August 19, 2021: Board of Education Meeting

001fine by my me [Music] the executive session of the wayne board of education regular meeting of august 19 2021 we're beginning thank you the executive session of the wayne board of education regular meeting of august 19 2021 was convened in the conference room of the wayne board of education 50 nellis driveway new jersey the statement of compliance setting forth time date and location was read in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act and the roll call was taken the meeting was recessed and is now being reconvened before we rise for the flag salute i want to say that we're do we're dedicating tonight's moment of silence to board member stacy sher's mom barbara ramsell who passed away after a long battle with cancer and our employee that we recently lost our science

002teacher from schuyler colfax roxanne scala please rise 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 thank you mr moffatt mr duffy present mr bubba here mr giordano here mrs kazan here mrs kumar here mr pavlak here and mrs put up here okay before we begin mrs puttup has something to read about roxanne scala roxanne scala passed away peacefully on august 9 2021 roxanne was born in paterson new jersey to grace and felix colella on august 6 1951. she went to jfk high school and graduated in 1968 the great 68 she went on to earn her bachelor's degree in teaching from trenton state college where she was part of the gamma sigma sorority

003roxanne worked as a teacher for paramus new milford and for the last 20 years in wayne she also enjoyed being the yearbook supervisor and wayne hills high school freshman cheerleading coach roxanna survived by her lovely loving husband of 46 years albert of wayne new jersey along with her three beautiful children jason jonathan allison her two daughters-in-law kathy and kristen her five wonderful grandchildren brielle connor addison depplin and grayson her brother john and his wife lisa colella several nieces and nephews and great nieces and great nephews roxanne will be missed by all who knew her but she will not be forgotten here are just a few of her former students remembrances shared with her family mrs scala was my seventh grade science teacher the impact she had on my education and my life was profound not

004only was she brilliant and an incredible educator but she was the kindest and most genuine person mrs scala never failed to believe in her students myself included i'm forever thankful for everything she did and everything she was she has inspired me and i hope to be as amazing an educator as she was may you rest in peace mrs scala you will be missed mrs scala was my science teacher more than 15 years ago during a year when my mom was battling cancer mrs scala made sure i knew i was smart and had great potential and she was supportive and kind she was always making our class fun and i greatly enjoyed her scrapbooking club as well she really took the time for all of us today i'm a social worker in a school i credit

005teachers like her with guiding me along the path as i found my career may she rest peacefully i am grateful to have it having had her as my teacher and wish the scallop family peace during this time her memory is truly a blessing mrs scala was not only my seventh grade science teacher but i also had the blessing of being able to call her my godmother i asked her to sponsor me and for my confirmation mrs scala made such an impact on my life not only as a student but as a person she ran a tight ship and this forced me to work hard and truly earn the knowledge that she shared with her students i am not the type of person who is great with science but it speaks incredible volumes about mrs scala

006that i can still recall the majority of what she taught me in seventh grade despite the challenging coursework mrs scala created a loving environment where i felt welcome to class each and every day and became excited to learn even as i moved up to eighth grade mrs scala was my go-to person the shoulder i could cry on the person i looked to for guidance she had so much love for all her students would go to any extent to make sure they were happy comfortable and cared for in school mrs scala became a role model to me and it came time for me to take the next step in my religious journey and get confirmed she became the obvious choice to be my sponsor mrs scala was a lot more to me than than a teacher

007she is my godmother and role model and i cannot wait to follow in her footsteps and become a teacher as well she touched the hearts and minds of many and will continue to do so as i take the next steps in my educational journey i will take a piece of mrs scala with me and present my future students with the same love compassion and knowledge that mrs scala showed her students i can only dream of being half the teacher that mrs scala was but i hope to take after her in every aspect i am truly blessed to have gotten the opportunity to call mrs scala my godmother and have her as part of my life i'll miss her always but i will remember her in everything i do my condolences go out to her her

008her whole family and may she rest in peace always on behalf of the board please accept our deepest condolences roxanne will surely be missed thank you dr toback so good evening everybody tonight we have a lot to discuss and we we plan to focus our effort on school reopening and the many details that must be considered as we prepare to welcome back our students in september before we get to our reopening discussion i'd like to share some other good news from around the district and respecting everybody's time i also know that our committees will be reporting out tonight so i'll try to keep some of my reports to a minimum to allow more time for the committee chairs to make their complete reports so first let's talk about full-day kindergarten after many years of planning

009and not without a certain amount of controversy the wayne township public schools will be offering full-day kindergarten starting in september for the first time each of the buildings is ready for our full-day kindergarten students and dr jessica hammond it is something to celebrate um so dr hammond the principal of the preakness early childhood center reports that they continue to enroll students but as of yesterday there are 109 students registered for in-person learning dr hammond also reports that the ecc now has a pto and it's ready to engage with our newest wayne township public school families i'd like to take a moment to congratulate the business office they've received an award but mrs puttup will be reporting on that in a few minutes so i'll leave that to her i'd like to talk a little bit

010about the facility work that you'll hear more about from the chair of the facilities committee but there is a lot that has been going on um so as you return to school as your children return to school you'll be able to see a number of improvements across the district and there's also a number of improvements that you'll notice on the agenda tonight so first of all just um across the district um jim floors refinishing occurred at wayne valley wayne hills pacquinak pines lake jfk scottie colfax and also pines lake and paknek had their staged floors sanded and refinished across the district there have been hvac improvements at ap tirhoon at george washington at randall carter and ryerson there's floor replacements across the district in a number of classrooms there are fire alarm upgrades at the

011preakness school there's a boiler replacement project at wayne valley which is almost complete the boilers that are at wayne valley are the original boilers from when the school was built you also note on the agenda that there is a resolution to award a contract for installing generators in the amount of 643 000 this is a very important project particularly for our students and staff and our parents at pines lake pines lake is one of the schools that loses power frequently and so now they will have a generator system in the event that power is lost the other locations for the generators are the bus terminal and the maintenance garage which are also important locations that must maintain power you're also going to see a resolution on the agenda where the district is drawing from our

012capital reserve account the action is being recommended to continue to fund renovations to our science labs at both of our high schools there's also a resolution to use some of our funds in maintenance reserve for roofing work but i'll leave some of that like i said to the committee report the security outlook for the district is very good we continue to make improvements in our school security we can't talk about it too much specifically in public we also continue to replace older security cameras when funding is available with regard to technology the district as you know is a one-to-one district that means we have a laptop for every student kindergarten through 12th grade and we're well prepared in the event of a need to implement virtual instruction in each of the kindergarten classrooms there are

013also five new ipads and cart to use as a learning center one of our big projects includes the phone system but there will be a report about that later i'm happy to report the state has officially approved wayne to extend free breakfast and lunch for all students in every school year until june 30th of 2022 be on the lookout for more information from sodexo as we get closer to the start of the school year i'm just a reminder to parents that the thing to understand that there's an important issue here many parents have not filled out or have not even in the prior year filled out their free and reduced lunch forms that affects funding for the district we receive less funding if we have fewer parents applying so it's very important to fill out

014free reduced lunch forms we're very happy to announce that this summer the student support services department collaborated with the wayne education foundation and new jersey special olympics to provide inclusive activities for wayne students through the unified sports program the program ran from july 19th to 23rd during the summer after the extended school year program ended so we received positive feedback from students and their families they enjoyed competition on wednesday we had a very nice day we welcomed 80 new employees to the school district so we're appreciative of all the efforts of the hr department also our board president was in attendance the administration from all departments the wayne education association leadership all took a turn to welcome our new employees so it's interesting to know we we congratulated all the employees because they were the

01580 employees selected out of the 3 200 candidates total that we had for positions in the district so those employees that we did hire represent the top 2.5 percent of all the candidates that we had for the various positions across the district so that's really quite an accomplishment and obviously they rose to the top of a very competitive candidate pool um so regarding work based learning the education section of the agenda includes a resolution to approve work based learning opportunities for our students over the years we've expanded these opportunities to establish internships other valuable educational experiences for our high school students by working with our local business leaders of course none of this would be possible without the help of our local businesses so i wanted to just take a moment to thank the 80

016businesses that are included on this agenda that have become real partners for us and for our students in providing work-based learning opportunities for the hiv report i'm reporting the following data related to harassment intimidation and bullying incidents in the wayne township public school district there was one incident that was investigated since my last report which makes sense it's the summer and that case was not deemed to be a case of hiv so at this point what i'd like to do is we'd like to move ahead with a presentation about policy resolution number 17 which is our recommendation to the board to adopt policy 1648.11 which sounds very technical it's the road forward covet 19 health and safety presentation and policy this is a mandated policy and addresses the recommendations for school districts contained in the

017new jersey department of ed road forward document and also under governor murphy's executive order number 251 so at this time i would also like to invite mrs reichman to co-present this information so if you could please go to the first slide do you have it oh i have it okay all right i can do it myself fine it's not on all right it's on okay it's a timeout yeah you're able to pull it okay we have a different version of the presentation we're just going to log in very quickly so the tv timeout thank you for your patience we want to make sure we show the right presentation sorry about that he had he had an earlier version of a presentation an older version just give us a few minutes okay i can't sing but

018no one would really that would um yeah you'd appreciate it it'd be really cool should i do volare or like my way which one [Laughter] i could do the summer wind i'd probably be okay with saying that as well this so okay [Music] okay all right everybody so um we're ready to go sorry about that so um what we'd like to do is we'd like to provide the community with a complete presentation and overview of our return to school it does not necessarily have all the details because there are still even like today for example we received a checklist from the department of education regarding different um things that we have to comply with so things will change and i guess the one thing to understand is that everything that i talk about today can

019certainly change and we've had that happen before it's not through any fault of our own but conditions change decisions are made at the state level that affect what happens here in the district but what i'd like to do is talk about where we are locally and i would like to talk about uh something well there's a few things that we used as sort of a barometer for where we were as a community and where we were as a school district when it came to covert 19 cases from last year okay so just a general sense of where the community is when it comes to covert 19 cases so you could see the total number of cases you can see that as of august 18th we have 129 confirmed cases that were reported throughout the month

020of august and you could see that from january february you see the numbers have come way down the problem is that says august 18th right so there's still a ways to go in august so we'll see where that lands but you can also see there are 14 cases in schools so that's for the short time that we've been back in action with athletics those cases pertain to school related activities and you can see that the percentage is 11 percent so that's a general overview of where we are as a community where we were and where we are right now okay so the other thing that we're doing is we're preparing vaccination is an important issue in every school district right now because vaccination leads to a reduction in the number of cases where students have

021to be or staff members have to be quarantined it is not something that we can collect and would require people to submit that information it's a voluntary thing so we did a voluntary survey this is the best that we can do and you can see for the student responses right you can see the total students in the district our response rate you can see our staff responses which is 96 that they are fully vaccinated but you can see the total staff in the district that only represents 36 percent of the staff so 96 of 36 percent now we still a few weeks ago before school starts right we're still three weeks out so we'll continue to collect this information as time goes by and we can update this chart um likewise you could see where

022we are with regard to our student vaccination status so again that keeps students in school that keeps teachers in school but here we are all students in grades 6's to 12 who are fully vaccinated right because if you're under the age of 12 you are at this point unable to receive a vaccine so there's our percentages and you can see what the percentages look like at each of our schools okay and so again i just want to remind everybody these are numbers based on a voluntary survey which is the best the district can do board members at this point any questions on the information presented so far okay so if that's the case then we're going to keep rolling we're going to get into our staffing outlook so another factor that we we reviewed regularly

023with the community last year was where things stood with staffing because as you know not only in wayne but lots of other places staffing was a big problem being able to have enough custodians to work with schools to clean buildings the ability to field all of our teachers right every classroom with a teacher was not an easy thing to do last year and in many cases we started out i mentioned last year that we started um at different times with 65 staff members out with 504 accommodations so for medical reasons there were 65 staff members out on any given day there was about 35 or so staff members that were out so that puts us at 100 people out every day 100 situations where we needed subs so that's a lot of coverage right and

024we really because of the the virus and because of a lack of a vaccination many of our subs declined work in the district so we're really only operating with maybe three four dozen subs on some days we really had very few subs now looking ahead we have 206 226 substitute teachers and classroom paras which is great news for the district we have 12 substitute school cafeteria playground aids we have 42 office subs 10 para subs we have a system of permanent subs so each building almost we're still one short but each of our buildings has a permanent sub so that means every day they start with at least one sub except that the the high schools they have three subs so that really helps a lot in terms of every day you start out and

