October 7 Board of Education Meeting

001the executive session of the wayne board of education pws meeting of october 7th 2021 was convened in the conference room with the william board of education 15 ellis drive wayne new jersey the statement of compliance setting for a time date and location was read in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act and roll call was taken the meeting was recessed and is now being reconvened can i get a mover mrs put up mr giordano please rise for a flag salute in a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so dr toback everyone hear me okay so good evening everyone at our next meeting our student

002representatives will be joining us a reminder that our next board of ed meeting is on october 28th which is one week later than usual due to the fact that the school boards convention was normally scheduled for the third week of october um a number of committees will be meeting or did meet this meeting or this evening and we'll be reporting so i'll limit my comments so i don't duplicate the reports the covet situation in our schools has been for the most part stable with no major spikes or outbreaks that threaten our ability to keep our schools open 63 additional students and staff have tested positive since the first few weeks of school with 178 people identified as close contacts the good news is that we have had a reduction in the number of close contacts

003who had to actually quarantine because some close contacts were vaccinated in this case 141 of the close contacts had to quarantine in 37 did not so that helps keep in mind these are the cases where the schools acted there are other cases where people are in quarantine for other reasons including travel and family members testing positive governor murphy's executive order 253 requires that all school employees with frequent school contact be vaccinated by october 18th which is only a few weeks away at this point the district has developed a database and has loaded much of the information into a new software package designed for vaccine management so we're in good position to meet the requirements of the executive order i'm pleased to report that our first weekly district newsletter will be going out tomorrow for hiv

004report i'm reporting the following data related to harassment intimidation and bullying incidents in the wayne township public school district there were two incidents investigated since my last report and neither case was deemed to meet the criteria of hiv incident that concludes my report thank you dr toback mr moffatt revisions to the agenda please yes we have a few tonight if we can go to the emergent section of the agenda is your mic on okay a little better yes yep if we go to the emergent section under human resources the first one is item t5 which is approval of a revised items revises follows number four id number eight nine five seven revised to read november eight twenty twenty one through february four twenty twenty two fmla without pay and with benefits february 5 2022 through

005may 15 2022 wea extension without pay and without benefits under t5 again number six courtney uh d-u-i-n-s-a-v-a-s-t-a-n-o change to interim ap to long-term replacement ap and we'll add to t5 ad number 10 which is adding dawn deposqually as fairview lakes chaperone for lafayette school moving on to item t6 approval to rescind items will be add number four which is resin kim and i'll spell last name m-a-t-h-i-s-e-n at fairview lakes chaperone for lafayette school under t-12 approval of transfer revise as follows under number one revise hannah and the spelling is s-v-a-d-s-o-n to the correct spelling which is hannah s-v-e-n-d-s-e-n and will be adding to tonight's agenda under emergent human resources we'll be adding t13 which is approval of the revised final collective bargaining agreement and salary guides with local 11 international brotherhood of teamsters dispatchers unit

006and that resolution reads as follows that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent reapproves the revised final collective bargaining agreement and salary guides with local 11 international brotherhood of teamsters dispatchers unit for the period july 1 2021 through june 30 2024 which incorporates the agreed upon article roman numeral x iii which is benefits and authorizes the president of the wayne board of education to execute the new collective negotiation agreement as discussed in the executive session that concludes tonight's revisions to the agenda thank you this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residences 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 employee or a student the

007board 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 can i get a mover move mr giordano mrs put up you need to turn the mic on first of all we can't hear you and i need a timer so hang on a second sorry are you okay can i take my mask off madam president yes go ahead you can pull it down to speak and then just put it back up okay thank you okay uh jim frieswick i reside in wayne i'm here to speak about items u5 and eu6 on the agenda that's the policy for school employee vaccination requirements this policy which you're going to consider uh

008is in accordance with executive order number 253 signed by governor murphy on august 23rd and under this policy the board shall adopt and maintain a policy that requires all covered workers to either provide adequate proof that they have been fully vaccinated or submit to covet 19 testing at a minimum of one to two times each week however under executive order 253 paragraph seven it provides that nothing in this order shall prevent a covered setting that's the school district from instituting a vaccination or testing policy that includes additional or stricter requirements and your policy follows that provision on page two it says nothing in this exact nothing in executive order 253 and this policy shall prevent a board of education from revising this policy to include additional or stricter requirements i would ask this board to

009impose a stricter requirement on employees of this school district by requiring them to get vaccinated or lose their jobs [Music] [Applause] get vaccinated or get fired that's the policy of wayne township with respect to wayne township employees and the opinion of the township attorney is that that policy is lawful and it's a better policy than governor murphy's policy outlined in order 253 and it's better than the policy being considered by this board also with respect to your policy you provide that if a unvaccinated employee if if an employee if an employee of this district is unvaccinated he must undergo testing at a minimum of one to two times each week to be determined by the superintendent of schools but there's no criteria to guide the superintendent in making a decision whether or not an employee

010has to get tested once a week or twice a week and and that's a flaw in this policy because any determination thank you sir that's your time anyone else wishing to speak on agenda items only sorry okay i have a mover by mrs share it's a closed public portion seconded by mr bubba mr buffett okay we're moving on to committee reports we'll start down on the other end mrs kumar do you have a report [Music] hello [Music] okay sorry about that education committee met tonight um board members in attendance uh were eileen albanese matt giordano and i administrators in attendance were donna reischmann paula clark and matt magnanelli we discussed our last education committee minutes on september 9th we reviewed a residency we looked at our dual agreements which are pretty important between pcc and

011rockland community college and we looked at some of the schedule for our pse psat testing and we reviewed new policies and regulations that need to be put into place that concludes my report technology met tonight with dr burchard myself and mrs scheer we just discussed insurance for chromebooks the department's looking at reviewing options for chromebook insurance policy the department is going to investigate alternatives to the current policy and they will come back with us with recommendations we also talked about the email retention policy we are going to develop a policy based on the law of how much email we have to keep and then we will come back and cipher it down from there we have an update we have starting to receive technology equipment that we ordered in july that has been slow due

012to shipping and parts and we're finally starting to see some of it come in and we are scheduling installations now and we the elementary schools completed the new jersey strong assessment start strong assessment last week the middle and high schools will begin to take the assessment next week no major technology issues were reported during the testing which is always good and we also talked about they installed a an outdoor huddle cam at wayne valley to tape games for coaches to be able to analyze games from the press box and they're also going to be unveiling soon a high school ticketing system for sports and events in the district so you would basically pay for the ticket and then show this the qr code when you get to the school and that's how you're getting in

013so and that concludes my report the finance committee met this evening myself and mrs kazan along with administrators mr moffat and miss mislighted we reviewed the agenda items check register financial reports contracts for special services transportation agreements uh special education tuition contract for with pcti and attached policies there was no budget transfer review because there were no transfers we have yet to receive an audit update because our auditors have not gotten back to our business administration office with their findings and we looked at anticipated revenues coming in from idea and sr2 thank you for those reports any questions from the board for discussion on any of that okay you had a question mrs i don't know let's move on to the agenda can i get a mover i'll move you'll move what i'll move the

014whole agenda thank you this is kazan that's what you'd prefer all second okay moved by mr bubba seconded by mrs put up the full agenda mr moffatt discussion questions okay everyone's done their homework roll call mr moffatt mrs kumar yes mrs put up yes mr sheer yes mrs albanese yes mr bubba under t emergent items number five um line number seven no yes to the rest mr giordano yes and mrs kazan yes motion carries thank you 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 three minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding

015employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings under old business can i get them over move mr giordano mrs put up god hello tory esposito 47 woodlot road here i am as some in washington would like to call me a domestic terrorist dr toback thank you for sending me the guidance on travel so that's a cdc recommendation and not a mandate so the same cdc who says cloth masks don't work and to use n95 so why isn't the district supplying those for our students the state of new jersey does not follow this my employer does not follow this guidance i'm demanding wayne township drop the cdc recommendation question for everybody where will you find these books who are you a kid's

016guide to gender identity sparkle boy and my favorite when kayla was kyle at every wayne township elementary school library wtf you have been up here for months stating that you are not teaching this this was all found on the wayne schools resource website when searching by school under library resources the things that you won't find on that website any mention of the bible jesus muhammad or allah you sat here for months saying that you're not teaching it so what are these books if there's a book on crt are you saying that you're not teaching that they just happen to be readily available how can students read these books and then in the next hour learn about biology [Applause] can i hmm can i start yes jim frieswick wayne new jersey i attended last night's council

