracking that the statistics are there the support programs are in place to help children catch up teachers as activists [Music] i really hate it when people take things out of context i wasn't at that meeting i don't know in what vein that comment was made [Music] i do know not right now sorry okay whether it was a post or but it was said at a meeting okay thank you if it weren't for teachers being activists female teachers would make less than male teachers for the same job we teachers would be making fifteen thousand dollars a year they would not be valued at all and that does happen in some states so i appreciate activism from that point of view and

188i don't know what point of view the post or whatever was trying to bring about when they were talking about teachers as activists that remains to be seen the other thing i want to talk about this evening is your children will be exposed to a lot in their lifetime there are two commercials on running on regular television right now that every time they come on i go why is that allowed on regular television and it is and a child will probably ask their parent questions about it and that's what you're there for is their parent we will teach lessons in school and your child hopefully will come home you know what the curriculum is and you can help them the other thing that your children have been exposed to whether you block everything on their

189phone is this this has changed the dynamic more than anything on television in movies this and their peer group so please be aware of it it's not just what is taught in the classroom which is filtered a lot more than the cell phone the last thing i want to talk about is a theatrical presentation that was made at the last board meeting where a parent flew in at the last moment came to the podium and complained about a lesson about what was done in an ap psychology class what the parent had to say was taken out of context her child was not in a class well-regarded teacher had been teaching this class for the last eight years the same lesson and to besmirch a teacher's reputation that way without having all the facts was despicable

190i was appalled when she presented the lesson about incest [Music] well dr toback got my email the next day how could this be but that was the reaction that was desired it wasn't fair she didn't have a child in the class it's ap psychology the point of the lesson was how do you know this is wrong what informs your moral compass and studying and asking questions about how you have formed your moral compass moving forward especially we're talking an adult level here is something i never stop to ponder i wish i had had this class because i had never asked myself how did i form my moral compass i'm sure i got mine from my parents but i never stopped to question it so really upset because administration talked to this teacher and the teacher

191may never teach this lesson again now because there's a fear and when you put that fear in education you lose teachers and you lose knowledge that will never be taught in a classroom again and that's just not fair so i'd like people to think about that before you come forward with a grain of truth wrapped in a fable that you haven't gone to the the teacher or the principal or the administration if you just come in here and make a theatrical presentation and trash someone's reputation it's just not right so thank you for listening to me i do appreciate it i want us to have a great school year as my colleagues have said yeah this has been anxiety producing with this with the new curriculum we'll work through it it'll get tweaked we'll get

192past it and we'll move on and wayne has great schools and i wish you a great year thank you