025you're actually ahead of by a few subs and we only have at this point four requests for staff members who would like to work remotely under a 504 accommodation so that was another situation right we have to provide subs so one thing as far as the staffing outlook goes right now it is very difficult to find qualified high school teachers um in most every subject and we're also having a very hard time finding special education teachers so that is those are the two areas where we still we're we're having a little bit of a tough time okay so um the next slide has to do with our goals so we're going to talk a little bit about the road forward but there's certainly some things that are listed there to be excited about first of

026all the goal is to maximize safety for all students and staff and protect in-person learning by minimizing covet spread and exposure utilizing all available resources and mitigation strategies in other words we're going to do everything we can to keep our students and staff in school all day every day for the whole school year um and you could see another goal maintain a stable full day in person learning environment on the regular schedules without cohorts office hours and some other things that were a necessary thing that last year maintain a full array of extracurricular activities okay so keep all of our extra curricular activities going minimize disruption and economic losses so we understand the impact school closures have on families and the ability for people to maintain their employment and um the other thing one of

027our goals is to strive for stability kind of like what i said before but also to plan for covet outbreaks and remote instruction if need be finally another goal is to educate the community and maintain our communication which is part of what we're doing tonight okay and as i mentioned before the plan is subject to change at any time okay so this time i'd like to ask mrs reischmann to come forward and she's going to do her part of the presentation good evening everyone this part of the presentation details the health and safety guidance that's included in the road forward once again we always try and strive to make the presentations as interactive as possible for anyone who's in attendance tonight or anyone who may be listening the presentation will be posted online tomorrow there

028are a number of links included in the presentation this way you can look and see in further detail there may be questions that you have or things that are detailed through the links that i may not directly comment on here the road forward basically is a plan which guides us it's a compliance document and and these are the steps that we need to take to open our schools wayne them to public schools will continue to plan to provide full day full full-time in-person instruction for the 20-21-22 school year based on this guidance the guidance comes from the new jersey department of education and the new jersey department of health at this time we will not be offering an all-virtual learning option for students i did receive some questions today and emails from parents asking about

029this as dr toback shared each week we received some updated information updated guidance but the guidance at this time indicates that we have to offer and will be offering full day full-time in-person instruction and there is not a full remote or full hybrid option offered at this time the guidance includes a range of strategies to implement to reduce risk to students and staff from proven 19 while still allowing for full-time in-person learning while the state is committing to the resumption of normalcy for the next school year the data will continue to be monitored and decisions will be guided by signs to ensure that safe and healthy school communities are maintained in the document there's a link to the road forward it's linked at the top as well and if you wanted to be able to

030look at the document yourself you'll be able to access this tomorrow in this slide i included the general health and safety concerns of student staff members and visitors the wearing a math is mandatory by staff students and visitors in the indoor portion of school districts all school buildings as per the executive order there's a link in here which lists the qualifying exemptions for vaccination status we're required to have a system to determine the vaccination status of students and staff this is the information that dr toback was commenting on we sent out a form and we've been gathering voluntarily this information i know many of you reached out this week a covid notification commitment form was shared parents will have been asked to acknowledge a waiver for the 2021-22 school year as part of the annual

031back-to-school process the form states that if your child is exhibiting any symptoms noted in the waiver that they would not be sent to school or extracurricular activities while symptoms persist an evident a negative cova test may be necessary for a child to return to school or activities the form is linked in here i did receive a number of emails and questions about this form and and again parents should exercise good judgment and and caution people have wrote shared that they have children who have allergies seasonal allergies if there's something that your child has and you know that this is not a covetous symptom i would suggest or recommend that you reach out to the school nurse this way they have this as part of your child's record and your child can come to school common

032cold if your child has sniffles but they're well enough to be in school again reach out to the nurse make the nurse aware let them know so that your child can attend school regarding travel restrictions the wayne township public school will comply with all guidance from the new jersey department of health and executive orders issued by the governor of new jersey regarding travel restrictions if any and in consultation with the wayne department of health for both vaccinated and unvaccinated students and staff this slide includes the exposure protocols according to vaccination status this is for vaccinated staff and students for those who are asymptomatic if you are fully vaccinated anyone who is a close contact does not need to quarantine at home following an exposure they can continue to attend school in person and participate in

033other activities covet testing is recommended for any fully vaccinated individual who has been identified as a close contact to a positive case a mass should be worn in other public indoor public settings for 14 days or they receive a negative coven 19 test result for those who are symptomatic the individual should remain out of school using illness days just like any other illness and be tested for covid i have the information linked in here for information and i will talk more about what virtual learning offers and options we have for students who are quarantined a negative test result will allow an individual to return to school once the cova test has been received and reviewed by the building nurse all symptoms have to be resolved and you have to be fever-free for at least 24

034hours without using fever-reducing medication you can return to school if you have a positive test result you need to remain out of work or school from the date of testing and may return after 10 days of isolation as long as you're feeling better symptoms are resolved and you've been fever free for 24 hours without using fever reducing medications for unvaccinated staff and students closed contacts who are not fully vaccinated have to quarantine 10 days from the date of the last exposure while our area is considered to be at lower moderate risk for transmission of cobit 19 that's the green or yellow each week we will share out the chart as we receive it from the department of education 14 days is required from the data last exposure when the risk for transmission is considered to

035be high or very high that's the orange or red indication in the table should an asymptomatic individual choose to be tested they should still quarantine at home for 10 days or 14 depending on the color code of the transmission at the time after exposure regardless of the test result employees will be required to use illness days during this time if an unvaccinated individual experiences symptoms he or she should be tested for covet a negative test result with a negative test result the individual may return to work or school once the covet test result has been received and reviewed the building nurse 10 days have passed and symptoms have been resolved i'm sorry and they've been fever-free for 24 hours positive test result individual must remain out for 10 days as long as you're fever-free and

036symptoms are resolved for 24 hours for screening parental screening parents or care and caregivers are strongly encouraged to monitor children for signs of illness every day as they are the front line for assessing illness in their children students who are sick should not attend school employees who are ill should remain at home guidance about when to remain is included in the link that's in right here in blue response to symptomatic students and staff the school building nurses and the supervisor of nursing are the contact persons throughout the district for any covert related issues that arise procedures will be in place to identify and respond to a student or staff member who becomes ill with covet symptoms while in a school building there will also be a designated space away from others to isolate individuals who

037become ilbacovid symptoms hygiene supplies including additional cloth masks facial tissues and alcohol-based hand sanitizer will be available we'll make every attempt to have children in an isolated area or outside while they're waiting to be picked up for contact tracing if a staff or student reports that they have contracted the coven 19 virus or come in close contact with someone who has a virus a report will be made to the department of health at each school the department of health and the nursing employees will then facilitate the contact tracing protocol process to make recommendations for school and community response each school building will have a designated employee in most cases this will be the school nurse who will be responsible for working with the department of health to identify possible close contacts of covenanting positive individuals

038to potentially reduce further exposure close contact is divine defined as being within six feet or more for 15 minutes cumulatively over a 24 hour period the supervisor of nursing shall be the primary contact person with the school nurses and the department of health regarding covert 19 responses copin 19 testing is recommended for any fully vaccinated individual and non-vaccinated individual who has been identified as a close contact to a positive case i have linkedin here for your review at another time the exposure protocols to vaccination status the wayne township public schools will continue to maintain close communication with the new jersey department of education and the department of health to provide information and share resources on covert transmission prevention and control measures to establish procedures for notification and response to cover 19 illness in our schools

039we will communicate information with transparency to all stakeholder groups this slide includes the mass wearing protocol we are required as per executive order that the wearing of math shall be mandatory by staff students and visitors in the indoor portion of the school district premises except in the following circumstances these are all listed here if your child is eligible and meets any of the eligibility criteria it is very likely based on our situation being similar to last year that you have a 504 in place if there's not a 504 in place you would need to request one and go through the process through your building school nurse you can see here the exemptions include when doing so when wearing a mask would inhibit the individual's health when the individual has trouble breathing is unconscious incapacitated or

040otherwise unable to remove a face mask without assistance i already referenced the iep um section 504 when the individual is under two years of age when the individual is engaged in activity that cannot physically be performed without wearing a mask such as eating drinking playing a musical instrument when the individual is engaged in high-intensity aerobic or anaerobic activity when the student is participating in high-intensity physical activities during physical education class or when wearing a mask creates an unsafe condition in which to operate equipment or execute a task we will continue to maintain physical distancing measures in the class and school to the greatest extent possible the wayne township public school will also prioritize other prevention measures including masking physical barriers and the use of personal protective equipment distance in the classroom settings will be three

041feet between students to the extent possible facing deaths in the same direction avoiding group seating arrangements we will implement physical distancing in the following areas to the extent possible that may pose greater risk of transmission in common areas and spaces where students may gather such as hallways and auditoriums when mass cannot be worn when masks may be removed such as outdoor activities during indoor activities with increased exhalation occurs such as singing shouting band practice sports or exercise cohorts including recess lunch time and participating in extracurricular activities may be considered during periods of high community transmission as per the road forward mass must be worn by all passengers on the school bus regardless of the vaccination status we will physically distance students the greatest extent possible we will assign students to seats so they are seated

042in the same place each day windows will be kept open to increase airflow and high touch surfaces on school bus will be cleaned daily in this slide you will see that we will continue to maintain our crease our increased cleaning protocols if you are interested in looking at the cleaners and disinfectants the hand soaps that are available to our students we have links in here where you can gather that information will continue to bring as much indoor outdoor air into the indoors as possible and it's safe to do so windows and doors will be open and fans will be used to increase air circulation activities classes and outdoor lunches will be considered when circumstances allow a decision has been made to hold our back to school night presentations virtually these will be available in the

043google classroom later in september and the information specific to your building will be communicated out by your building principles the wayne township public school food service employee screenings will take place prior to the start of each shift and will be required and we require self-monitoring for symptoms and signs of covin-19 food service will continue preventative measures for cleaning and disinfecting during meals we will have layered prevention strategies to help mitigate the spread of kovid i know that there were a lot of concerns and questions about lunch how can we be wearing mass in class and not wearing masks during lunch time so clearly you can't wear a mask when when you're eating what we can do is put strategies in place to mitigate the spread of coved we have established a staggered lunch schedule we

044have ordered additional tables we are making arrangements to have lunch outdoors whenever possible we are going to have students eating in groups intervals of 10 to 15 minutes which supports us with the staggered approach and then we'll send kids outside for recess we're allowing juniors to also go out in addition to our seniors in our high school to reduce the number of students who are indoors for lunch which again enables and opens up space for kids to spread out we're using the box grab and go lunches we're discouraging students from sharing meals we have our incl increased cleaning protocols between groups and i think that includes all of the strategies we have in place again another question that many people have written in and have had a great deal of concern about when there are

045situations and we anticipate that there will be situations where students have to quarantine as a result of close contact all of the work will be posted and maintained in google classroom and shared out as it was last year for middle and high school students who were required to quarantine as a result of close contact which has to be established by the school nurse they will receive live stream for core instruction and what that means is a part of the lesson the instructional part will be live stream and then students will be directed to work in their google classroom for elementary students teachers will live stream for math and language arts core instruction and we are in the process of hiring our teachers to work after hours to provide check-in and extra support for students as

046needed and to also be able to respond to questions we know that for elementary parents this is very challenging our summer our fall athletic season kicks off in the summer many of you are probably familiar with the process we have shared in on course a and asked for parents and guardians to accept a preventative certification by acknowledging yes to affirm that representations are valid and and this is basically just detailing and acknowledging that you're being compliant with the covert protocols in place this was set up separately because many of our fall athletics started in the summer it's also an easy and quick way when there is an outbreak and and we have had cases of covid for our athletic directors and coaches to quickly gather and access this information to stop the transmission and start

047the contact tracing process when this is posted we'll once again have a reopening website and as we have new information we'll continue to update the site and it'll be an easy place for you to go and access at the bottom of the slide you can't see it on the slide but there is a link where it says click here each of the icons in the house represents there's a picture which probably isn't very visible from where you're sitting or if you're watching from home but you'll be able to see when you look at it on the big screen it takes you directly to that information we were looking at an easy way for parents to access information by referencing a small picture on a moment's notice something that you can use from your phone we'll