017meeting and there was a discussion raised by council member ritter who proposed that a sidewalk be installed on berdan avenue across from the entrance to wayne hills high school so that high school students can cross verdan to the sidewalk and walk down along the side of berdan avenue to the driveway entrance to the passage valley water commission's point view reservoir across the driveway and then into the point view shopping center for lunch apparently juniors and seniors are being let out during the day for lunch and that was the proposal and mayor vergano said he'd look into that by contacting the saint valley water commission which owns the property to see if the township could obtain an easement and he'd also contact passaic county which owns berdan avenue to see whether something could be worked out

018meanwhile that's not going to happen for a long time and some interim measures should be instituted by this board to protect students who are crossing berdan avenue at the entrance to point view shopping center which is not there's no crosswalk there there's no traffic light there so it's dangerous and i suggest that you bus students from wayne hills high school to the point view shopping center if you're going to release them in the middle of the day for lunch and they're going to that shopping center i think you should bust them to the shopping center and back again to get back to school in time you'll you should also look into hiring a police officer to perhaps cross the students across spurdan avenue to get to the shopping center safely i don't know whether that's

019legal or not because there's no crosswalk there but there has to be some type of interim measure also council member sasso suggested that perhaps you could hire food trucks to come to the wayne hills high school and let the students eat lunch from the food truck so they don't have to walk across spurdan avenue to get to the point of view shopping center that was another suggestion but the board should really look into this it's a safety issue and it was a it was it was a big point of discussion at last night's council meeting and the mayor's looking into it and the council is looking into it and i think the board of education should look into it also because we're talking about wayne hills high school students when i was a wayne hills

020high school student here from 66 to 68 i graduated with the first graduating class we weren't allowed thank you that's your time mr frieswick roger gunnell's uh can you turn it in i can't hear you sir roger gunnell's 22 lowly ave the biggest thing i just want the board to do in the school system as a whole is decide what you're doing you can't teach kids the things that are being taught and promoted and and teach academics at the same time because they just don't agree okay they don't they never will agree they're not going to agree and you need to decide what you're going to do and you need to be honest and upfront with us citizens and tell us what you're going to do instead of hiding it because you're hiding it those

021books were found in lafayette school where my son goes to school and i'm going to be direct with every single one of you my son will not be emasculated and i'm going to tell you now i have faced terrorists the people in this room we're not terrorists i can guarantee you we're not we're not terrorists we're concerned american citizens and constitutionalists that believe in the american rule of law and american exceptionalism and our kids our kids should not be exposed to this radical democrat liberalism should not be but you guys for the well most of you i presume for those of you are not thank you but those of you are democrat radicalists sir what save the political to discuss your issue thank you i got three minutes i'm going to use my three minutes

022so oh you know what miss kazan i don't appreciate the way you're talking to me so i i would hope you give me some respect and vice versa thank you i didn't disrespect that ma'am i didn't i didn't disrespect you i didn't disrespect you so the idea of blowing lines between genders is child abuse it's child abuse kayla's not kyle and kyla and and kyle's not kayla you're either born with a x or you're born to y and any effort to teach kids otherwise is child abuse because here's why you emasculate little boys who's going to don the next police uniform it ain't going to be colin it ain't going to be kaylee or kyle or whoever it ain't going to be them who's going to don the next military uniform and stand in the

023face of evil it's not going to be those kids because they don't understand that evil exists because they've been taught that everything's okay and evil doesn't exist you talk to this officer saying here and he will give you otherwise you talk to me and i will tell you the evil that's out there i've seen it i've faced it but the schools today are hell bent on emasculating our kids and teaching that it's okay to do drugs it's like it's like it's just like diabetes it's just like it's like food poisoning or food allergies it's in that babes training that's going on in schools yeah i figured that out too so all i'm saying is be honest be upfront with the citizens and let's get out of the habit of supporting these these ideals that damage

024our children [Applause] oh jill carbone 15 kelowna road thank you good evening we as parents and educators should be doing everything in our power to help make up for the academic and social development our children lost while isolated during the pandemic the damage done is extensive and the long-term effects are not yet known the current curriculum being introduced in our schools is not helping but instead further confusing our children and distracting them from making up unfinished learning in the subjects that matter most in 2019 new jersey fourth and eighth graders performed significantly worse in reading on the national assessment of educational progress than in 2017. fourth grade students also performed numerically worse in mathematics this was before kobit a july 2020 a july 2021 mckinsey report found that the impact of the pandemic on k-12

025student learning was significant leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading at the end of last school year mckinsey also surveyed over 16 000 parents nationwide and found roughly 80 percent were concerned about their child's mental or social and emotional health since the pandemic began over 35 percent were extremely or very concerned about their children's mental health with statistics like these i implore you to explain why we are further adding to the social and emotional illness of children with the current learning objectives in the school curriculum in tunis dye there are eight books in the library dedicated to gender identity targeting kindergarten to third graders titles already mentioned like when kayla was kyle and who are you the kids guide to gender identity in the latter book children

026are provided this wheel where they can select statements like quote i have a body that made adults guess boy and i am trans gender fluid or gender queer while i vehemently oppose introducing the concept of gender identity to children as young as five and making borderline pedophilic books available in the school library funded by my taxpayer dollars i cannot fault local educators this is the new jersey department of education who has established a performance expectation that children discuss the range of ways people express their gender and how gender role stereotypes are ex are made limit behavior by second grade by the end of fifth grade children are expected to describe gender role stereotypes and their potential impact on self and others and differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity i believe every child has a

027right to be respected and treated kindly everywhere including public schools that includes my children and i also feel strongly at that i as their parents have final say in what is appropriate for my children to learn about gender and sexuality now now more than ever taxpayer-funded public school curriculum that's your time ma'am thank you [Applause] okay can you hear me oh good it works so good evening uh alan a sarge 61 brandon i'm not here today to talk about sel or the sex ed curriculum changes i've made my points on them clear and trust you'll listen to the parents and teachers with legitimate concerns and make sure you do what's right i'm presenting a different topic this time because it's affected my child and my family the new york times says those anti-coveted plastic barriers

028probably don't help and may make things worse the seattle time says fortunes spent on plastic shields with no proof they stop coving bloomberg says plexiglas is everywhere with no proof it keeps covert at bay times says the coronavirus seems to spare most kids from illness but its effect on their mental health is deepening joseph allen harvard t.h chan school of public health says not a single study has shown that the clear plastic barriers actually barriers actually control the virus marwa's atari a pandemic task force member of the american society of heating refrigerating and air conditioning engineers says the plastic shielding has created a false sense of security especially when we use it in offices or in schools specifically if you have plexiglas you're still breathing the same shared air or another person after a coronavirus

029breakout at wellesley high school in boston last fall an investigation concluded that the plexiglas around desk seemed to increase the risk of virus transmission these death seals and plexiglas are what they call hygiene theater time magazine tells us that this pandemic and draconian rules have caused these kids such mental health problems as loneliness loneliness no essential socializing learning issues meltdowns anger and stress and at first i thought it was all hearsay but i've seen it in my own home so i know it's true my child isn't focused on learning behind these shields she can't learn together in socially distant groups or participate fully without hesitation these shields are protecting these kids from nothing and doing more harm than good and with all due respect dr toback didn't like the hygiene theater show before a board

030meeting in august the first thing he did when he entered the chambers was remove it if it's good enough for him to remove then it's good enough not to have our kids learn behind them the virus is not going to go away no virus goes away kids are going to get cold strep the flu stomach bugs and and more and a member of this sport acknowledged that covet has a mortality rate of only 4.5 percent on average versus h1n1 west nile bird flu all with a mortality rate of 45 percent the member said quote this is a picnic compared to that stuff i don't believe that death shields are mandated please throw us parents a bone have the kids feel some sense of normalcy and take the shields away if a parent wants their child

031behind one their choice and no problem with it totally fine but i want my child's desk shield taken away i want her and all the kids to have good academic health good mental health and social health which is all being taken away under the rules of hygiene theater thank you can you hear me you could hear me all right uh it's just funny i could take this off um i'm in a school and i'm talking it's pretty funny i could take this off but i can't do it in my own classroom when i speak but um we've heard a lot of uh crazy things today and some real things like some of us want to have food trucks pulled up to schools when we can't even afford a ventilation so that's pretty that's pretty ingenious

032to me um but but uh i i look up i don't see any three feet social distancing like i have to abide to in school up here among the board members that make me have to do that we talk about uh governor murphy's executive order i have it right here this is his executive order from the official new jersey website and there is times where we don't have to wear a mask it says when we are engaged in high intensity activities like in physical education we can remove our masks we send out emails and send out letters to the teachers telling them you saying hey you need you need to mandate the mask why don't you tell them the exceptions as well the exceptions matter are we going to only start emailing the teachers saying

033we have these exceptions when there's kids flatlined because they're breathing in carbon dioxide while they're panting because they're playing soccer and can't go outside and take off their mask is that what we're gonna wait till because that's pretty unacceptable i was just playing soccer inside the other day because it was rainy and i could not breathe wearing a mask and i have to leave my class if i want to breathe i have to lose class time if i want to breathe if i want to breathe never thought i would have to say that in the united states states of america and then if you are following his executive order tell the teachers our exceptions tell the phys ed teachers the acceptance it also says uh when there's no if if you're in a highly ventilated

034building like anthony wayne middle school brand new building like i that i'm in it says you uh it doesn't say anything about the physical distancing um when you are taking off your mask in gym so i think you should tell the physical education teachers about that then when we go to gym i'm not jim when we go to lunch lunch is uh pretty pretty laughable we have a kid right here in a plastic shield but i'm next to um i'm a seed away from him talking to my friend with no plastic shield it's just there for show we gotta admit it because we don't want to throw away something we spent money on last year we and then the one seat apart the one seat apart the seats this big that's definitely three feet definitely

035going to prevent covet it's going to do so much for me and it's it's just hilarious people in favor of this masked mandate in the schools because you guys can't do anything it's an executive order and i understand that but then we have people come up here they take off their master forget the wear what happened to your particles you always talk about that dr fauci talks about isn't that going to spread all around this room infect everyone in this room and then walk the quarantine i'll be back [Applause] stella fiorinelli wayne new jersey i'm here tonight to ask you to understand the effects of the curriculum that has on our children i pray you don't just accept the mandate because of the money the future of our children is not for sale one part

036of the curriculum in particular sets education state of new jersey page 33. for eighth graders has abortion as an option of pregnancy abortion is not birth control there are risks to the mother i did some research real easy mayo clinic state department of health and the risks include emotional psychological consequences physical damage from complications to problems that could lead to future child bearing risk to the mom and of course 100 percent risk to the baby this is a religious matter for me but it is also a humane matter and why promote an option a pregnancy that is harmful to the mom i don't understand if you guys understand the consequences of this curriculum that's being set to our children today and i pray that you do understand the harmfulness effects and the choices that you

037make to the curriculum before you decide on it there's a reason parents across america are speaking up and it's time that it's not just time it's your responsibility not to just to listen but to hear us and to speak for us thank you [Applause] hi luisa wiltshire 8 stone hill road in wayne i'd like to revisit your mandates some are inconsistent and we really need you to fix them please first is the plexiglas shield have you seen them in person have you gone through school sat in the seats you know get a first hand perspective into the lives the eyes the ears of our children i did and it was quite traumatic let me start off by pointing out that middle school is lovely skylar is amazing that's where my son goes their classrooms look

038normal no desk shields high school middle school no shields but elementary schools are all shielded up why i went to run a pto meeting i walked in to see arrows all over the floor as like a psych ward or a juvie center the classrooms look like they had little jail cells in them our kids are masked up sitting behind cubes that are essentially germ-filled petri dishes can i remind you of the science of this virus it is airborne it also settles on surfaces you know like plexiglas i sat in a media center and attempted to listen to other parents who sat behind their own cubed up cells i could barely hear anyone it was awful and it was only one hour all i kept thinking of was how do our kids do this for six

039hours plus and what about gym they have to sit in gym or do gym in a classroom behind their little jail cells come on guys enough is enough they are conditioned to think this setting is a normal setting and that is not okay this is overkill of an attempt at extra safety going above and beyond any mandate the masks are mandated plexiglas is not we have looked at other towns i cannot find any other town that has had this radical of a mandate with plexiglass of jail cells across their elementary schools it's insane they are a hazard they are petri dishes for the virus they further limit appropriate communication are another deficit to learning i sincerely request that you please have a boat tonight to remove these useless desk shields from our grammar schools there

040is no mandate no benefit no desire from most parents we are not in this to get an award from murphy on who can go above and beyond without mandates please make them optional or just simply make them disappear the second inconsistency that needs major fixing is quarantining i personally spoke with donna richman and dr toback where you both told me that a benefit of the masking is that if children are within three feet of each other but wearing a mask they will not have to quarantine if exposed i'm hoping this is still true but please clarify because there are inconsistencies here i have a friend whose kid wasn't even in contact and he's quarantining parents are having to stay home for these inconsistent rules it's hurting families financially and children emotionally again also when a

041child quarantines i was told they have full access to virtual learning and this is not that's your time thank you [Applause] pamela masik i have two questions the first why are there no classes or courses on abstinence why do we promote sexual promiscuity but not abstinence so my second question is how do you tell others you are concerned that the wayne board of ed promotes obscene material in porn without telling them i'll go first here are two identical books one from the wayne public library young adult section and one from the wayne hills high school library same book both made specifically available to our young impressionable teens just picture your 14 15 or 16 year old finding this book curling up in a chair and delving in i'll begin i was 11 or 12 years

042old the first time i can remember fantasizing about having a penis i was lying fully clothed on a hillside under an open sky i held a folded handful of grass between my legs ma'am are you reading from a book oh absolutely i don't think that's appropriate there's young people in the audience of course it's appropriate it's a library book it's not in the curriculum it's in the high school library for 14 15. okay 16 17 year olds you're darn too and i'm going to exercise my conversation without reading the book no oh no you ain't shutting me up okay i discovered it at around the same age oh my god alison mitchell writes in fun home okay if this continues we will clear the room we will clear because i'm chair of this meeting madam

043okay officer please [Applause] [Music] ma'am do you have anything to say [Music] if the board is unable to conduct business we have to take action to either remove individuals or to recess the meeting matter president i move to close [Music] officer her time is up and she's disrupting the meeting [Music] perhaps you don't understand the rules of the open public meetings act folks i'm not going to argue here but this is a lack of decorum and the chair has asked her to stop speaking okay we have a mover on the floor to end the meeting now i don't have a second yet would you like the meeting to cl i second the motion madam president [Music] i take that as a threat [Music] okay there's a move to close is there a second mrs put

044up okay roll call mr moffatt [Music] seconded the motion roll call please this is put up and [Music] no thank you mrs albanese no but i would ask people to please settle down so we could continue the meeting with the quorum button that's a no recorded as a no mr bubba mr bubba board members should not be treated like this and have somebody threaten them right in front of the officers for crazy no close this meeting yes record it as a yes mr giordano no but i would have i would ask everybody to try and maintain some kind of civility here it's actually starting to sound like a bit of a rabble and that's actually a bad reflection on the people who want to speak and express themselves we only had two people talk or

045three people talk it's spoiling for everybody else i want the meeting to go on my voters know mrs kumar i would like to explain my vote i am going to vote no on closing the meeting on the condition that we understand the reason why we cannot read things from other people at the meeting those are other people's words that you're taking that will be posted on the internet and we don't have the copyrights we don't have the authority to post those things so please express your own opinions that's that's important i'll record that as i know mrs kazan what's the vote count mr moffat two yeses and four nos okay meeting continues i'll abstain abstain motion fails okay can we have order can we respect the police officers in the room who are asking you

046to calm down okay that would be appreciated because i can close the meeting without a vote but i won't do it because there are sane people in this room who would like to speak politely and i will allow them to so thank you next uh amy altemar oakland and it's kind of ironic that you wanted to pay respect to the police officers because i have sat all summer watching the videos from my home believing you guys no critical race theory in our schools my son brought home a book called all-american voice the other day i thought it was a football book right the guy's arms are up what looks like lights behind him so i said oh what's it about he said i don't know i said did you read the book you know the

047back of it he said no so i paged through it the back kind of sparked my interest and i set up my kitchen table i read 91 pages of the book nor is it appropriate for children 8th graders 7th graders 6th graders it came from anthony wayne it's not appropriate for whites blacks police officers and i'm quoting i don't have the copyright but i didn't paraphrase it like at home because i thought i'd be able to read it it's uh by brendan keely and jason reynolds it was a duo author and what they said was i want to thank all librarians and educators who support all american boys and who have championed it and opened conversations about police brutality race racism systemic racism whiteness and white privilege in your community you all do the tough

048frontline work of engaging young people and nurturing young minds and bodies minds bodies bodies matter because there are too many minds and bodies missing tamir rice trayvon martin sanja blank michael brown this is why i say black lives matter every time i get behind a microphone because young minds and bodies are missing i can't bring them back so the question is what uh what am i going to do to go forward as a white heterosexual cisgender able-bodied man when i think about the peace brotherhood and non-violence also jacket you're reading this is in the back of the book because i got 91 pages in and i said am i going to sit here at my table worried about my son being exposed what if he wants to be a police officer how like what if

049he wants to you know how do you how do you mold the vulnerability get the gist of the description of the book thank you we're not going to read from books i'm i'm giving the synopsis she can tell us her opinion about the book that's fine my opinion of the book is it is not appropriate for young vulnerable minds who don't know what they want to do when they grow up who are in a school with black white asian whatever you are what we live in a very broken world very angry and i feel like books like this are just stoking a fire how is this not critical race theory when every word in the back of the book that this author surmised hits every single point of critical race theory i believed you guys