048continue to enhance us and work on this just for for ease of accessing information and communicating out information in another way did you earn it okay all right so um i just wanted to add very quickly a few things um so we heard a little bit more about the academic recovery plans and some of the things the district will be doing to address academic recovery issues the second thing i want to talk about is a partnership with rutgers behavioral health so in the spring the administration met with guidance counselors at the different grade levels and we heard back a little bit about what they were seeing in their counseling sessions and they expressed a lot of frustration at the fact that there really are a lot of crisis situations and they have no time for

049anything else and um so what we've done is we on the in the agenda tonight there is a contract with rutgers behavioral health and so the idea behind that contract is to provide support when there are counseling issues that go beyond what our counselors can handle in schools in other words most of our counselors some of them have some expertise in in counseling for crisis situations they all do to some extent others are more academic counselors their background really is like college admissions things like that so um what we want to do is we want to make sure that as we go through the coming months that if there are services that are needed by our students in the world of counseling and particularly crisis counseling because there's a lot of cases right now the

050district and our students and our parents will have the resources so all the students who need counseling will receive counseling either during the school day or perhaps after the school day but those services will be there so that's another part of our return to school plan that um is not on there but it's on the agenda tonight as a contract okay i think that concludes our presentation board members have any questions get there dr toback thank you so much that's a lot to take in uh but obviously as uh has been mentioned it'll all be available on the website for you to check on and they'll most likely be an faq at some point based on whatever questions we may receive from the community does the board have any questions for dr toback or mrs

051reichman okay thank you oh mrs kumar go ahead um so i actually had a question because we're talking about vaccinated versus unvaccinated and i think this is really going to come more into play in terms of our staff so so our staff and our vaccine status of our staff is pretty important to being able to you know have teachers in the classroom um only 36 percent of staff answered the question so is there any i know we can't require it but at the same time as we look towards personnel how can we get the can we get that number up yeah okay yeah so the answer is um okay so okay so okay so the question was basically um there was a concern mrs kumar expressed concern about the staff vaccination um numbers so there

052was 96 percent of the staff members that completed the survey and the prior side you can see that um they they were vaccinated right but that only represented 36 percent of the total staff so in other words about a third of the staff responded but the ones that did respond got their vaccines right so the question is how do we go about making sure that number goes up because ultimately we need our staff members in school and we need to if there is a situation where a staff member is exposed then um obviously if you have your vaccine you don't necessarily have to be in quarantine so you don't miss you don't miss work so the answer to that is as a school district we as a school district do not have necessarily the ability

053to demand vaccination however the governor there was a press release today where governor murphy announced or or someone close to him i'm not exactly sure about it but there was a plan governor murphy has that would require all teachers and all school employees to have their vaccines so obviously if that's the case and if he follows through with that then that's that has much more effect it's not public portion what's um yeah it's not public portion yeah okay i'm just trying to answer questions well we'll get to their questions got it thank you anything else any other board members have a question okay thank you very much for that substantive report um mr moffat yes we have some changes to the agenda tonight i'll read them we will begin with section m human resources items

0541 through 20. item number 2 which is approval of lee requests we're going to revise id 8420 to maternity leave from 11 11 which is november 24 2020 to i should say 11 24 2021 to 11 24 2022. um on number three which is the approval of district substitutes we're going to add number 67 uh and i'll spell the name kenda k-i-n-d-a and last name is a-l-k-h-a-d-d-o-u-r for dm substitute teacher at 150 a day we're going to add number 68 jacqueline mcgardy per diem substitute teacher 150 a day ad line number 20 uh excuse me number 20. 69 brenda portelli per diem substitute teacher 150 a day item number 10 approval of appointments of district staff removed number 22 daisy gomez we'll be removing number 23 aaron harney we're going to revise number 44 alyssa

055memish and delete which will be a delete no medical benefits we will be adding salary for number 28 hannah yoon step one m a plus 30 which is 64 000 and cents uh it's pending certification we're adding salary for number 59 corian and our spell last name g-r-u-n-s-t-r-a sixty-five percent step one ba plus fifteen at thirty five thousand nine hundred and sixty-four prorated no medical benefits we'll be adding salary to number 60 christine palmeira step number one m a plus 15 which is 60 930 these are all pending negotiations um on m15 which is approval of appointment of staff and re-appointment of staff to community programs we're going to revise number three an attachment community staff a community program agenda will replace and i'll spell the name e-n-j-e-e-l-a and the last name is a-h-m-a-d-i with

056kimberly beale which is at 16.94 cents an hour and the last item is we'll be removing uh from section o school resource legal removing 0-1 which is the approval of shared service agreement for school resource officers and class 3 special law enforcement officers tonight that concludes the changes to tonight's agenda thank you mr moffatt this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residents are to state their names addresses in 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 board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent

057meetings under old business can i get a mover move mrs kumar mr duffy we're waiting uh jim friswick one two one two summer hill road uh you have an item on the agenda you're approving uh policy 0167 public participation in board meetings first of all i don't understand why this is back on the agenda do you have to pass the same policy twice for it to take effect because this policy was approved at the last council board meeting and my second comment is this uh in the future why don't you post on your agenda the changes that you're proposing to to a policy by indicating strikethroughs for the words you want to eliminate and then for the words you want to add put them in bold so that the public when it goes to the

058agenda and pulls up the policy it can see clearly what the proposed changes are because currently what you're doing is your post you're posting on on your website the final version of the policy that you want to adopt without any of the proposed changes in it with respect to the substance of this policy i'm going to repeat what i have said at least on two prior occasions i think it's wrong for the board to reduce the time period allowed for the public to speak from five minutes to three minutes i think you should keep it for at five minutes [Applause] it's been five minutes for decades and it it's a fair amount of time to allow people to speak in order to express themselves some people need more than three minutes to make a an

059argument or or present what they they present the point they're trying to make i think five minutes is very fair and i think three minutes is very unfair and i think you should defeat this policy because as it's written now the proposal is to reduce the time period from five minutes to three minutes thank you [Applause] anyone else on agenda items madam president seen no one else her eyes that moved to close second second bite mr giordano moved by mr pavlak okay well we've got a lot to get to this evening we'll start with the committee reports we'll go this way so mrs kumar we'll start with you okay the education committee of the wayne township board of education started at approximately 5 pm today at 15 ellis drive the meeting gathered adhered to the

060agenda and began with a brief overview of the minutes from july 19 2021 meeting in attendance were administrators donna reichman and dana sir education committee members dawn kumar myself and matt giordano were in attendance we discussed a possible student transfer the sixth grade seminar proposed curriculum um changing some things about the psychology course at william hills and kindergarten enrollment that concludes my report thank you mrs kumar mr bubba communication committee met i believe it was august 1st with mrs kazan mrs kumar dr toback it was a meeting that we went over the media coverage of what's going on in the district we talked about some open items and we reviewed the parent form presentation and that is my report thank you mr bubba mrs put up the finance committee met yesterday august 18th at 3

061pm via zoom mr pavlak mrs kazan and myself were the board members in attendance along with administrators mr moffatt and miss lighting they were having trouble hearing it is that better yeah okay thank you we went through the financial reports related to this week's agenda there were no reserve withdrawals to report we reviewed the contracts that we the district would be signing because there are a lot of them are continuing obligations that support student learning uh we awarded contracts for the backup generators as mentioned by dr toback in his report the auditors came in and finished their work during the summer however they will be returning at the end of september to finalize any reports and you will get an audit report it's done in the district on an annual basis i'm happy to report

062that our district has won an award of excellence for financial reporting it's given out by the association of school board officials and it's an honor to have our business administrator and our business office winning this award this year that's my finance report the policy committee met on monday august 16th at 10 a.m uh mrs kazan mr giordano and myself were in attendance as board members and mrs clark our hr director was there as our administrator uh also dr toback was in attendance we went through various policies policies come and go they're updated they're abolished so we abolished p 1648-02 which was re remote learning options for families from last year last school year p 16 48.03 which was the return to school plan full-time remote instruction from last school year that's to be abolished and

063p16 48.11 the road forward which was the old new jersey plan for return to school last year um there's a new policy regarding board member resignations and removals p0145 and the bulk of our time was taken with re going through the new booster club guidelines for the district we have a lot of wonderful booster clubs that support our athletic and other endeavors through the district for our students and we're updating the guidelines to help make sure that those booster clubs function in the best way possible thank you mrs pettup mr pavlak on tuesday the facilities and transportation committee met myself mrs kazan mr duffy mr blanchard mr skobitsky and mr moffatt as far as facilities go we talked about all the upgrades and all the work that's been done over the summer the list is

064enormous dr toback hit on a lot of them and dr toback possibly we could um put that list up on the website for people to see all that we've done in a short two and a half months it's it's incredible the number of safety and security upgrades that have taken place dr toback also spoke about upgrading of our phone systems we want to we're going moving to ipv voice over thus getting rid of the copper lines and no longer having to pay verizon transportation bus passes will be out by september 3rd so any of you have a student who rides a bus you should be arriving in your house around september 3rd give or take a day with the mail compliments to our transportation department tsa has come in and is doing evaluation of our

065transportation department and in fact they're taking a number of our safety practices and will be implementing them as national standards across the country for school buses we reviewed several contracts for out of out of district buses and athletic busing and we also spoke about the revision of a number of routes for efficiency that's it thank you mr pavlov did you have a meeting mr duffy mr giordana yes thank you the personnel committee met this evening it was myself dawn kumar donna reichman and paula clark attending the meeting we had a lot of things that were discussed at the meeting specifically we reviewed the entire transportation department business operations they're being reorganized and saving quite a bit of money with their reorganization trying to make themselves more efficient in the way they operate we also reviewed

066the entire technology business department operation their hierarchy and how they're being placed we are looking for a couple of positions right now so look up for a possible job in the town we are also updating jobs descriptions to reflect changes and upgrades over the years once again this is for the sake of efficiency and making sure we move any obsolete positions and to update new ones uh several uh policy changes were discussed as with uh miss puttup that came through and we also took a look at staffing there are a couple of uh positions that were said in the presentation that are very very hard to fill if you know anybody in those positions let us know at the high school and in special education please take a look at the website and wellness together

067let's hope we can get that filled in but we also filled in a tremendous amount of staff the hr department worked very hard to fill i believe was almost 80 positions over the year and that's that's quite a bit up and down the board of that office and they're very very confident who they brought in that's it thank you okay thank you let's move on to the main agenda can i get a mover yeah president i'd like to move the entire agenda's consent agenda wait a second a second this is kumar mr duffy moves mrs kumar seconded any discussion any questions or comments on the agenda items well before we move to a roll call i want to congratulate our new employees we did have a wonderful orientation the other morning although it was a

068bit early for me to get out of bed and get up and have to make a speech but i have to say dr tobak stole my thunder a little about the number of staff we hired and how many actually applied so we did really pick the cream of the crop because that's what we want in our school district we want excellence and uh we're very pleased with this new group and we wish them all the best so roll call mr moffat mrs kumar yes to the full agenda mr pavlak yes for everything no on n1 policy 0167 my belief is our current policy allows for that with consensus of the board so i vote no on that yes to everything else mrs put up i vote yes to the full agenda thank you mr bubba

069yes mr duffy yes mr giordano yes and mrs kazan yes motion carries thank you okay i have to find the page i need to read ah i'm sorry yes we have a couple of retirements to read mr pavlak thank you for reminding me now you get to go first um irene lignos was hired by the wayne schools back in 1993 prior to coming to anthony wayne in july of 2012 this lignos worked in special services now called student support services as a secretary regardless of the role in which she served the well-being and happiness of our students has always been her number one priority a mother of two and a grandmother or yaya as she is known to her to four mrs legnos has always treated every member of anthony wayne middle school as a

070family member upon her arrival at anthony wayne middle school i am told she was nervous and having never worked in an actual school mrs lignos had no idea that she was made for the position of vice principal secretary no one greeted people ringing the bell or calling the school with as much kindness and patience as mrs ligno says she's been a gift of diffusing many situations with her calming and pleasant voice in fact she would tell everyone working in the main office multiple times a day all is well never afraid of hard work mrs lignos has always ready to collaborate on projects aside from her daily tasks as one of the main office secretaries much more than just the school secretary mrs league notes will be missed on behalf of the anthony wayne middle school