050all summer i stood there i sat on my debt my deck or my couch and i said no i believe the representatives of our town and what they want to do for our children and then i read the book and i nicholas let the first time speakers go before you please okay okay hello my name is sandy prasakos and i live in wayne i want to first start off by stating some of the outcomes from the june 10 2021 presentation given by the diversity consultant curriculum and instruction committees were created at the elementary middle and high school levels training was provided on identifying seven types of bias found in instructional materials committees reviewed books texts and novels that were used especially in english language arts and social studies for various types of bias so the

051results of the findings were then published and presented to the district by the diversity consultant in in this packet so in putting together a final summary of the diversity equity and inclusion goals outcome it was stated quote the work was collaborative in nature and the consultant worked with over 100 staff and stakeholders in completing this audit end quote the point is that the district made quite a big deal to find even the slightest form of alleged bias in books that are available and used to teach our children however it is unfortunate that the district administrators or whoever was in charge didn't seem to instruct the consultant to look for obscene sexual content towards minors there was nothing about explicit content mentioned in her presentation maybe that would have cost an extra fee i don't know

052with the recent community outrage towards this disgusting and obviously inappropriate content found in the books available in various school building libraries the only appropriate thing to do now is to conduct yet another audit i am calling on the board to allow for an investigation of all the material that may be viewed by a student in the library or in their classrooms this time the stude the superintendent himself can collaborate with a different group of 100 people these 100 people must consist of district police officers trained in identifying pornographic materials that are illegal to show to minors also i recommend that in the group there must be lawyers and other community members trained in identifying what constitutes endangering the welfare of a child and of course there needs to be parents any parent willing to volunteer

053should not be excluded from this group the wayne township public school district must stop promoting garbage books that sexually exploit confuse and endanger our children in fact the district must stop promoting a curriculum that normalizes hateful and inappropriate ideologies this once great district is on the wrong pathway our administrators can sugarcoat this district and feel accomplished by the amount of powerpoint presentations they put together but surely all of you sitting up there cannot sugarcoat the fact that you've created a mess in this town that you are now owing it to our children to fix please and by the way the new mission statement that you all voted on also needs to be rewritten thank you [Applause] good evening um brittany coral 36 lawrence road before we go ahead and start implementing draconian measures like mandatory

054vaccines without room for any exemption let it be known that under the law the township of wayne and anyone who votes to enforce such a mandate can and will be sued when the teachers and staff have adverse reactions and or die and trust me they will and everyone who votes on that will be held liable it's just something for you guys to ponder i'm asking if that's something you could live with on your conscience um i'd like to tell you all about a mother named jessica berg wilson jessica was a 37 year old mother of two little girls she loved being a mom more than anything he wanted to be involved as possible in your young daughter's lives she thrived in her role as a class mom for her daughter bridget but because of an

055executive order put in place by governor jay inslee of oregon that stated that all school employees needed to be vaccinated with zero exceptions jessica opted to get vaccinated other than miss out on participating in her children's education she died two days after being vaccinated the cause of death was vaccine induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia blood clots this woman was vehemently against the covet vaccine but she felt she had no choice she was told get vaccinated or get fired like mr freeswick said do you really want to put that same threat to our educators the people that are teaching our kids don't listen to people like mr freeswick i'm urging you to respect our teachers [Applause] i'm a nurse i work this entire pandemic pregnant that that choice is not being given to me don't do the same

056thing to our teachers [Applause] ryan battishill 63km drive um there's a couple of things first of all sorry every time um there's a couple of things first of all uh i found some data on covid which says that the average mortality rate age for covid is 78. which is higher than the actual mortality normally in the united states which is only 76. in addition to that the r naught number for passaic county is now down to 0.8 which is great which means we are coming out of the delta wave at which point will this board now decide to send a letter to murphy and ask him is now is the time to start removing the mask mandate from the children the other thing i'll say i think is i am shocked and appalled by the

057books that are being found in our school libraries after there was commitment from this board that these books were not in our school libraries i will seriously hope that after this you do do some kind of review across all of these books and immediately remove them this goes from everything from the inappropriate ones found in lafayette school all the way up to the high school ones which are pornographic and have been shown to us tonight lastly i spent the last um weeks since the beginning of school since i came to the board and i said that i wanted to opt out of all of these things and president kazan specifically said that we were able to opt out of virtually everything that is not a graduating requirement at 2 hours and 14 minutes into the

058june meeting i went back over i looked on the website and went to find it because we said we should that process which has taken over a month so far two weeks of not hearing anything pushing on it again going through the building as you have recommended during this time having a very wonderful conversation i will point out with mr craigly who is a great principal um and we had a great in-depth conversation about different teaching beliefs and so on as well in there he committed that none of these books were available in fact we had a discussion about what would happen if a book was taken out to show something specifically and it happened to have different characters different racism we both agreed that that would be absolutely fine as long as it wasn't

059specifically going in and saying there are these people and you should be doing this to these people because that creates division that creates the problems that we are seeing here tonight and he committed that those sorts of things wouldn't happen and then this book is in lafayette library which is concerning to me for because i need to be able to trust all of you we need the truth and transparency and honesty in addition to that it turns out that the opt-out is not universal for any of this it is purely and only against a very small fraction that's your time good evening jennifer lee in 48 terrace road um i've addressed this board on several occasions stating my concerns with regard to the way that the wayne schools interprets and rolls out mandates within our

060district since the last meeting i attended there have been some developments that i believe that it would be of concern to all parents as it appears that our school system is in many instances choosing covet 19 protocol over other equally important safety measures the following is a list of concerns among district parents for your consideration as of september our district is short 12 bus drivers how many students are now being put on each bus as routes have been consolidated how are you ensuring social distancing on the buses if there are less buses than before how is being on a crowded bus okay but it's not okay for students to sit next to one another at lunch with regard to lunch there have been concerning reports from families involving elementary students who are being told to

061bring towels into eon from lack of seating due to distancing protocol would children eating on the floor be safe in the event of a school emergency or an evacuation why are classrooms not being utilized so children can sit in an actual seat apparently our district administration thought it best to close select elementary school gyms in favor of setting up student desks for contact tracing during lunch this is to my knowledge not required by the state so the gyms that our children should be learning in and staying healthy in have been closed off forcing pe into plexiglass crowded classrooms during inclement weather winter is fast approaching members and i can't see how this is an educationally beneficial solution to that issue the final concern relating to lunch deals with students in this very high school as

062they are being allowed to cross bordean avenue with no crossing guard to access our local eateries this has tragedy written all over it and it's appalling that it's continued on through october the last point that i'd like to make relates to instructional staffing and this is a big issue as of this week we in schools will require all substitutes to be fully vaccinated without the option to test or they will be unable to work in our district what effect is this going to have on our substitute pool numbers are we not already short on subs are students expected to lose more educational time due to staffing issues now further complicated by your district policy i realize that adherence to mandates are of utmost importance to this board so much so that you chose to go

063above and beyond current guidelines and close school for a half day due to heat instead of simply allowing the kids to pull their masks down if it got hot but are you comfortable with there not being enough adults in the building to safely monitor children because of your requirements per cdc the vaccine is not perfect protection and breakthrough cases are becoming more and more prevalent from delta so why are you making an already strained staffing situation worse i invite you all to take a step back and look at what you're asking this district and our children to sacrifice in the name of your unwavering devotion to mandates and edicts from our governor truly ask yourself is this for the safety of the kids or is it for your public perception of virtue unfortunately the repercussions

064of your decisions are impacting a degeneration of children in this town and i'm imploring you to please stop taking it lightly hi my name is heidi and i'm a resident here in wayne um [Music] i wanted to talk a little bit about transgender people since those are the folks who seem to be coming under under criticism and challenge here first of all in a study that was has been done of well multiple studies of adult americans between 0.6 and 1.4 percent of americans are transgender what that means is that there are kids in our schools who are transgender and in fact a cedars-sinai study showed that the mean age of the transgender women's earliest memory of realizing that they were women that they were female was between 4.5 and 6.7 years and for men it

065was 4.7 and 6.2 years transgender children according to studies behave the way that their gender that they identify as behaves in studies from very early ages and some say as young as three so for the transgender children in our schools they need to know that they are seen and the reason is that between 50 well more than 50 percent of transgender males and more than 30 percent of transgender females report attempting suicide but when schools and parents and loved ones are supportive of children and their gender identities that number drops dramatically and there is essentially no difference between the depression levels of children transgender children who are recognized and supported in their gender identity versus children who are not transgender and that's why it's critical that our curriculum support these children not force them but