071and learning community we wish her many years of good health and happiness in her transition to her retirement on a personal note mrs lignos was at anthony wayne when my daughters were there she was always the smiling face that greeted you so all the anthony wayne family knows when you'd come in it'd be a big hello and a big smile she always made you feel feel welcome best of luck thank you mr bubba joseph deshawis joseph deschellis retired from the transportation department on july 30 joe began his career as a bus driver on april 25 2011 over the course of his 10 years of service in the wayne township public schools he has always been committed to his work responsibilities joe reported on time every day and has always transported his students with care throughout

072his tenure as joe and his wife leave the area to their beautiful new home down the shore the transportation department and the wayne public schools wish to express their sincere thanks and appreciation for his outstanding service from all your friends and co-workers best wishes for a long happy and healthy retirement thank you all the best to our retirees this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on any topic residents are to state their name 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 board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight

073or at subsequent meetings under old business can i get a mover mr giordano mr duffy oh god jim frieswick 1212 summerhill road the last board meeting i asked the board of education to mandate vaccinations against covet 19 for all district employees including all teachers provided of course that the board has the legal authority to do that and so i'd i'd really like to get an opinion from the board attorney on that issue wayne township has mandated vaccinations for all municipal employees and they sent out a letter to that effect dated july 30th it's a mandatory policy it's a condition of employment so that if the employee does not get vaccinated he loses his job [Music] it's not a the type of mandatory policy where you've got a choice of either getting vaccinated or getting tested

074uh you have to get vaccinated and that's the type of policy that should be instituted in in all of the school districts provided they have that legal authority i don't know whether they do that's why i'd like to find out from the from the board's attorney the wayne township attorney rendered an opinion that the township had the legal authority to require vaccinations of all municipal employees uh that's the right policy to take because there are 90 million americans who are eligible to receive the vaccine but who have thus far declined to get vaccinated and therefore we've had a major outbreak of covert 19 because of the 90 million americans who refuse to get vaccinated so we're going to have to move to a mandatory policy and that includes government as well as private enterprise private

075employers are going to have to start mandating vaccinations for their employees as a condition of employment thank you for your consideration i'm so upset shayna kegelman ten bonita terrace it's just two weeks it's just a mask it's just six feet it's just non-essential business it's just to flatten the curve it's just some floor markings and some temporary plexiglas it's just government guidance it's just for the greater good it's just this scientist not that scientist it's just the second wave now it's just four more weeks do you see how the goal post keeps moving does it ever end does a virus like this ever actually go away isn't it here to stay like the flu 74.1 million children aged 0 to 17 and 423 cova deaths from january 2020 to august 11th is point zero zero

076zero zero zero five seven two there is no pandemic amongst children [Applause] why can't our kids take off their mask behind these plexiglas shields the way we could to sit at a restaurant to eat a meal businesses were packed all summer shoulder to shoulder have you seen photos from djs or fish concerts with 38 000 attendees kids at playgrounds kids at camp but now are kids at the social distance behind plexiglas barriers and a mask masks are unnecessary useless and ineffective at preventing covid children are not the disease carriers of covid our children are now being raised in fear fear of each other fear of the world fear of illnesses viruses and even the air that they breathe why do speakers come up to this podium and pull off your mask so that we can

077hear you more clear does the virus disappear at the podium do our teachers get to lower their mass in the classroom so that my son that has speech and vision disabilities can actually learn something this year why can't i send a letter and just opt out of this mandate the way you want us to just opt out of teaching our fourth graders masturbation and our eighth graders about oral and anal sex [Applause] i am taking my son out of public school and there will be many more like me doing the same if none of this changes with our education when enough of us do it you will lose your grant money this board event needs to fight and stand up for our kids as if it was your own entering kindergarten this year write letters

078to murphy and let him know we the people are in charge of our children's future [Applause] okay we'll all get out of here a lot sooner if you hold your applause till the end thank you [Applause] yeah my speech is right at the three minute mark so don't applaud just give me one second um alan aisarch brandon ave let's pretend i'm up there where you are and you are down here with us misinformed people and you learned all of this from your school system your child needs to quarantine for 10 days for certain travel do they completely miss school with no virtual learning option and why does someone get to remove his desk shield over there but my child has to learn behind one you learned of the sex ed curriculum did you just throw

079up in your mouth i hope you did because you know as well as any parent with a motive of decency that the new sex ed curriculum is completely inappropriate you learn that under the guise of social learning children go to learn a supposed psychologically dangerous aren't you shocked and disgusted all educated and bright i don't believe that you're and under the guise of social emotional learning is dangerous and wrong in wayne schools i was with young boys and girls of all different backgrounds not judging each other or being taught to judge we were eager to learn we were supported by our teachers to learn the three r's right from wrong and do the hard work to succeed in school and in life because nothing in life is free in fifth grade i learned about puberty

080at an after-school workshop with my father and me that's appropriate junior year of high school with sex said you know how a sperm fertilizes an egg to make a boy or a girl science there's never a time to instill in these kids at impressionable ages that one person over another is bad or that our country is bad or that any person sitting in this room today is an oppressor or the oppressed or privileged or not privileged these kids do not have to learn about abortion anal sex and masturbation in schools so young to what end kids should be learning about these topics at home from their parents you should be concentrating on fixing the atrocious common core math program my comments and criticisms though are not personal indictments it's just business and in the spirit

081of business i'm saddened that you think that so many of us are misinformed that you think none of this is happening right now in the classroom i'm frightened about what our kids are going to be forced to learn and how it will affect them and i'm scared that what i've said tonight and others who may echo my comments will be dismissed and you'll say that's not true but i don't believe you your constituency are the parents who are taxpayers who have children in the wayne school system not your best interests or the whims of a tyrannical politician of the state in our constitutional republic we the people have the ultimate say you do what the majority wants you to do and the and the silent majority is silent no longer thank you for your time

082[Applause] stuart resmer 82 new street a member of the silent majority that can't believe what i hear coming out of this forum week after week after week the young lady just said that there is no pandemic among the children the lady is either in denial or she's just lying because every newspaper excuse me i have the microphone i have the microphone here thank you very much reclaiming my time the lady is misinformed or she is lying like the other people i've heard in this auditorium over these past weeks there is a pandemic among the children practically in every southern state in this union read the news one more time again this is my this is my time reclaiming my time i understand madam so they're they're lying they're just lying and why are they lying

083that's the question they're lying because they have an agenda and that's all there is to it so what is the agenda okay can you please first time please pause the time pause the time okay if you're not going to be quiet when the speakers are speaking we will clear the room thank you so in almost every southern state right now children are falling down in florida there's images on the evening news of a woman on the floor in a clinic in florida because their governor refuses to do anything about this pandemic that's ravaging that state the same thing is happening in texas and in other states where these ignorant people ignorant people are running things when the county set up the covet site i volunteered this is my credential i was probably the first person

084that volunteered from what i was told let me tell you what i saw fact 400 cars a day for two weeks straight lieutenant daley is it 10 goals i'm sorry sir by mistake lieutenant daley knows what was going on up there because i was sending him emails daily 400 cars a day with individuals families that were sick sick in a way i have never seen in my entire life and we processed those people and got the next one in and got the next one out one woman died in the car she never made it to the hospital from the lineup this disease is deadly serious my son has been in the icu in los angeles six times over the last two and a half months my friend of forty years dropped dead from the coven

085a week and a half ago these people are dangerous not only to themselves but their children and their community at large don't listen to them they are the minority this man speaks up thank you very much [Music] honestly you guys are so embarrassing we're her compassion for humanity yes if we could have water thank you maria de la caprenzo wayne new jersey i'm here tonight as a parent who believes in science and facts and i'm here to say there are many more like me watching from home instead of attending in person because they have young children and immunocompromised loved ones they want to protect as the vaccine cannot yet be given to everyone they take necessary reasonable precautions to protect their families including getting vaccinated wearing masks social distancing washing their hands frequently and avoiding

086large gatherings especially in places where others can't be bothered to follow simple recommended disease prevention guidelines i'm here to make their voices heard and to show that we care about students and teachers health we don't want others to get sick from covid and we do our part to help prevent that from happening we don't want our schools to shut down again forcing our kids out of the classroom and into a virtual environment away from their friends and teachers masking is one of the simple precautions we can take all is one of the simple questions we can all take and is not to do so is irresponsible and dangerous some will argue that there is no need to mask because the transmission rate among children is low the reason transmission rates were so low last year

087was because precautions were taken class sizes were reduced and split into cohorts to limit exposure social distancing was enforced masks were required hand washing was highly encouraged children and staff exposed were quarantined strict classroom cleaning protocols were put in place and building hvac systems were upgraded yet in spite of all of this schools were forced to go virtual on multiple occasions due to covet infection spread all this was prior to the outbreak of the more deadly and highly contagious delta variant that now dominates our country affecting younger people in much greater numbers to pretend that masks are unnecessary because students to teacher transmission rates were low completely ignores the fact that they were low because of the use of masks in combination with other precautions not in spite of them we are in a deadly

088pandemic and while no one solution is a hundred percent effective we need to use every tool at our disposable at our disposal to help prevent the disease from spreading and to protect ourselves our children and our community masks are required in the state of new jersey now so it's not debatable whether we will follow the guidelines or not you can certainly debate whether you like it but you can't debate that you're going to do it in conclusion i just like to thank the board for their time for all they do for all of us i know it's a thankless job as you can hear there's not a lot of a lot of support in the audience right now but we appreciate it and the people at home appreciate it they've asked me to you know

089convey that message so thank you [Applause] hello my name is donald challa i live in wayne 20 cherry way wayne valley class of 2012 rutgers class of 2017. thank you for the opportunity to be heard the public interest research non-profit group uncoke my campus recently published a report that details the dark money behind the misrepresentation of these curriculum changes across america the report is called coke funded moral panic ultra right think tanks and critical race theory koch industries is the second largest private u.s company by revenue 110 billion in 2019 their largest stake is in oil why is koch industries funding a network of think tanks foundations websites media personalities etc that publish hit pieces and propaganda that worked to misrepresent the american public education system in 1996 koch industries executive vice president and board

090member richard fink published a document called the structure of social change in it he outlined a three-step process for motivating political change by exploiting culture as a means to that end i don't have time to get into the numerous books documentaries independent investigative reports politicians from both sides of the aisle employees and executives of koch industries that have spoken about this company and its heavy influence on american political funding lobbying and discourse but i will say this is not a conspiracy it's a company so companies will do whatever it takes within their legal bounds maximize the bottom line we all know that we all a lot of us work for companies coke industries is desperate the oil giant has a lot to lose as renewable energy and electric cars get cheaper public acceptance of climate

091change grows and the carbon dividend policy gains bipartisan support bipartisan support back to education polling data shows that the higher level of education you obtain the more likely you are to be politically active and lean left this is true now this was true ten years ago year after year the education divide is growing the effects of climate change are also becoming more apparent throughout the years koch industries has contributed billions to lobbying for voter suppression lobbying for looser greenhouse gas em emissions standards and spreading climate change misinformation their latest strategy is to undermine faith in the public education system through the manufactured boogie of critical race theory this propaganda stirs up misled grass loots of grassroots support for defunding and dismantling public education the institution that trains the next generation of critical thinkers as it

092now stands our public education system is the front line between our is the front line and its democracy and climate reality versus koch industry deep pockets i know there's some authenticity behind the local opposition to the curriculum changes but the report shows that it's been hijacked by a political strategy corporate giant they will drive this movement as far as they possibly can hopefully in their goal to get rid of wayne schools let's bring this back home sir why live in wayne without schools that's your time thank you thank you i encourage wayne residents to follow the money follow the money can i start luisa wilshire ate stonehill road i'd like to speak on choice i come from the world of pharmaceuticals i lived science educating physicians sadly now evidence-based science has gone out the window

093the government that directs each of you has chosen to follow one narrative and eliminate medical choice they are ignoring the fact that science is not fact science is meant to be challenged and that used to be respected in the free united states of america instead many instill fear to mandate medical interventions like masks and vaccines that have no true statistically significant data yet because they are still experimental to mandate experiments is unconstitutional what about my body my choice how can anyone up here support my body my choice and then believe in mandates against my body my choice i simply cannot understand that level of hypocrisy please make your choice now will you support us just like many other towns are doing or be silent and complacent what's the end goal here masks are a vehicle

094for forest vaccinations i asked my principal what happens when only the vaccinated could take their masks off one day he said well some may choose to still wear one that's the key word choice what about the others their only choice is to succumb and get the jab or be ostracized because bottom line no choice for medical interventions will lead to visual segregation and discrimination of unvaccinated teachers and students you are already discriminating with your punitive quarantine rules that i can't seem to understand the cdc is even confirming that vaccinated can get coveted and transmit it if we use common sense everyone would need to quarantine except those who have recovered from the virus and have immunity are you supporting them just getting ignored and punished the nea sure does they recently hosted a training for

095teachers to push vaccines on students in school they're even bribing teachers with prizes and they have an app to record their progress so our kids are pawns now in a competition how many of your teachers were involved in this medical training of non-medical personnel i would like to know tonight from each of you do you support this my children go to school to learn academics not experimental medical interventions or politics i have taught them to say no to experimental drugs please don't teach them differently my sons will speak up about the true misinformation if they have to the government overreach is way too far it makes me feel like my kids are not in a safe place at school please do something about it choose to take a stance for our kids who you should

096be representing they are your job thank you [Music] dana aliquin carroll place i went back and forth with myself a few days now if i should speak tonight the feeling that my words would just fall flat on deaf ears was the main driving factor on this internal debate of mine but here i am because if i'm not going to fight for my kids who will tonight all i'm asking for from the board from school health officials from literally anyone at this point is to show me as a parent a single peer-reviewed scientific study that found wearing a basic cloth or surgical mask will protect my child or any of you for that matter from contracting or spreading covid just one study is all i'm asking for but if you want me to save you time

097guess what there is none not a single one but you know what studies are out there ones that came to the findings that these masks you are requiring do absolutely nothing but provide a sense of comfort for the paranoid and the misinformed person now i support anyone who wants to wear a mask that is their choice to do so but if i'm going to respect their right they need to respect mine i get it some kids are perfectly fine with wearing a mask all day and that's great but kids are not all the same one thing we can all agree on is that they are walking germs did you know that when wearing a mask the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages enter the olfactory nerves

098and travel into the brain did you know that wearing a mask causes heightened airway resistance during exhalation and can lead to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the blood did you know that when masks can be vectors of pathogens if they become moist or are used for too long these kids these are kids we are talking about they are touching the desk their shoes doorknobs and god knows what else all while touching their masks to constantly adjust it or to take it on and off to eat facial expressions are integral for kids who are learning how to signal fear confusion and happiness covering a child's face mutes these non-verbal forms of communication and can result in robotic and emotionless interactions anxiety and depression seeing people speak is a building block of phonetic development all we

099ever hear thrown around by the board and others in this room is the word misinformation what i talk about tonight isn't misinformation that was right on social media it's information and studies from the experts in their field the pro mask people's god himself dr fauci recently said in an interview that although there are no studies that bask back masking for kids hopefully this will be a temporary thing temporary enough that it doesn't have any lasting negative impact on them hopefully it won't cause a lasting negative impact president biden's covet epidemiologist said many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out dr marguerite greets bryson md phd who is one of europe's leading neurologists has gone on record stating the rebreathing of

100our exhaled air will without a doubt create oxygen deficiency and flooding of carbon dioxide and finally i'll leave you with one last study i found it interesting a research study by dr markery and his colleagues from johns hopkins university they found that the 42 billion national institute health spent on research last year less than two percent went to covet clinical research and not a single went grant was dedicated to studying math on children not a single one [Applause] i am so nervous um my name is lauren heaney i reside in pompton lakes i'm a first grade teacher at ap trahoon school hi mom so i 100 oppose mandatory masking of children and adults for that matter regardless of their vaccination status this piece of cloth that we ask these children to wear is teaching them

101to fear one another this piece of cloth is teaching our children that they are the disease spreaders here's a story this past year i offered to tie a child's shoe it's par for the course in k123 and she said with fear-stricken eyes i don't want to get you sick she's six years old being masked and appropriately distant proved to be very difficult for students seated anywhere but in the front row imagine having to look through i don't know two or three layers of plastic plexiglas imagine sitting in your little plastic cubicle being able to not see the screen the board or the work at the front of the room did i mention they're six years old now it's time for foundations that's our phonics program i adore fundations except reviewing and learning new sounds was

102darn near impossible this year is it a v or an f i don't know they can't understand me i can't understand them is it p or t well it's hard to tell through my mask which felt more like a muzzle throughout the year the students struggled not being able to see my mouth form those letters this affected their writing as well as their reading what about facial expressions and nonverbal prompts not for nothing i've worked 16 years to perfect the you need to sit down and get to work look and it was lost this year but what about the smiles and this joy and expressions of happiness over a job well done they didn't see that much either another story throughout the year the students would ask me mrs heaney come sit outside with us

103so we can see your face and we can talk with our faces free their words not mine we've learned from professional development after professional development that one size does not fit all in education masking should be no different so here's the big finish i'm asking you to petition the governor and have him reverse his mandatory mask mandate like several other districts are doing [Applause] i'm a parent and the parent is the first and most important teacher to their child it should be their choice not the governments we want freedom not force thank you for your time [Applause] hi my name is emily duhain and i'm a teacher at albert pacinter unit school in wayne i teach fourth grade i speak on behalf of many teachers in this district along with lauren heaney who share my

104feelings which i'll explain in a moment as you are well aware the majority of this past year was spent either in the hybrid model with masks or locked down and forced to teach virtually in late april all cohorts were finally reunited in person together and in june mass were made optional due to the extreme heat when people ask me to describe the school year i tell them that the day the mass were optional was the day that my students came to life and some sense of normalcy was restored in the classroom there were parents who respectfully still chose to pass their kids but overall there was more chatter laughter participation interaction and smiles simply put my students were jubilant and wanted to hug each other almost as if they had forgotten what it looked like

105to look each other in person i've always loved my job i love my students i love their different personalities most of all i love their smiles and right now that is something that they are being robbed of it's also something that's being taken away from teachers like myself it's a powerful tool that i use when i greet my students in the morning since a student is having a bad day or simply for no reason at all other than the sheer fact that smiling can instantly create a feeling of warmth care and acceptance a smile sets the tone for the day i've not even touched upon other facial expressions that are crucial from both a human and educational level as a teacher i cannot emphasize enough how frustrating it is to people unable to communicate with

106my students in a non-verbal manner simply put masking discourages of the classroom participation socialization and interaction moreover have we considered that kids may hide their sadness grief worry fear and anxiety behind their mask and how are we are teachers supposed to encourage and edify them when we cannot see how they feel the masks the shields the standing three feet apart the incessant washing of hands and non-sharing of materials we are conditioning them to view one another as nothing but a walking disease a vector a risk they are being trained to live in a constant state of fear what kind of psychological damage are we causing by implementing a mandate that has no scientific basis whatsoever please do not misunderstand me i have no less respect for any parent who chooses to master child i would

107never force anyone to remove their mask that's their personal choice i am simply requesting that you give families the same choice of having their child wear a mask or not i'm urging you to petition governor murphy to make mass optional i am one teacher one voice you on the contrary are many and represent a very large district in the state who will stand up for the kids who will defend their right to breathe freely [Music] uh madam president before you uh push the button may i first thank you uh and especially ms put up for your kind words about roxanne i was part of that great 68 school in kennedy high school in patterson my name is norman robertson levenberg lane in wayne i have to tell you i have become more and more concerned

108about the direction that the board is taking i understand why parents are concerned i recently reviewed the summer reading guide for middle school students i was especially struck by two of the book clubs that the district suggested one was on the history of the civil rights movement the other one was a book club on activism one book was common to both of these clubs and that's this one stamped by professor ibram candy well known the guides summary to this book says that the book quote reveals the history of racist ideas in america and inspires hope for an anti-racist future and we all know that anti-racism is a political doctrine let me read to you one bit of history from that book just so you hear it it's inv it involves the civil rights act of

1091964 which was a watershed event in american history and especially civil rights history professor candy writes this about the passage of that law quote but what did it mean on paper it would mean that discrimination on the basis of race was illegal but what it actually meant and actually was italicized in that sense but what it actually meant was that white people even those in favor of it in theory could then argue that everything was now fine that black people should stop crying and fighting and get over everything because now things were equal dr kendy called the new law a political play by president johnson for the upcoming election then he went on to say quote but george wallace the governor of alabama and the ultimate racist threw a major wrench into johnson's reelection plans

110wallace had taken a public stand for segregation the year before and received a hundred thousand letters of support mostly from northerners these fan letters professor kendy wrote quote proved painfully that everyone the north and the south hated black people i'll say that sentence again that those fan letters quote proved painfully that everyone the north and the south hated black people really is this really the history of the civil rights movement that you wish to teach our children in middle school that the civil rights act of 1964 was simply an exercise in racism that martin luther king sacrifices were for nothing that everybody hated black people in 1964 it just is not true it just is not true you speak of helping our children become critical thinkers it was mentioned today but critical thinking requires an

111objective look at all sides of an issue professor kendy is a self-proclaimed radical far left of center thinker that can't be three minutes i guess he counted the part where i thanked you but many years ago we did not we let you have that time so next event i just want to say that i agree with somebody who brought a sign into the last meeting that said my child is not your activist [Applause] hi how are you um my name is sandy and i live in wayne um i have a question actually from ms kumar i i heard when you gave your i guess your committee of education summary very quickly i think you said something you made a change to the psychology course i guess in the high school um ma'am address the chair

112oh okay so um if i can ask can we know what the change was and i'm bringing that up just because in the um the diversity consultant's presentation you know she put in there that intersectionality should be included in the psychology course so i just want to confirm because you know i know there's misinformation and mr toback wants to do away with misinformation and i'm trying to get to the bottom of misinformation but um i i guess he doesn't have time for me anymore because that's like that was the response i got so i just want to know um is is that the change to the psychology course that intersectionality should be included um in the psychology course um if it is just i'm just telling you intersectionality is an aspect of critical race theory

113so that's why that's my question um and then i just want to really say that i do not support these mass mandates for the children and you know even after hearing mr toback said that the the governor is possibly going to mandate vaccines i just think that's appalling and horrifying and um it's just not right and again i'm i'm asking you just like other people did to reach out to the governor and just put an end to this um or keep it choice it should be freedom of choice that's that's all that we want here um i know my child does not want to wear his mask i i for children none of them want to wear their mask and i pray that they don't mandate vaccines for children or or for teachers it's not

114right it's not right thank you [Applause] i always feel short when i come up here um cindy simon rats a road first of all i believe we're all fellow humans i belie yes really and i believe that we all deserve equality of opportunity my own life experiences tell me that not everyone shares those beliefs when i was in school i had teachers deny me equal opportunity i had students torment me for who i was as a person with a disability now i'd like to say you know that was a long time ago that doesn't go on anymore yet somebody just said behind me yes it does they can hear i just can't see well it does it goes on and it's not only about disability it's about other characteristics and demographic groups as well and

115apparently it's even about being friends with or supporting people who don't look like you that gets children made fun of picked on and threatened this has got to stop i believe firmly that hard work is how you succeed i have worked incredibly hard to get where i am but i've also had to deal with bigotry and discrimination based on being a woman based on my religion based on disability and those things are real we can't pretend they don't exist that doesn't mean anyone in this room is responsible for doing any of those things because we also cannot accuse people based on whatever demographic group they are part of of doing things the people who are responsible for those actions are the individuals who took them only but they do exist they are out there we

116need to understand that we need to teach our children that we are all equals we are all deserving of equal opportunity and we need to teach our children to work hard to study hard to pursue their goals i will tell you as a college professor the students of mine that don't pass my classes are the ones who didn't do the work the ones who do the work generally pass thank you good evening [Applause] good evening jennifer leighton 48 terrace road um before i get to what i wrote i just want to address there was something that was brought up by one of the board members about asking about vaccination status of a teacher so i just want to put this out there pfizer and moderna are still in active trial until 2022 and 2023 respectively

117they're still in trial so there's that and um the other thing is that our wayne police actually just learned that their life insurance doesn't cover them if they get the vaccination so when you think about asking this of your staff please keep that in mind because they were informed by a lawyer that your life insurance doesn't cover you if you get the vaccine under a ui so just food for thought all right so while there's that [Applause] i'm here tonight to bring to your attention that having officially i've officially notified james fallon elementary school that my daughter will not be attending kindergarten this year this wasn't an easy decision to make but it has become clear that wayne public schools does not really have an interest in supporting or representing parents who have valid concerns