066support them in what they already identify as to encourage their mental health thank you could you hear me good yeah okay what yeah well he gave it scritin he spoke at the last meeting he should have given his name do you know his name the last meeting he did he didn't speak at this meeting okay continue go ahead nicholas okay um so yes i do understand uh you could come up here and understand like no if you're a transgender kid or whoever you shouldn't be like bullied and beaten that's wrong i completely think that's wrong but people in this room should also acknowledge that as a christian and even people who are muslim and and jewish it it goes against the book of our religion are we only going to acknowledge an ideology and a

067you could be be what you want to be but that does not have to involve me if you're not going to teach every ideology you shouldn't just teach one and i i think every it's made clear that everybody's accepted today i just had a lesson no place for hate for everybody i don't think they had for transgender and lgbtq people it's pretty clear everybody needs to be treated equally and i understand that i understand that there's no reason there needs to be a special part because that's when you feel singled out when you start making it a special separated part from everybody when you start separating from everybody you should not separate someone from someone else and say they are important you should say every single human being is important because they say in my

068no place for hate lesson which i agree with they said that they told us what they should they told us everyone should be treated equally no matter who they are and that's what we should be teaching in our schools and that's what we are teaching in our schools we should not be teaching this person should be special and even more special than you because you are already teaching every student in this district everyone deserves to be special just as much as the next person we talk about our differences but we do not single out our differences because that's how we should be teaching it and that's what we are doing so this board is doing the right thing when it comes to that and no place for hate and that's a very good thing in

069my opinion there's no reason we should single it out and i i mean what teachers do cannot be controlled by you guys unless you someone reports it if that's the teacher's fault it's not your fault unless it's your curriculum so if a teacher does something they should report it and then you guys should handle it it shouldn't be everything's your fault i understand that not everything's your fault but then when like we're in america and i look around tonight was not an example of what america is supposed to be america is supposed to be where everyone has a voice i understand the problems we had but i don't think we should have ever ever had a vote to close public session but i also do understand respecting the police officers and what they tell us

070to do because that's what how i was brought up but there's there should have been no vote to get rid of the public session that we are obligated to as americans and our first amendment right thank you excuse me miss kazan mr a sarge we have someone who hasn't spoken yet in the back there yes thank you if we could let him go first i'd appreciate that thank you thank you this will be short um my name is evan taglorini i live in pakinak lake um i was a wayne valley student i graduated in in 2020 in my four years at wayne valley i and the other students were given our own personal chromebooks and on these chromebooks there were firewalls put in place that would red flag any explicit searches or curse words that

071we put in and so i like to raise the question if chrome if the chromebooks that were given to the students of wayne township had their own self-censorship why are there pornographic books in the libraries [Applause] it's very hard to follow those two young men and uh thank you for pronouncing my name right um i wasn't prepared to come up a second time and i remember when when we emailed miss kazan i wanted to thank you in person for spending the time with me on the phone and i do appreciate it and the people here should know that ms kazan will talk with you and let you share and i'm really appreciative of that despite everything that's going on and thank you for keeping the meeting the meeting open so it's just a question that

072i just feel compelled to ask beca and has nothing to do with copyright has nothing to do with somebody else's words has nothing to do with anybody's political or religious views and maybe i'm being a dead horse here and don't please don't get riled up it's not worth it i think we just want to and i i think when we when we spoke on on the phone or by email you know it just a lot of this is we just want to know why and i guess we just wanted to know expressed not well why that book was inappropriate for this audience but not for the kids in our schools who can get it from the library again i'm not making a statement about the book though i have my my own opinions about it

073and i think all we just want is an answer why are they here how they get here if they weren't supposed to be here and how do we get rid of them if they're not supposed to be here and you know a lot of this always comes down to choice you know where's the parental choice to not have our kids get access to any books that we feel aren't appropriate for them and this you know i want to echo i think is his name was nicholas we're not trying to single anybody out and i think i i told you when or the previous board meeting when i went to school here in the wayne school system we weren't singling anybody out i went to school with all religions all colors all faiths and this just

074didn't happen and even though it was maybe years ago um it's it's it just we're just begging it now and at least i am we really need to figure this out what's happening isn't right we see it all over the country we see it on every news station and it breaks my heart and i was just telling the woman behind me that i don't want to pull my daughter out of the wayne schools that's why i moved back i can't afford it either that's a whole different story so please i think we we just want to know why and that'll help thank you so much for listening to me again mike fatale way in new jersey uh first and foremost wayne police department you guys do a great job good job tonight you guys didn't

075get published so very good um i really had no intentions of speaking tonight but clearly we see a divide here and i think we need to find common ground and bring everybody together as one it's sort of disheartening to see how upset our family you know families our parents are dr toback maybe we could put an ad hoc committee together and just try and get some sort of common ground i do understand things have been legislated and things are in law right now but if we could find common ground with a variety of parents um so we are all on the same page moving forward i think that could be potentially very productive for our school and our children as far as inclusion i am all about inclusion i have family members that are part

076of the lgbqt community i don't think our children necessarily see someone as different at such a young age i think that everybody should be included into these programs i think that we need to be mindful of the literature that our children are reading i just you know to you guys i appreciate all the support but i just think that we we all need to come together and just just be one and be in unison moving forward because our children are most important and they should come first and at the end of the day we need to put our children first and keep pushing forward for the best education for them thank you i think the gentleman before me mike and the gentleman before him very calmly expressed what i would have continued if i hadn't

077been shut down it is when i started coming here in the summer i was very respectful because you all had had didn't lose my respect at that point the parents are angry they're frustrated i'm a distraught mother i didn't know i couldn't read the book i'd like to know where the policies are that i can't read from a book to show you that it's obscene and pornographic who whomever are the committees for approving obscene pornographic material like this it's called genderqueer it's not about being queer it's not about choices being made it's about the sexually explicit material on masturbation what the toys whatever i was gonna show you because i think if you don't see what's in here you obviously just approved it without knowing because i cannot believe that any one of you would

078not have a shred of decency in you and reject this book so whoever's on the committee is responsible and there are two c statutes criminal statutes it is illegal under new jersey state law to possess view distribute share receive photograph or allow a child to engage in child pornography some of these pictures depict when the author was a child so whether it's illustrated or an actual photograph will get some legal counsel and i'll i'm not a law enforcement officer or an attorney i'm a distraught mother and none of us want this in our child's library or the public library where it's it's not even any child could come up and get this book and that's my point and we're angry and we're frustrated because you're not hearing us uh yes i feel targeted and we'll

079see how that plays out but for this i'm concerned about the safety of the children i hope you're all aware of these statutes i'll let you do your research on your own to find out i do intend to see if there's obscenity child endangerment possession and distribu distribution of pornographic material found in this book and any other i suggest you do as well ryan battischel 63 come on drive i didn't think i'd get up um for me the opt-out uh that was mentioned beforehand and alluded to as well at the parent conference here that was a comforting thought of the fact that if things didn't change that we would be able to do reach to that point which is why i started that process finding out that that actually covers a very small portion of

080all of this is a little disappointing um uh and i i would like you to take a look into whether or not we can find a way of being able to extend that so all of these people who feel like this is not something that they want to be taught to their children have the option of not having it taught to their children it's not about whether or not we are i don't i haven't heard anything that's targeted any specific group i've heard something that tries to include all of the groups and treat people like people that's all we want to be able to do not take a 0.5 and make that something that's subject to the 99.5 percent of the population thank you hi again i just want to say thank you for letting

081the meeting continue i also want to say i wasn't going to come up here again but i i want to say that i'm really impressed with mike fatale and standing up here and saying something that i've never heard anyone on the board say that we need to listen to all sides and we need to compromise and we really really need to listen to the people and come together as one uh i don't i don't think that i think that there's discrepancies in so many areas when we look at crt there's the side that comes over and says we want to hear history we want our history included there's the other side that says we don't want crt we don't we don't we're not saying we don't want history i'm sure there's a lot of missing

082history i'm sure there's a lot of of history on different cultures that should be included but we don't want the history that's going to teach children how to hate and that's what crt is so i think if we can come together and find out what those missing pieces are we can really make a nice school town which is what we all want to have i think also when you look at like i'm looking at you know these people that are that are voting now and getting ready for board of ed edu education uh you know new seats old seats and this and that and i look at at people that just close their eyes and don't say anything when the people are speaking and you know show us show us tonight that you care about

083the people we are asking you to take away the plexiglasses we're asking you to take away books that are inappropriate um parents are standing here they're not saying they're anti-gay or anti-trans or anything like that parents are saying we don't want our children to be taught inappropriate developmentally inappropriate hyper-sexualizing material at a young age there's nothing wrong with that who wants their kid to be hypersexualized at five to six years old none i have friends who have children that are questioning their sexuality at a very young age they don't want their children exposed to this because they want them to figure out who they are what their identity will be on their own and they want to take care of that in their own families they don't want the school to do it so again