118about their young children being masked for over seven hours a day for your reference i have emailed each one of you a list of 47 studies citing inefficacy of masking especially when not using an n95 which our children aren't we know that if you were truly interested in following the science i suggest you take the time to go through these studies and see that subjecting children to this daily is not helpful especially for their social emotional and mental well-being while we are speaking about preventative measures i've also included an article for you just published by the new york times that's titled anti-covet barriers probably don't help and may make things worse and it seems like the district should probably take special note of this before investing more of our taxpayer dollars and more of this

119plastic like we see tonight although my child is not enrolled in wean public schools i'm asking you as a lifelong resident that you put aside any bias or apathy and stand for all of your constituents in this town over 65 boards of education in new jersey had planned their opening mask optional and are now directly writing to the governor to give parents the choice of masking their child or not blanket measures blanket measures are not the answer for all students especially when shown to be ineffective and potentially harmful and instead of deferring blame to the state as has been done before by this board know that we expect you to contact our governor to let parents have the choice in this matter for those listening in the crowd tonight who are afraid to speak or

120for those who are at home because you may not want to draw attention to yourself i'm asking you to stand up and be heard based on the presentation scene tonight it seems that there is no normal to be seen for our children in schools now or in the future if we all don't get involved please let the people we elect know that all of our voices matter in november vote education first on the board of that ballot [Applause] one two three [Applause] hi my name is janine i live in wayne um while i understand that bill 4454 was signed into law during the parent forum we asked them to look into seeing if the law can be interpreted to reflect the home community we did check into that and the answer is yes so this

121law mandates the learning standards but it does not mandate this the specific curriculum the curriculum is being written right now for sex ed and it will be approved by all of you in the spring of 2022. with that said there are many parents that have issues with some of the bullets that were in the handouts from the forum and we hope that you as our board listen to our concerns and have age-appropriate curriculum and not what has been shown to us as far as anal sex oral sex and masturbation because that is disgusting to teach to these young children i don't know if it's a fetish or if it's smut or what but it's gross so we would also like you to consider an opt-in option instead of an opt-out option because opting out doesn't

122mean that every child in this town is going to opt out of that so if we have an opt-in option you will let the parents know what you're deciding to teach to the children and they'll have a chance to say yes i want my child to learn that by you or i'll teach them myself so also from the forum there was a diversity equity and inclusion topic where we want to have the clarification on the teams that are being formed in each one of the schools so supposedly there's going to be parents on those teams how do we get our names on that list because a lot of us want to be part of that i myself already reached out to my principal on it i'm just waiting to hear back from him on the

123mask topic while i understand there is an executive order in place that binds the district to mandate these masks what i do want to know is when you our board of ed is going to stand up for our children like other towns are doing against this tyrannical governor in your presentation you also state there are different terms for vacs and not vacs why you do realize that vaccinated people still spread the virus right so you also keep referencing science here are the stats off of the newjersey.gov since the start of covid two children have passed away from covid with underlying conditions of the age of 5 through 17. you can go to the website i can send it to you and here are the stats right here so the science shows that children may get

124sick from this virus but by you masking them is worse than what the virus is going to do so we do not need these measures because the flu kills more children than this virus has ever done thank you my name is alison grillo lions high drive east and i was not planning on speaking tonight but after sitting here and watching the apathy on all of your faces i am disgusted by this board i moved to this town in 2008 when i was pregnant with my son for this school system and i'm here to tell you that my son is pulled out he is going to another school i have been showing up at all of these board of ed meetings and i've been watching every single one of you with your apathetic faces i've been

125looking at miss kumar and her political agenda okay and i am absolutely disgusted and my question for you is who on this side of the room is going to be receiving an email or a mention how you are especially grateful when someone can when someone i'm not going to mention came to the board of ed meeting to speak about our diversity equity and a inclusion goal you are so one-sided and you are only standing for one side of the room so my question is when are you going to look at the other people who have been speaking out since may and listening to what they have to say you should be embarrassed and ashamed with the agenda that all of you are letting happening in this town and it's not gonna it's not gonna go

126on with my son it's not gonna go on and i hope to god that these people wake up and realize that their children are political pawns [Applause] hi good evening michael fatale stone hill road uh first i want to start out by saying thank you to the wayne police department and the men and women for doing such a great job keeping us safe here tonight uh next i want to thank you guys for hosting a wonderful event at wayne hills high school uh it was very informative the thing that i brought back though is s-4454 i went home i started digging into 18a 35. things that were left out in the sex ed curriculum abstinence where is that in any of the forms that was provided to anybody if somebody could please point that out

127to me or email me i would appreciate that a lot of parents expressed their concern with masturbation anal sex uh pregnancy abortion parenting things starting at such a young age the thing that i ask to you is you have a very powerful voice listen to these parents listen to the job that they're coming up with they want to be a part of things when you go to governor murphy about the masks because again you guys have a powerful voice please reconsider the curriculum that you guys are going to write when you brainwash your kids it's as easy as somebody said it before one two three [Applause] i'm andy smith i live at 34 lucas lane in wayne i'm the parent of three students in our school system here anecdotally my two middle schoolers both read

128stamped and ghost boys and neither of them is a cop-hating communist so we can settle down a little bit about that madam president dr toback members of the board there is a well-orchestrated well-coordinated and loud movement of people here i think it's important that you hear from parents as well who supports the governor's mask mandate for k-12 schools and i thank you for simply abiding by the law in this matter it's a simple way to show love and care and compassion for one another and to recognize that we live in community where we can make small sacrifices for the common good i also uh speak in favor of greater diversity in the curriculum pertaining to human sexuality we say that we are a stigma free community but to remove the stigma that our lgbtqia plus

129neighbors and children do still face we have to normalize the full range of healthy consensual human sexuality by teaching it in the same fact and health-based way we do vaginal intercourse and heterosexual relationships whether we like it or not diversity in human sexual expression and gender identity and expression exists has always existed and will always exist to pretend otherwise by only teaching about and let's be clear it's only teaching about it's not how to by teaching about only heterosexual relationships and sexual expression is to tell our your lgbtq children that they are somehow aberrant abnormal and wrong these kinds of messages tacit or explicit do incalculable harm to a young person's psyche and spirit i am a minister and a pastor and from my professional perspective i would much rather have the whole diverse spectrum

130of human sexuality and gender identity and expression taught and normalized in the classroom then i would excuse me i will wait then i would have to counsel even a single lgbtq teenager or young adult who's contemplating self-harm or suicide because they've only ever heard at home in school or from the pulpit that they are wrong bad and broken wearing masks and normalizing the whole spectrum of healthy consensual human sexual expression are literally matters of life and death time in my line of work thank you these are literally matters of life and death i've seen it oh i'm sorry i'm sorry your time is my apologies i didn't hear the timer i'm sorry yeah oh [Music] good evening thank you good evening thank you so i don't have a prepared speech you need a name and

131an address my name is brad katz i am on amy way in wayne new jersey thank you um i did not sew on my yellow star of david for the speech today but today i did learn which of you would have hid me in europe and which of you would have turned me over to the gestapo thank you for sharing i'm here today to talk about our children because that's what you all ran for the board of education to represent you all are here to represent our kids you're not here to represent a political agenda regardless of what your side is if you opt not to represent the children in the town i ask you to resign [Applause] i'd like to add that i attended the parent symposium at wayne hills and you guys put

132up on a slide that you are not interested in equal opportunity for our children you are interested in equal outcomes that's what they wrote yeah i'm not making it up you put up equal out not interested in equal opportunity but equal outcomes i asked an administrator i said do i now go tell my child that you don't have to study for your tests and you can choose to go to class or not because at the end of the day you will get the same outcome as the other students is that opting for our children is that advocating for our children or is that beyond utter ridiculousness at this point it has nothing to do with masks it has nothing to do with mandates it has nothing to do with crt it has nothing to do

133with whatever you opt to choose to call it with some lipstick on it at the end of the day if you are going to quote not be interested in equal opportunity but only equal outcomes you're basically telling our children that when they leave the wayne school district they will have a participation trophy as opposed to a diploma and they should all go to the ivy league right because that's an equal outcome right and they should all get the same job for the same money right that's an equal outcome but that's what you put on your slide i'm not making this up earlier we had a gentleman decide that he thinks that every teacher in town should be mad to be uh mandated to be vaccinated or lose their jobs i'm very sorry for you guys

134you're going to be fired if he gets his way we also had a gentleman earlier screaming about the fact that kovit is a child pandemic we had somebody who actually provided statistics and he said she was wrong because he of course had all the statistics we also had another gentleman earlier talking about following the money oh well let's follow the money that's what i do for a living i'm happy to follow the money i'll come back thank you [Applause] my name is mark faber i live on overlook avenue and i had no intention of talking i just wanted to come to my first meeting and see what this was all about and i got to tell you i don't even know where to start this has just been the most eye-opening disgusting situation i've ever

135experienced in my life and i've gone through a lot but sitting here watching you roll your eyes because you disagree with the constituents i have been watching you i've been watching you for hours now and when you disagree it i mean maybe you should put your mask on because maybe you'll hide it better because you don't i could see which which side you're following and which side you believe in and who you're going to fight for and who you're not and that's not your choice you're there to you're supposed to be there to fight for the people here and how we feel i have four kids in this school system and i gotta tell you i'm sick to my stomach four girls no less now i gotta listen to you know all this guy talking

136about you know well you should teach about the full range of sexuality sexuality was taught as part of biology for the purposes of learning how you have children it was never about oh well if you do this it feels good and if you do that it's great and it was never about emotional aspect it was about procreation and how you facilitate the species onward that's what it's all about all this other stuff is for home and that's where it should stay okay then we get to these vaccination masks and i got to tell you i've been fighting with people on social media about this now i can't even tell you it just i just can't help myself but i read something today about vaccines and how the average time for a vaccine to go from

137inception to being released to the public is 10 years 10 years this is about 10 months okay you have no indications of what long-term impacts of vaccines can be and yet you're going to force our police officers and our teachers to take this vaccine not knowing what could happen to them in three to five years you have a problem filling teacher spots now what if they all get sick what if there's really big long-term ramifications for this who's going to be around to protect us and then you know teach our children who's going to be available in hospitals if there's a problem with this i mean it's just getting beyond insane that you are telling people what they have to do and what choices they can't even make for their children based on things that

138have no basis in science yet you can't tell me that this is safe you can't tell me that masks are safe and there'll be no long-term effects with any certainty so you guys need to stop you need to take stock of what you're saying and if you're going to follow science follow actual science not what you're being told not what this agenda is because if you're worried about saving lives why don't they make all the other treatments free why don't they give away cancer treatments why don't they give away insulin if this is all about saving lives why are they not focused on saving lives you need to really think about it [Applause] hi hi good evening um i've spoken several times about some oh sorry patricia brown 1500 ratzer road about the topics that

139have been discussed but that's actually not why i'm here i keep i actually spoke in january mr toback you had called me the next day but i keep putting this to the side because there seems to be so many more important things going on but we're heading into the school year and still this hasn't been addressed for me and i obviously issues are not going away anytime soon um so i i need to bring it up for what you board actually can do something about the the issue i have that's concerning to me are the levels in high school and the grade point average and the gpa that is assigned to them we have three levels at the high school actually four if you include special education special education students are not ranked and let's

140face it high school is ranked people are put in order of their gpa then we have a general education that gets your standard 4.0 gpa and then we have ap and honors kids that get a 5.0 and then we give this enriched section where we give them harder work and we give them absolutely no credit for it it's been going on for years when my niece was here she worked really hard in her enrichment class earned a b in biology for a really hard exam and her friends were in general got the study guide for their biology exam and got an a so their chances in college were actually improved because they had a higher gpa than her although she worked much harder to get a b in that biology class again we have four

141levels that we teach and we only have three systems of gpa and ranking i've been told things like i don't want my child in general classes if she's at the enrichment level i've been told that my child should be placed at the level that's appropriate for their learning which sounds good except they're the ones not getting the credit if that holds water then people in honors classes are really smart and need to be challenged and should be getting the same gpa as everyone else but that's not what happens and like i said i've addressed it to the board i know that there's a lot going on but this is there's no good reason that anyone can give me except that that's how it's been i work in a district that has four different gpa levels