084i just i would love to see some of the board members that are up for re-election show us that you care about us now i don't want to see signs i want to i want to hear from you and hear that you are going to do right for the people and the children because that's where you're going to get the votes like mike fatale thank you hi i'm sandra leon wayne new jersey i am not a very good speaker and i just have one question you want to press charges against us parents for what we feel about but who do we get to press charges against for things that shouldn't be taught to our kids how do we go about getting board members removed for inappropriate education to our children how do we get to

085move to remove somebody that is teaching our kids or possibly exposing our kids to pornography if this if this were to happen in a catholic school we would immediately have some removed why how do we get the people that put these books into our schools removed and press charges against them i would like to know how do we do that do you have answers we don't have dialogue here we answer at the end ma'am thank you [Applause] i might have an answer for what she said because i listened to the news and uh on the news i didn't hear your name what was your name oh my name is annette colliserto and i live here in wayne for many years and i've taught for many more i spent more time in education i think than

086anybody up here and i've seen a lot of changes this stupid thing anyway i heard this week on the news and this may help this is how we can get rid of these people that want to put things on the bookshelves etc etc there's congressman bishop and congressman bob good good and bishop and good good names and they're introducing a bill to ban crt completely because on the basis that it's a violation of the civil rights of the students which i believe it is uh having taught in schools for close to 40 years i've seen a lot and the diversity is much ado about nothing i have seen diversity kids live with diversity they care about diversity i was in hackensack high school in the 60s up and down the aisles and i see a

087kid and i say oh what color mascara you have on today almost see it's blue good you look good and we just teachers don't discriminate they don't care what gender the kid is if you're a good teacher you're there to teach the kid and help them now my little granddaughter was having a party and there were all kids around and they all wanted to hear the story of when i taught out at south bend how i got a paddle and i was allowed to be hit the children and they all want well that's how it was they were some of the best kids i ever had anyway well they were and i couldn't stand hearing the kids crying in the hallway and i'd say okay what oh don't worry miss c just okay i was

088mrs l at the time but anyway uh so the kids wanted to hear the story at my granddaughter's birthday party now these kids were all from wayne good schools wonderful kids all races all call everything and i said well don't forget kids that was before integration that was during the days i said the kids looked at me what's integration what's segregation i said you don't know well the civil rights act of 1964 prohibits discrimination this came in on the basis of race color sex national origin prohibits discrimination in public and prohibits federally funded programs that promote this now i think all the literature and all the crt these are federally funded and that's against the civil rights act so if these two people or the congressmen come in and make crt uh against the kids

089civil rights it won't be in the school so there is hope that you people don't have to keep fighting mark faber live in wayne uh like to start out by apologizing to everyone up on the board and all the members of all the people that are here for losing my temper before um it's very uncharacteristic for me to get that frustrated but uh i'm sure as many of you could understand this is a very frustrating time to be a parent um i saw things today in books that were shared with me that just made me so upset that my daughters are going to be going into their school library and seeing men giving men or kids giving adults blow jobs or fantasizing and that's the book that she was trying to explain to you that

090is so frustrating that it's in our school and the fact that my you know five-year-old up until my 11 year old daughters could go in and just check that book out i mean they can't go into a grocery store and buy a porno magazine but they can find that in their school library do you know how helpless as a parent that makes you feel that the people who are supposed to be educating your children are providing materials to your kids that you would never give them in a million years to read do you have any idea how that feels as a parent and your sole job in life is to protect the best interests of your of your children that's what a parent is supposed to do and i've been coming to these meetings and

091i've been trying to explain the facts behind things and make you understand how you're making the parents feel and that helpless feeling that we're starting to get because we believe what you're telling us but then we go along and we find out that what you've told us isn't the case and you are putting our children's futures at risk by providing them with materials that we don't agree with you don't know how a book like that will impact one child versus another you don't know if they're mature enough to actually process the material that's in that book yet you've allowed that to be there how do you want us to believe you and trust you and put the safety and well-being of our children in your care and not be so upset and hurt when you

092betray that trust that we have to give to you and it's not even like we have a choice in the matter you are the elected officials but you are betraying the trust that is put in each and every one of you and that hurts me to the core because i wouldn't trust you people to babysit my kid yet you guys are now in charge of educating them and you're trying to instill your values on my children and it needs to stop but again i apologize for losing my temper [Applause] hi janine i'm from wayne um i have two things to say tonight so one is on the sex ed curriculum that you want to teach to our children in one of the categories that's going to teach i think it was the second level which

093is third through fifth grade it's masturbation and i know everybody keeps telling me it's not going to be visual it's not going to be this it's just going to be a definition so i want to read you the definition from the webster dictionary definition of masturbation erotic stimulation especially of one own genitals organs commonly resulting in orgasm and achieved by manual or other bodily contact exclusive of sexual intercourse by instrumental manipulation occasionally by sexual fantasies or other various combinations of these agencies that results in an orgasm should we tell this to a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old because i don't think so and one other thing that i want to mention you keep saying how us parents are spreading misinformation it's all in the school who's spreading this information now because it's not us [Applause] hey

094doing mike mccabe allen drive wayne i wasn't prepared to speak i wasn't going to say anything but after uh the gentleman that came up here that lost his temper um i feel 100 the same way he does and i could easily have come up here and like through this podium at you guys uh seriously that book any kind of literature that is in the library that ex like like that graphic i mean that's ridiculous honestly and for for this woman to start reading that and you say that that's inappropriate i i mean that just i mean come on really listen to what you just said um our kids are going to these schools and not only to be educated they're there also hopefully that you guys are protecting them as well uh you're teaching ideologies

095at a very young age uh that a kid needs to be able to make their own decisions um they shouldn't be pushed in in a manner of what you think is appropriate and uh i mean it's just that that type of stuff really has to go i mean you just really have to get that out so thank you tori esposito again still not a domestic terrorist unless you talk to the president so everybody was disgusted by that book but what if that was a what if that was a film that those high schoolers had to watch would that be appropriate so how is that book appropriate keep those books in the guidance counselor office because if my eight-year-old comes home with that it's going right into the fire pit that will not get returned to

096the library just charge me all the fees up front i mean this we do not teach that my daughter today there was an incident in school she was only one of two girls that didn't have to go to the principal office in her class and i was so proud of her i'm proud of her every day but to hear that she didn't participate and didn't get into peer pressure i feel like me and my wife are raising an amazing daughter that's what we need to teach we talk about inclusion and diversity listen this month is italian american heritage month you guys aren't teaching anything and that's fine i don't need you to teach them about their italian culture i have my gra i have my parents who who came here as immigrants to teach them

097i teach that at my house if you want to teach about black history month to february that's fine okay i will teach my kids what i want to teach my kids what i do not want them to see they will not see i will censor things on the internet that they do not see that's all we're talking about do not keep that visible to especially young minds because if that was a movie people would be suspended for showing that film in class so how is this any different thank you [Applause] at this point i'm on a roll i have another question at this point if you have your name again ma'am sandra leone at this point you're sitting there teaching this and how is it that a teacher can sit there and if there is

098something going on in high school and in the lower educations how do i know that these teachers aren't fantasizing about my nine-year-old and seven-year-old who are absolutely adorable and if this is going on it's absolutely disgusting i think you're putting stuff that doesn't need to be you're putting these teachers in a bad position and you're putting or endangering my child this is absolutely abusive hello uh my name is chung wallace sterling lane i wasn't going to speak about the sex set i actually wanted to come up about something simpler so i'll take care of that first in my family we were very inconvenienced by the quarantining one child tested positive in my son's fourth grade class and i did follow the chain of command and i did get a call and i'm very appreciative of

099that but there is no rhyme or reason to this so since we're kind of imploring you for a bunch of things this evening i thought i would also ask you to revisit the quarantine period if we could go and maybe visit the negative test after seven days that would be very appreciated because i know my family was very inconvenienced i will speak about the sex ed just very briefly um i happen to have two teenage daughters and we happen to have very open conversations and i did go to the forum back in august and when i got home with all the material i looked it over very carefully and i decided i was going to talk about it with my girls when i said to them what do you think about this being taught in

100your schools they they just kind of shuddered and said mommy stop because they don't want it either and i thought maybe you should hear that perspective what our kids think even they know this is inappropriate so just take that into consideration and what i really want to say is i'm very proud of the parents of wayne something that i like to do as a teacher myself is teach my parents how to advocate for their children and i'm really proud to see the parents of wayne advocating for theirs thank you madam president seeing no one else come to the podium i ask that the public portion be closed i move that thank you second move by mrs put up seconded by mr bubba oh i'm sorry mrs shara i can't hear with that blower on where