142based on how their course and the curriculum in that course so there's really no good reason why it's not a 4.5 for the enrichment student and a 5.0 for the honors it's just there's no good reason anyone has given me except that be happy my daughter's being challenged but we all know high school is a ranking system to get into college it's not just about being challenged it's about more than that thank you [Music] hello i don't have a study this time but i just like to share my personal experience having gone to wayne schools randall carter george washington wayne valley um some of the first time i encountered uh i guess sexual information was in randall carter fourth grade lunch table uh every kid like a lot of the kids not every kid my

143bad a lot of the kids uh were watching uh family guy in south park in fourth and fifth grade by sixth and seventh grade i distinctly recall dr k the principal of george washington at the time he was encountering a lot of i would say unusually complicated behavioral issues he called every student into the auditorium he had a big talk about behavior and bullying one of the questions he asked and he pulled right there one of the questions he asked he told the students hey how many of you guys are watching the sopranos when you get home this is in sixth and seventh grade a good half to three quarters i recall of the entire auditorium raise their hands children are going to encounter i want to say sexual information are we going to uh

144choose the lesser of the two evils with the encounter being by you know teachers teaching them things are we going to have it the media and their fellow peers fourth fifth graders telling them about all sorts of unusual things at the lunch table are we able to hide are kids able to hide when they have a smartphone and there are a couple of uh there are a couple of uh terms away in the search engine from all sorts of unusual content are we able to hide from this or can we just keep on running from it is this something we're procrastinating well that's what i think about that or what what can we do against uh you know getting ourselves into the world you can't you can run from growing up but you can't hide

145[Applause] brittany coral 36 lawrence road does anyone know the smallest particle size the surgical mask is able to filter it's 100 microns does anyone know how many microns a single particle of the stars cov2 viruses four so why are we also playing make-believe and pretending that these masks do anything at all you the school board have decided that kids should go to school all day every day wearing muzzles like rabid dogs i've listened to the arguments and noticed that they're missing a few things namely evidence data science common sense and basic human decency you presented no facts at all so let me do that now here they are covid poses almost zero risk to our kids at all 4.2 million children worldwide have tested positive for covid a total of 0.00008 percent of them have

146died that's less than 400 in our country what about the flu the cdc estimates that 480 kids died from the flu in the 2018-2019 flu season that's more than have died from covenant in a year and a half now did anyone on this board at any point in that year suggest that we should wear masks for the flu anyone no no of course you didn't of course you didn't sorry i lost my place oh do you know what it's called when you force your children to wear masks for fear of a virus that poses almost no threat to them it's called child abuse do you want to look up a disease look up munch housing by proxy because that's what this is now do any of you know what sort of psychological damage we do

147to children by forcing them to cover their faces teaching them that the air is toxic and that everyone around them is sick to deprive them of the ability to see each other's faces do you know what kind of damage that does have you thought about it have you wondered about the health effects of making kids breathe through sweat and spit and dirt soaked rags every single day are you sure that there are no health risks do you know what the developmental effects are if they're unable to read each other's social cues what about learning to read when they can't see the teacher enunciating the words what does it do to the child's developing immune system to wear a mask all day every day you're satisfied to place this burden on the children and why it's

148not to keep them safe it's not to keep the adults safe they can all get vaccinated if they want no you do it to make yourselves feel better and to protect yourselves politically it's a disgrace and anyone who's insisting on making kids wear masks without giving the parents a choice should be deeply ashamed thank you for your time [Applause] hi brad cats again still on amy i just wanted to just i'm sorry i didn't hear you i said still brad cats still amy way still wayne thank you i just wanted to finish up my point from prior about following the money as somebody referenced before so in from through 2020 housing values in the united states of america have appreciated on average around the country 58 in the state of new jersey it's 31 in

149wayne new jersey it is one percent so i'm following the money why do people choose to move to certain towns typically one of the first things they look for is the school system in 2018 the last data i could find wayne valley was ranked number 79 in the state wayne hills was ranked number 67 in the state in 2000 which is the earliest one i could find wayne valley was ranked 15 in the state wayne hills was ranked 17 in the state so in the last 20 years our schools have gotten worse that's a fact based on the data these are numbers i'm not making them up and our housing values have lagged the state and our state has lagged the country what's the number one reason why people move to a town it's the

150school system your job is to make our school system better and if the majority of the town is suggesting to you this is what we want you to do for our children it's time for you as the board of education to do what we would like you to do so for those of you that want to follow the money that's the money whether you agree with me or not if you live in this town those are your property values as well when you eventually want to retire and move out of town that's your equity the good kind of equity in your home not the bad kind of equity equal outcomes thank you [Applause] i just wanted to come up and redress the board because i did could you say your jennifer leighton um i did

151misspeak in an effort to try and get all of my thoughts out in the three minutes so what i do want to go back to with regard to our fine wayne police officers um the statement that i made with regard to the vaccines is if they were to get a vaccine and harm would come to them as if they as in if they died that they would not be covered by their life insurance not if they got it point-blank period it was if um adverse reaction had happened and they had died from it then they would not be covered but while i am up here that does beg the question if you guys have this come to you with your teachers what responsibility is the board willing to take if adverse effects come to your

152staff under a mandate such as this where are we going to draw the line when we have something that is still an active trial if we are asking this of all of our teachers in the district thank you for your time and i appreciate it [Applause] hi i'm heidi rempel can you hear me okay do i need to take this off all right we'll take off the first layer okay um my name is heidi rempel i live on new street here in wayne a lot of very passionate discussion has been happening and i think that it's fantastic that everyone is getting the chance to speak i'm a librarian by training so it's really important to me when i am looking at information to see what the numbers are and there's a lot of disagreement about

153numbers about covid and masking and vaccination there is disagreement and not acknowledging that there is disagreement makes everyone's argument weaker so i think we need to acknowledge that however what i wanted to talk about is the research that i was doing today on the states that are have started schools up but have anti-mask mandates we have examples of what's happening in those schools on the 16th of august wbrc in alabama reported that there have been 5970 cases of covid reported in alabama's schools stationed ksat in texas on 817 reported that at least four texas districts have had to shut down due to staff and students with covid because there are too few teachers to run classes there are so many cases one of the largest districts in the nation is hillsborough county public schools in

154florida on 8 16 it was reported that over 6 000 students and 300 teachers were in quarantine or isolation due to covid the next day on the 17th of august that was up to ten thousand four thousand more over the course of a single day an abc affiliate in florida reported on the 6th of august that there were so many sick teachers who were all unmasked who had gone to a meeting and then became sick they were all unmasked in a teacher's meeting had one elementary school shut down before it even opened because there weren't enough teachers to teach in usa today on august 17th there were reported one thousand students and staff in nashville tennessee were in quarantine or isolation all public schools in ware county georgia were closed due to covid cases twenty

155thousand students are quarantining across mississippi last year we were all desperate for in-person instruction my child has an iep and he suffered last year due to lack of in-person instruction so if a mask is what it takes for us to have in-person instruction then that's what we need to do and this is what we're seeing in the schools in states that don't have masks thank you hi luisa wilshire again i i wasn't going to say anything but i i have to show the obvious in the room look around the room how many masks do you see okay so between now and when school starts we're not wearing masks not one police officer is wearing a mask half of you are half of you aren't because nobody wants to wear it it sucks who wants to

156wear a mask nobody but look around here okay so it's safe for all of us here now we're not socially distanced to be not wearing masks but oh my goodness the day that school starts everyone's gonna everyone's have to wear a mask all these kids are going to be like super spreaders and getting everyone sick i don't get it okay there are if we sat here and argued science like i said i know science very well and i would love to sit here and argue science it would make me so happy to do that however if we did it we'd be here probably later than you've ever been here and we nobody would win because science is meant to be debatable okay there's always two sides to science it's it's ever-changing it's evolving if it

157wasn't we'd all still be eating the poisons that physicians used to recommend years ago okay it changes so we have to change with it we also have to look at the two sides there's numerous trials that show a numerous studies and and and information that are showing full uh full vacation cruises that are fully vaccinated and people have outbreaks on them how does that happen okay we can't control everything what we can control is the way that we respond to our customers which are here these are your customers and the children are your customers and we don't want masks clearly we don't want masks so i i encourage you i urge you to please stand up for us please go to governor murphy and tell him even if you want masks can you and you

158feel more comfortable in your mask your people don't you represent us so you need to tell him what we want for our children none of these children want to be wearing a soaking wet mask all day long they don't wear them properly so all the studies that you're going to see that show that masks work they work when they're wearing them properly you will see that in the trial not one child wears them properly mine don't they they have them half around their nose they touch them about thirty thousand times with their dirty hands okay so just please listen to us just you represent us please do something about it please stop hiding behind governor murphy's mandates as your security blanket you have a job to do please do it thank you [Applause] hi janine

159again still from wayne i have um a question on uh there was a couple of articles that were written and then there was a rebuttal that was written in an article about us or people going to the forum without masks on and arguing with police officers and it was not true but there was an interesting statement that was written into tapping tap into wayne and it says between two thirds which is approximately 70 percent of parents support masking to keep our kids and teachers safe i don't recall getting that survey so i'm asking you please send a survey out let us parents answer the survey to tell you what we want for our children and i can guarantee you it's probably going to be mask optional because if somebody feels safe wearing a mask by

160all means wear it i don't mind i don't want my child wearing one like everybody said they're disgusting when they come home i wash his mess constantly so i would like a survey to be definitely sent out to the parents to see what our thoughts are and yes i understand there's a mandate right now but you all can stand up for us and our beliefs and what we want and fight that mandate with the other towns that are fighting it [Applause] hi go right ahead ryan battischel 63km drive um i'd like to start by um saying the three minutes um i think we've seen a majority of the conversations wrap up easily within three minutes maybe three or four that have gone over um i know the gentleman's mentioned a number of times over the

161past meetings that three minutes seems unduly short and i would agree with that in general i think that we should continue at the five minutes that it has always been um in addition to that um i'd like to ask one very simple question is it safe for my kids in school because i've heard a lot from both sides about whether or not masks are needed and either there should be a fully virtual option because it's not safe for my kids in the school or we should be able to have the option of saying that they are masks that are optional to be able to wear in because it is safe for them in school and i don't think it is a black and white issue on one way or the other on the masks i

162think it's a black and white issue on whether or not you feel it's safe for our kids to be in your schools thank you [Applause] very much see nobody else at the podium i'd like to make a motion to move the public portion second mr duffy mr bubba i'll pull my motion for the last speaker thank you sir nicholas petty 26 pulling dav um i had a lot of stuff to say but i'm actually just going to read a precedent that was set a while back in kentucky based on masks and ppe stephen petty he's got a couple initials after i don't know what it means p pecih testified as an expert and was accepted as such without objection mr petty has served as an expert witness in approximately 400 cases relating to toxins and

163infectious exposure personal protection equipment and as a warning expert he also served as an epidemiologist expert for the plaintiffs in the montessori roundup cases and for those in the dupont eight litigation in connection with his services as an expert he was deposed nearly a hundred times and was provided court testimony in approximately 20 trials mr petty also holds nine u.s patents has written a book compromising nearly a thousand pages on forensic engineering and is certified industrial hygienist and is recognized expert with the occupational safety health agency mr petty helped write the rules on risk assessment for the state of ohio and has trained ohio risk assessments assessors mr petty explained that the field of his expertise is to anticipate and recognize and control things that court that could hurt people everything from making them sick

164to killing them he testified that in his in this context he has analyzed the use of mass and social distancing in connection with covert 19. he testified that both the six foot distance rule and mass mandates are wholly ineffective at reducing the spread of this virus masks are worthless he explained because they do not are not capable of filtering anything as small as cover 19 aerosols in addition masks are not respirators and lack the limited protection that respirators provide i'm going to scroll down a little bit because i only have three minutes according to mr petty masks have no standards but and are not respirators and do not even qualify as protective equipment in contrast respirators have standards including rules that state respirators may not be worn person with facial hair must be fitted to

165ensure a seal and must be timely replaced or as in higher end respirators the cartridges must be replaced to prevent saturation in addition standards for respirators are also required users to obtain a medical clearance because the breathing restriction can impair lung function or cause other problems for persons having such limitations putting those persons in respirators can harm their well-being mr petty testified that mask leak do not filter out the small stuff cannot be sealed are commonly worn by persons with facial hair and may be contaminated due to the repetitive use and the manner of use he he emphatically stated that mask wearing provides no benefit whatsoever either to the wearer or others he explained that the big particles i'm going to skip that he acknowledged that both osha and cdc have recommended that people wear

166masks however he called this at best dishonest as an example of this done well there is a court case thank you already on file [Music] this is my first time here i didn't know i could circle back as an example making me regret guidelines guidance documents where on page one it recommends wearing a mask but then on page six admits that masks do not provide a reliable level of protection from smaller airborne particles according to mr penny those agencies have sma have smart individuals who know better mr petty points that even before march 2020 it was known that covert 19 particulates are tiny aerosols and on this he states that he insisted that insisted that the fact early on he also pointed to a more recent letter by numerous medical researchers physicians and expert experts

167with phds asking the cdc to address the implications of cover 19 aerosols during dr stack's subsequent testimony he also acknowledges that covet 19 is spread by airborne transmission that that could be aerosols finally mr petty pointed to another recent study by ben sheldon of stanford university out of palo alto according to that study both the medical and not a medical face mask are ineffective to block human to human transmission a viral and infectious disease such as sars covid 2 and coven 19 the court finds the opinion expressed by mr petty firmly established in logic the inescapable conclusion from the testimony in that ordering mass to stop covering 19 is like putting up a chain-link fence to keep out mosquitoes the judge summarized in in this situation nicely it is obvious from even a cursor every

168review of the order issued over the past 15 months attempt to control and seek to formally determine future rights and duties of kentucky citizens that include ordering the closure of all businesses except the governor deemed essential yadda yadda at the hearing defendants took exception at the attorney general's characteristic of governor's actions because he did the same thing our governor did and put lockdowns and mass mandates and the word mandate is killing me because as far as i know this is a uh we we are abide by law here a mandate's not law a suggestion is not law or a requirement is not law only if you follow it and we do not have to follow mandates as citizens of the united states we have rights and we need to exercise them [Applause] this is what

169the judge says what the people have endured over the past 15 months to to borrow a phrase from the united states district justin walker something this court will never expect to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel yet the defendants contend that the governor's rule by mere emergency decree must continue indefinitely and independently of legislative limits and effort in effect defend and seek declaratory judgment that the constitution provides this broad power so long as he writes the word emergency it does not i am not challenging her authority i'm denying it completely [Applause] madam president i'm back stuart roswer so let's let's recraft what we've heard tonight from the lady in the pharmaceutical industry science is not fact that's what she said she said it a couple of times she doesn't believe in science they

170talk about sex education and they talk about masks not doing the job well what about prophylactics just as long as we're talking about sex education dr toback they want you to tell the governor to go pound sand lord they want you to tell the governor to go pound sand you hear that are you in the habit of telling the governor what to do are you in the habit of telling the governor what to do does he take your call does he listen why are these people here haranguing you and not before the legislature the legislature makes the laws the state board of education makes the rules that you follow them am i correct on that lieutenant how much money are there taxpayers paying for for your team's presence here tonight to keep these people in

171line sir i filed an oprah madam president if i could explain 2500 bucks for these people act up these are the people that are talking this doo-doo about everybody and everybody that disagrees with them and they're spending 2500 minimum for these officers to be here when they should be out enforcing the law for real law enforcement but no they're here they act up to disrupt this meeting and to insult anybody that disagrees with them president if i could interject please please uh with our current adoption of hold on i'm sorry with our current adoption of policy and uh number one with repetitive commentation i'd like to make a motion to close this public portion second i haven't spoken if you would just grant me two minutes there's a motion on the floor to end public

172portion madam president i would amend the motion to allow the last speaker to speak i'll agree and after after that thank you very much and i appreciate that my name is wendy lemandry i'm a registered nurse i live at eight rose terrace in wayne new jersey i have had the experience of working on the covet team in bergen county since the onset of cobid and sir with all due respect with all due respect we live in a free nation okay okay so when somebody tells you to go up on the george washington adjust thank you if somebody told you to jump off the george washington bridge because he was the mayor of the town would you do it okay so we have free rights okay and we can stand up here and we can speak

173and we can be respectful but for you to insult people based on the fact that you just don't like what they're saying is absolutely insane number two covid in the beginning of covid at the onset of covid was horrible i saw it i saw people die and i appreciate the fact that you were a volunteer but the fact of the matter is that children now are not at risk for covid and if they are they're not hospitalized they are not dying by the grace of god okay every single parent in this room has the right to say what they're saying up here they do not want their kids to wear masks you guys go to the governor and you say we're having a problem in our township because parents are speaking up and they are

174taking their kids out of the school system this is no joke okay and as far as mandated vaccination how sad is that in a free country that we live in if you want to wear a mask wear a mask if you want a vaccine have a vaccine have two have three wear three masks help yourself that does not mean that i have to do that okay for the love of god that's all i have thank you i appreciate your time and i appreciate your listening tonight thank you i just have a question i'm not gonna comment i'm sorry we have a motion on the floor we have a second motion on the floor to end the public portion uh we allowed one last speaker i can't be for you no uh we're gonna call the

175call the roll mr market i can't ask a question public portion is over that's you and i ridiculous had coffee i can't ask a question i'm coming here this is my second time these are the words of order i'm asking a question whether you like to answer it or not i have that right clelia pergola i'm a resident of wayne mr moffatt we haven't we're trying to call roll on a motion well i'm laughing i'd like you to sit down ma'am and i'd like to know that if i tell my son both my sons i would like to know what happens to them because i will be telling both my boys not to wear masks thank you right now is concluded we're trying to call roll to end public portion i'll continue calling mr duffy

176mr duffy yes sirs mr duffy mr duffy mr duffy rolling roll ma'am i'm sorry mr duffy yes mr giordano for the sake of this i'm gonna have to vote no mrs kumar yes mr pavlak no mrs put up spain mr bubba yes mrs kazan i got my my two cents motion passes motion carries okay any comments from the board uh yes mr suzanne i'll have a comment if i get a point of order and go ahead mr duffy okay listen uh i understand that the the divide between this the community members of this town and it it's difficult to sit up here because i do agree with a lot of you despite what political party you're affiliated to i hate to say this but it has become political and it it has from the beginning

177to now um i i don't i can't tell you whether um it's been so political that the mask unmask vaccinate not vast vaccinate whether the state managed sexual ed this is all things that you've all brought to our attention which i agree is there are issues with that however you're at the wrong platform for this this platform excuse me let me let me finish this this platform your arguments should have been taken forward with the assembly the senate prior to them mandating it on us every person excuse me let me finish and and believe me listen let me finish please this entire diocese took an oath to obey and and the law of the state of new jersey and this and the constitution of the state of new jersey by the state mandate whether you

178agree or disagree we are on the hook because this is the governor's mandate if you don't like it write your state assembly people write your senators i encourage you to that is a democratic process it is what should be done and i believe me and i i understand that so please let me let me finish thank you believe me let me finish okay so i'm sorry do i have to clear the room we've listened to the public now it's time for the board to speak okay thank you so as i was saying what needs to be done is your your energy here in this room needs to get portrayed to your state assembly people and your state senators right to the governor and that being said i will put a motion on the floor right

179now to unmask the kids and make it optional and make a letter to the governor stating that we feel that it should be our choice so so for the record the next time don't interrupt me because i'm trying to get my point across all right thank you i'll second that motion i seconded [Applause] and we have a second and you want to ascend the governor a resolution it needs to be written uh there's this one sentence unmasked our kids uh i'm not sure how no i think it should be a choice i understand that mr duffy but resolutions need to be written in a legal manner uh this is something we would have to discuss and have written up properly and so the board could read it and then vote on it we can't vote

180on an abstract that we cannot see i'm sorry i get your point i'm president and i'm not saying it can't ever happen but it's not something we could do at this meeting this evening madam president i'm going to make an amendment to my second that the motion to the governor state that we encourage that we demand he rescind the mandatory mass policy for school districts and make it optional for teachers students and staff very simple we've done and we've done this [Applause] we have we have done this before at board meetings in the past and had the attorney or the secretary to draw up the resolution with the legal wording that is the that is the crux of it [Applause] board council i'm sorry and just to clarify just to clarify are we asking for

181a resolution to draft a letter that's as far as just the resolution should you have to left yeah certainly we can't draft a resolution directing that we're going to violate an executive order but as far as drafting a letter drafting a letter i think there's there's nothing that would prevent that but i do agree that this has not been before the board they haven't had time to consider this and it might be better sent for another time we're planning a special meeting we're planning a special meeting shortly we have a matter to consider probably within the next week so the letter can be drafted and we can vote on it at that meeting so this resolution is to prepare the letter roll call mr moffatt mrs put up no mr bubba yes mr duffy [Music]

182mr duffy yes mr giordano mrs kumar no my child's unvaccinated and my mother is immune compromised so no mr pavlak yes we're calling a roll here mr moffatt did you finish the roll call mrs kazan no motion carries four to three [Applause] okay any more motions or board comments you done mr duffy i'm good for the rest of the night thank you oh thank you thank you anyone else did the administration want to make any comment before i conclude the meeting okay i'd like to make a statement this is the third meeting where we sat and listened to the community concerns first it was crt then it was lgbtq and sex education and today it's masks crt is not being taught in our schools you sent us a handful of examples which we investigated and

183we're not deem credible we investigated these claims sex ed i've heard and read on numerous occasions that there is information being spread in our community which is absolutely false about what we're teaching young children there was one instance that was investigated that was correct uh and that was dealt with it was a presentation that was shown at the wrong grade level it was a mistake and it didn't happen again uh masks they're mandated and they're mandated by medical professionals which we are not we are not health experts that should not be our job it's not a decision i'm willing to make to put anyone's life at risk in our school district we have too many people in our buildings for me to be wrong about that we recently held a community forum to address your

184concerns about the curriculum we handed out the new jersey standards they have not been implemented yet because of the pandemic we put that off for a year we only had 100 parents at that event we gave you all the tools and information you need to advocate for your children and we would appreciate if you would follow that chain of command the opt-out curriculum the guidelines were given to you you do not have to take part in the sex education if you disagree with it to be clear though as a district we feel it's vital for the growth and development of our children to have a well-rounded curriculum and that includes health health is important i'd also like to point out well again this was started in the 1980s and it has been proven to reduce

185teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease and that is health education uh and it is mandated in the state of new jersey also it is that we don't have a choice so you can elect whomever you wish they're not going to change the curriculum they can't it's mandated i'd also like i'm not finished it i'd like to point out well two of your representatives voted for four four five four you might want to check to see who voted yes to that your elected officials voted yes to assemblyman uh the group that's leading the charge on this topic claims to be 200 families strong we here in wayne have approximately 7 500 students 36 000 registered voters and 54 000 plus residents in the world of data and analytics that would not even be considered a sample

186size our job is to listen to all the voices of stakeholders in this community that includes the silent majority and i can tell you based on my years of experience on this board the people who do not come here or write to us are okay with the education that we're delivering and that that is representative of thousands not hundreds and recently there was a flyer handed out in our schools i want you to understand that flyers per our policy have to be approved one of the things mentioned in this flyer is that you should report things that go on in the classroom to an outside organization i highly recommend that you do not do that that you ignore that advice because if in fact you take any kind of testimony about an employee and it

187turns out to be inaccurate we cannot protect you from a lawsuit for a defamation or libel so if you have an issue with your child's classroom you should come to us that is our job we will investigate it we will get back to you as we have done on every single claim you have brought forward on a personal note i i definitely take issue with misinformation because we have all worked very hard on this board for many years we put in a lot of our time we're volunteers and we would like this district to be seen in a positive light especially if that's the accuracy of it uh misinformation is harmful and you want to talk about your property values it's certainly harmful to that if people think we're suddenly teaching sex education to kindergartners

188when we are not so that is a problem now at this point we've addressed all of these issues we've answered your questions and we are moving on to the next topic of importance which is to reopen our schools and still during a pandemic for 3 700 students that are not eligible for vaccines so yeah they're at risk which is why i voted now 7 500 total students as you can see from our slideshow not all vaccinated and a thousand staff members who would be at risk if we don't take all of the precautions necessary and masks are only one tool in the arsenal send your child to school with several masks they if it gets wet they can remove it put on a clean one this this is a mitigating factor one of many open

189windows air scrubbers uh ventilation desk shields eating outside social distancing it's one tool in the arsenal so that concludes our meeting can i get a mover mr duffy mr pavlak [Music] changed your yeah