101is it right beno below me roll paul mr muffin do i need a roll full for this no never mind okay um are there any comments from the administration tonight well the meeting's not over if you want to hear our response we just closed public portion not the meeting give me a few seconds i have to get all this organized okay so um to get started i'm going to do my best to try to respond to a lot of the comments that were made tonight so i reserve the right to not respond to some comments because some of them require me to go back and do some research and ask some questions and look at some different situations okay um the main theme i think for the meeting tonight was there was a lot of

102concern that was expressed about some different books that appear in our school libraries and of course the district is very transparent in that all of our library books are listed on our computer system so i know that there's um there's a lot of books that across the country are being questioned right and so this what's happening here tonight is also happening in other communities so there's concerns about books that um in some cases are recent purchases in some cases that are purchases for many for many years ago that um up until this point have not been questioned okay one of the first books that was questioned was a book called who are you the kid's guide to gender identity okay so that was ordered in 2018 so that has been in the district um but

103there's some things to know about that book okay one one of the speakers talked about whether books sometimes are kept by counselors kept by the principles in a professional library they're available to teachers but they're not available on bookshelves okay so who are you was available on the bookshelves of some of our schools who are you is a book that very clearly designates responsibilities for how the book should be shared with children okay so the first part of the book clearly identifies the parent of the child as the person who should read the book first you share it with your child and then it should be shared with the child after the parent understands the book reads it and agrees with the content okay so these books are books that should be reserved and should

104have been not on the stacks not in the bookshelves for the students and readily available they should have been kept in the professional library they should have maintained been maintained by the guidance counselors but somehow and i don't know they wound up on the bookshelves of some of our schools okay the book was available at tunis it was available for circulation it was available at lafayette it was available at ryerson and um it is also available at randall but it is not available as a book to students it's available it's part of the professional library from what i know the other schools do not have it so today because of the specific directions that are in the book those books have already been pulled okay the other thing that is evident is that this sort

105of thing it's something that has to be consistent across the district you should not not have one book that's set aside for professional professional reference in the event that you have a parent that comes forward and asks about maybe some resources for their children um so i guess the other thing that in looking at the issue of this particular book and we'll talk about some other books but who are you is a book that was purchased because ultimately there are situations in the district where there's questions by parents and by children at a young age about gender identity okay so i'm going to just let you know that right now i surveyed the guidance counselors at the elementary schools and there are 16 elementary children in the district where their parents have come forward and

106requested resources about gender identity or lgbtq issues for their children okay the other point that i'd like to make is that since the beginning of the hiv requirement so we report these hiv cases at every board meeting usually one two maybe three cases um all said and done we have one since 2013 we've had 108 cases of 108 hib cases that are centered on gender or sexual orientation out of the 779 total hiv cases so about 14 15 percent of all the hiv cases in the district have to do with gender identity or they have to do with sexual orientation so that's just something for the audience to consider right that is something to think about one of the speakers folk focused on the idea that everyone should be treated equally and the administration agrees

107with that the goal is to have books where all children can see themselves and so they can feel included and to help realize that not everyone is the same so there are students that read books where they feel this book has nothing to do with me it has nothing to do with what i think so we do want to have books for all of our children so they do feel included regardless of what they believe but we also understand the point of view of parents where sometimes you're saying to yourself well some of these materials may not be things that i would like my child to read or that may be of concern to me there's also cases of children that have feelings but they're not sharing them with their parents right those kinds of

108things happen as well so those books are out there the other thing we did is the order where who are you was included in 2018 that included about 57 total books of which some of them were versions of who are you somewhere other books so that entire order from 2018 did not undergo the regular review process that the district does follow particularly in the event of questions about controversial material so all those books were pulled today from the library shelves for further review before they wind back up on the shelf so we would follow the district procedure to make sure that that happens some of the other books i'm not necessarily familiar with and so we would have to look further into those books but a reminder that the district does have in any time

109that you find objectional material you find that there's a book that you don't agree with that is something that you there's book challenges that have been happening in this district and in every district for a very long time so it does appear that there's a number of books and a number of parents have challenged books just as of late including who are you and some of their books that were mentioned tonight so those challenges have already um taken place um so there's a question there's there's other questions about um subs so i just wanted to talk about that because of course this year we've been very fortunate and school has rolled along smoothly we've been okay with staffing i've i've spoken to the public about issues with bus drivers and i've spoken a little bit

110about some shortages with custodians but tonight there was a question about the vaccination requirement that we have for subs so we pay among the highest school districts in the northern part of new jersey for substitutes we do have a very strong pool of substitutes so we do not believe that requiring substitutes to be vaccinated because you have to understand how complicated it is when um you start a day and you have to determine who's vaccine who's not vaccinated did they meet the requirement when did when did they go for the vaccine very difficult to do before the start of a school day so that's why that requirement is there um then the other thing is there's a lot of questions about um you know some some of the shields i guess so that was another

111topic that came up tonight it is correct the parent that spoke about the shields was absolutely 100 correct they are not required in many places we do not have them up and um in some cases in some cases feel teachers feel comfortable they have the shields up in their classroom in some cases in the elementary classrooms they are um you know the teachers feel a little a little better about having them in other cases not but the fact is if a teacher would like to take down the shields in their classroom they are certainly able to do that and that's something that that's fine okay um the other thing i guess there's oh okay so let me let me finish i'll come back okay okay so there was one school this this is um a

112situation where there's there was one school where there was a situation i remember last spring last spring we had a very brief snack period we did not have lunch right we didn't have a lunch period now we have a lunch period and so last year throughout the year there were situations where students were spread out outdoors things like that and so they were allowed to eat on towels this year we have full-fledged lunch we were short a few tables at pines lake elementary school we ordered tables we have tables there are tables for everyone and td is still waiting for just a few tables i think they need four or six tables but something like that okay so there's a handful of tables that they need um what's that okay yep so another question had

113to do with the burden avenue situation where students high school students from this school are able to walk over and buy lunch at the shopping center okay so that has been an option that's been available for at this school for a very very long time this is not new okay seniors that attend wayne hills and wayne valley have been able to go out and get lunch and walk over to the shopping center for i don't know long before i was here okay so i've been here this is my eighth year um so that's not new the crossing area down by brittany chase was something that's been there for some time that is that is the correct crossing area um there is currently there is no other crossing area right now so you do have to

114walk down to brittany chase we have been in contact with the police department we have talked about some different things in the end it is correct there are so there is a county road and so the county would have to do something to add um at a sidewalk the thing that is different this year is that juniors are allowed to go out to lunch and the reason they're allowed to go out to lunch is because of the pandemic so in other words to avoid crowding here inside wayne hills high school we spread students out as best we can but the fact is we do have a unit lunch and we do the best we can to allow the students to be able to go outside so we'll continue to work with the police department we'll

115continue to seek out if there is uh if the township is willing to support an additional crossing guard um these are all things that are fine with us the issue is because of the curve on the road i mean i know i checked out this the history a little bit the curve in the road would not be a place where a crosswalk would ever be placed it would never be placed in a curve because you can't see around the corner in other words drivers coming from the other direction wouldn't be able to see nor would drivers coming from brittany chase in that light be able to see when they're going around the corner so in no case would there be a crosswalk that would be placed on that curve at least i mean i don't

116believe so i think that would be very unlikely because they know a little bit about the whole traffic thing but um that's another topic what else do we have okay so we have these um for anyone asking about the quarantine period i mean we've distributed this earlier but this is the guidance we follow there is a rhyme or reason that based on this table this is base this is what we use and um so whoever whoever was asking about the the quarantine please come up afterwards and we can we can go through the table with you if you if you'd like to talk about it and um i'm trying to think if there's anything else you had um you had a question ma'am if correct they're not required okay right now with regards to questions

117about other books okay so um it is true like i said there might be books out there that are you know potentially books that you might disagree with i ask also that you keep in mind that there are many different students that attend our schools and there's also many students who have books or seeking books so these are not books that remain unread um keep that in mind and then if there are books okay like i said there is there is a process for that and we will certainly look at we will certainly look at our list of books tomorrow starting at the elementary level just to double check our orders and to evaluate the books that are on the shelves we do have a meeting with our our library media specialist scheduled for tomorrow

118to go through all that and otherwise we would follow the board of ed policy regarding all of our books i think we answered most of the questions okay anything else [Music] yeah and i think i think that's it i think we've covered everything thank you board members mrs cher um so i have a few things i need to say uh and i'm gonna talk to luisa for a minute like it's just us in the room because um i appreciate you coming to the meetings what i don't appreciate is everybody who gets up here and screams at us about everything we're doing or not doing for lack thereof i'm not appear to do a campaign speech because this is an inappropriate place to be campaigning for anybody what i will tell you is that you can

119attest yourself along with most of the people in this room that i have if i have done anything for you is i have been responsive and i take offense to being told that board members are not there is not i would say i might have missed 10 emails in the five years that i have been here and that is for reasons i could not control including my mother passing and still got emails yelling at me for missing meetings because my mother passed away so that's what happens when you're sitting on this side of the fence and i just want you to be aware of that okay when it came down to you were outside protesting at one point i made sure every single time i came down i introduced myself and i listened to what

120you had to say and i fought every single time to get our kids back in school what people are not understanding that i'm trying to make clear is as a board member and i i agree with mr fatale 100 that is what i've always tried to do is bring everybody together it's not that easy and and you might see that in a couple months it's something that we still try and do whether you want to believe it or not so every time i'm here along with miss kumar i see we're taking notes i got a whole list right now for dr toback and ms reischmann however we don't handle everything publicly because that's not appropriate it's appropriate for you to come and speak publicly there's nothing wrong with that but for us when we hear

121a concern from a parent what do we do we take that concern and we pass it on and we ask questions so for example one of the books that everybody's here yelling about i already spoke to dr toback yesterday about it because someone did it the right way they emailed me they asked me about it i said i'm not sure i'm gonna find out for you i found out the answer i gave it to them and then dr toback told me that he would be discussing it today at the meeting so i felt it's going to be discussed i don't need to bring it up but i just i i just want you to all be aware it's not that any of us are sitting here not doing anything i it's not like we're going

122on paid vacations from the district or something we're here we're fighting for the kids that is i can speak for myself that is why i'm here i'm fighting for the kids to be in school to be learning what they need to learn not everything happens immediately i know that many of you are very upset about the the sex ed mandates from the state however you're coming up and you're screaming you board members aren't listening you're not doing our curriculum in wayne for the sex ed has not been written yet when it is written then it will be presented to us and that at that before it's presented to you at that point we all get a chance to look at it and say okay this is great or no i still see a problem with

123it please look into it more so we're fighting right now over something that hasn't happened yet so you have to give us that opportunity i have already said to dr toback amnesty i would like to see it when it is completed before it is presented to the children because i have concerns myself they could be different than yours they might be the same i have my own concerns please i'm asking you one more time if you follow the chain of commands your kid comes home with a book that you don't want your kid reading for you to take that book and give it and another parent not even the person who took whose kid took the book out another parent decided to throw that book up on facebook and rip us all apart for having

124this book i have so many problems with that one that's not the chain of command at all you email the librarian the principal the superintendent there's that's what you do or or even a board member that's yes you're shaking that's how it works i'm telling you how the system works that this book that you came and you're screaming you're reading out loud i've never seen the book because i could tell you as a board member i don't know every book that's in my library and you can shake your head that's right i admitted it you know what i don't run the schools that is not i'm not pointing at you that is i am not no this is not a back and forth that's not how it works someone got up here with a book

125and read it out loud and was started screaming about it and got very unruly that's not how it works i'm not talking to you it's not a back and forth that's not how it works you had the last almost two hours to speak now it's my turn to speak and i'm telling you as you can all shake listen tori esposito how many times have we spoken i respond to you i look into it i get you answers that's the role of a board member not to know what every book is in our library because we don't we look oversee the schools we don't run the schools and if you'd like to research that you could go on new jersey school boards and you could see exactly how that works but as soon as you bring

126a complaint i promise you that i look into it and i always get back to you with an answer that's the best i could tell you but us coming up here and getting threatened and screamed at that's not going to bring everybody together so i will work to answer your emails to answer your concerns call me i'll give you my cell phone i don't care luis has my cell phone it has my cell phone i don't care i'll talk to you but please approach it that way because it's very hard to be up here every time and be screamed at and and not be hurt it's it's it's difficult and we are all working for the children that's it that's why everybody's in this room right now for the betterment of the children i am

127a parent i am a taxpayer i am a board member i still more than any of you i care about my children that's why i do this so please you have my email it's sheerwayneschools if you have a concern email me and i promise you i will get back to you as soon as i can with an answer thank you anyone else mr g or dana thank you i'm not trucking here there we go it's better um first i want to thank everybody for coming tonight a couple of months ago i asked you all to keep coming i asked you all to keep questioning i ask you all to keep keep keep us on our toes and besides the emotions that ran at the meeting today you did keep us on our toes and i

128appreciate that not just the book and the book is a huge part but the burden avenue incident the lack of bus drivers the plexiglass these are all things we can sit down and really dig into here the person who came up and said about violating the civil rights you know reading the civil rights act she's not too far off on that one and i hope those congressmen go ahead and challenge what the state government has handed us and made us work on here the only thing i will call publicly is saying the only person i'll say to is and i don't think you said mr freeswick i've gotten my inoculations i'm good with my inoculations making it stricter no i'm not for that that's that's ridiculous we have a position in place for testing to

129decide not to do it no i'm not i'm not having this stricter really if this is not strict enough the inoculations aren't strict enough here we're all doing our best here and we're all trying to come together and i asked this several months ago and one of the things i said was we had one group on one side of the uh one side of the municipal court building and another side and the other side of the municipal court building i said you guys aren't really that far apart one side is making sure that they are heard the other side makes sure they want to be respected if you really boil it down to that being heard and being respected aren't really hard things to do for civilized people to do so i'm asking you to

130keep coming to these meetings i want you to keep coming after november when all of this has settled whether i'm still here on this board or not in january does not matter i want you to keep coming because you are an essential part of the democratic process you come up here you bring points to us we examine them and if we deem it appropriate we correct it the process has to work let's see it has to work that way i know many of you are angry and many of you are upset as i said before when it comes to being parents sometimes logic goes out the window a little bit here and it's supposed to be the case here but all i ask of you is when you come up here is to come up

131here and try to treat us with a little bit more courtesy and dignity than what's going in your heart at that time because you're angry and you're annoyed but we're here to listen to you and we'll continue to be here please keep coming to these meetings keep talking to us keep this going here this is how the process works as stacy said you go talk to a board member board member talks to the superintendent you can go to a a principal if things don't get done and they don't follow the process then you can come up here and you let us know and we'll make sure the process gets done i respect everything that was said here today i would expect everything that was said at the last six meetings whether it's masks crt vaccinations

132shielding anything you've been talking about here it's all important stuff you all get a voice here and i want you to keep going even after all the politics is over and the board elections are settled here you need to keep going this is how this works this is why wayne is a fantastic educational system this is why both of our high schools are nationally recognized places of academic and civil excellence thank you all have a good night mrs albanese i'm going to keep my comments brief today the board had an education committee meeting um dr toback and mr and mrs richmond both alluded to that uh one of the major topics of that committee meeting was concerns from parents about certain books in the library um they've committed already to do a full review of

133books in the library teacher classrooms to look at things that you've raised do it do a review do an audit to see what's in the library what's been there maybe a very long time that should no longer be there but i want you to know you were heard um and you were heard before tonight because mrs reichman said she has heard from parents who have reached up through the chain of command who did give her topics that she that needed to be looked at dr toback very receptive there's a meeting tomorrow with the media specialist to begin that process so you are being heard your concerns are heard because you are the children's parents so let's let that process take place you've raised the issue let's let the administration review and do their audit and

134then they'll get back to us and and we'll get we'll get findings from that review so again i don't want to reiterate what everyone else said but you are being heard and your concerns are being recognized have a nice evening when i retired from wayne public schools i was a media specialist on the elementary level in the almost 20 years that i worked as a media specialist a parent a family could always challenge a book in the library there is a process for that our elementary libraries run like 10 to 12 000 volumes 10 to 12 000 books the high school libraries are around 20 000 or so i got to very much pick and choose the books that came into my media center on the high school level you have a lot more children

135in the building you have a much bigger library there's still only one media specialist often the large book companies like fallit sell books in packages if a librarian feels that their collection needs to be filled in as far as sex education or gender identity books they order a package if they can order a package for boys sports you can order a package for family life and sometimes you'll get a package of books and if you're ordering hundreds of books at a time the librarian doesn't necessarily have an opportunity at the high school level to actually read every single book we go we have reading sources that we use and that's what happens sometimes a book will be put on the shelf that may be in your eyes inappropriate for your child and that's why you're

136able to challenge a book in wayne public schools it's a very open system so please take advantage of it if you have a problem with something your child brings home i think it's wonderful that so many parents are aware of the books their children bring home from their libraries because it's like television movies the use of their personal devices parents have to be vigilant children in this day and age are exposed to everything thank you anyone else [Music] i was considering saying quite a bit but now i have to leave this meeting and drive to the wayne pd and press charges against you mr favor for threatening me [Music] officer i'd like an escort to my car