July 15, 2021: Board of Education Meeting

001get here can i get a move to reconvene second mr mr giordano okay we're going to start with you mrs reichman superintendent's report good evening everyone dr toback is unable to be with us tonight the summer is off to a great start and we have many programs in place our end of school year program started july 1st and we'll run through the end of the month summer academy is a new secondary program we're excited to offer this year to support students who participated in our resource program during the 2021 school year this program was developed to boost skills and provide emotional support for students we have a number of elementary programs available for students this summer that started on july 12th sessions include phonics math and literacy book clubs and writing the phonics sessions provide

002explicit instruction using a systematic program rooted in critical foundational skills designed to set students up for future success in reading and comprehension in the math sessions students will participate in problem-solving activities math puzzles and games to strengthen their skills and engage students in active learning during the literacy book club and writing sessions students will be reading a variety of texts while being exposed to exposed to some structures of book clubs for our middle school students we're offering an enrichment program for math and english language arts the math program will allow students the opportunity to complete optional summer mathematic packets with the structured support of mathematics teachers students will participate in many lessons targeting the essential grade level skills play interactive games to practice key concepts and engage in the enrichment activities to promote enthusiasm for

003math students participating in the english language arts summer enrichment program will have the opportunity to participate in teacher facilitated book talks and complete thematic-based projects based learning and based learning activities focused on bolstering critical thinking and analytical writing skills while strengthening reading and writing stamina the community advisory board of chilton medical center and atlantic health system was recently pleased to award lafayette elementary school with the chilton medical center 2500 cab grant to create a dedicated staff and student wellness program at the school the school climate team led by billy scara conducted a needs assessment to design a wellness space at the school which can be used by staff and students on a daily basis as the schools reopen fully for the 2021-22 school year this grant awarded to lafayette elementary school has met one or

004more of the identified priority health needs to improve student and staff health and will now help chilton medical center and atlantic health systems address these needs in our community this is great news for the residents of this region i'm reporting the following data related to harassment intimidation and bullying incidents in the wayne township public school as required in my report there were two incidents investigated since the last report and neither of those cases were deemed to be in the category of hiv this concludes my report thank you thank you mrs reichman mr moffat revisions to the agenda please yes we have a few tonight first in section m human resources items one through 18. item number six approval of reappointment of certified and non-certified district substitutes we're going to add attachments for dawn de paola

005and jane babcitch in the office apprentices cynthia i'll spell last name c-z-a-r-n parentheses teacher slash power and office parentheses number seven appointment of district staff we're going to remove a line number 11 for kelly scanlon number eight which is approval of additional hours and minutes add to 1d judith mclean which is td and pines lake number nine approval of revised items we're adding number seven revised appointment for lisa by the last name s-w-a-y-n-g-i-m for tenured track as of september 1 2021 to long-term replacement from september 1 2021 to june 30 2022 and we're adding item number 19 which is an approval of increment restoration and i'll read the resolution resolve that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent approves the restoration of the adjustment and employment increments for employee id number 5438

006effective july 1 the business and superintendent are authorized to take all further steps to implement same and that concludes the revisions to tonight's agenda thank you mr moffat okay we're moving to the first public portion i just want to make the public aware that the curriculum issue is not on the agenda this evening it was the last meeting because the goals were being voted on but it is not this evening so this portion is agenda items only and there will be time to speak at the second public portion so this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only resid this is the first public portion the curriculum issue is not on the agenda this evening it was on the agenda at the last meeting that means you can speak

007at the second public portion which is after we conclude the business of the agenda so if you wish to speak to something that's on the agenda this is the only thing allowed in the first public portion so you could speak to agenda items before we vote on them this is so that you could weigh in before we make a decision any other education items are brought up in the second public portion so ma'am this is not an open discussion you're not speaking now madam you have not been recognized by the chair could someone please explain that she's you're you're [Applause] ma'am you don't speak until you're recognized uh well you'll be escorted out okay you've been warned twice of course she can speak when it's time to speak everyone will have their turn at the

008proper time okay back to the meeting this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residents are to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to three minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an 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 meetings under old business can i get a mover i'll move so mr giordano mr bubba go ahead sir uh jim freeswick one two one two summer hill road i'm here again to make some comments about board policy zero one six seven that's on the agenda uh that's the

009policy that amongst other things provides for a certain period of time that members of the public are allowed to address the board during public sessions currently the board policy provides that each member of the public has five minutes up to five minutes to speak tonight you're considering an amendment to that board policy which would reduce the time from five minutes to three minutes per person uh as i mentioned last time i think you should maintain the current policy of allowing people to speak for a full five minutes now i would have no objection if you reduced the second time that someone can speak from five minutes to three currently you're you you allow people to speak twice initially for five minutes and again for another five minutes after everyone else has spoken that's that's your

010policy i wouldn't i think what you ought to do is allow people to speak for five minutes initially and then if they have to speak this for a second time after everyone else has spoken then you can limit that period to three minutes so that people have a total of eight minutes if they need it the reason why you should maintain the five minutes initially is because sometimes people need five minutes to make a coherent argument and [Applause] i was here at the last meeting and i think it was a disaster with the three-minute rule that you instituted at the last meeting which by the way was in direct violation of your own board policy which provided for five i don't know how that works uh i guess you suspended your policy uh last time

011but uh people had a rush i i was annoyed because i was listening to people speak and i was trying to listen very carefully and i noticed that a lot of people were just eating very very quickly to try to get in under the three minutes and then some people had to come back again for another three minutes because over two minutes because they couldn't finish what they had to say the first time so i i think you were to keep them keep the initial uh five minutes and if you if you can reduce the second time they speak to three minutes most people aren't going to come back a second time if you give them five minutes they're not going to come back a second time uh but i noticed that some people didn't

012come back because they couldn't finish what they had to say in the three minutes that they were allotted the first time that's your three minutes can i get a mover mr giordano mrs put up okay onto the agenda we had committee meetings this week who would like to go first go ahead mrs puttup the finance committee met yesterday july 14th mr pavlak mrs kazan and myself were in attendance from the board and our administrators in attendance were mr moffitt and miss lighting the business we discussed were the agenda items financial reports transportation agreements contracts and lease purchase agreements that you can see on the agenda we did a budget transfer review which is not applicable right now we got an update on grants cares fema and esser we got an update on um the revamping

013of business office uh we got a budget update we went through revenue and appropriations especially x-aid which refers to extraordinary aid that the district gets us for special education we reviewed our enterprise programs um that would be our before and after school programs which took a hit of course during covet we looked at our unemployment account and the obligation we still have to the state for that and then we discussed potential august 16th agenda items and um that concludes our business thank you anyone else have a report this evening okay i know some of our committees haven't done it yet all right move on to the approval of the agenda miss kazan i'd like to move the entire gender as a whole i'll second that mr duffy mr pavlak move the entire agenda discussion roll

014call mr moffat mr giordano yes mr pavlak yes to everything no to n3 mrs put up yes mrs sheer yes mrs albanese um as i've stated at each meeting policy number 0167 changing the amount of public speaking time from three minutes from five minutes to three minutes um is not something i agree with so i'm going to vote no to n3 yes to everything else mr bubba yes mr duffy i'm going to have to agree with some of my colleagues in light of the current state of affairs some concern that's out there in the community i'm going to vote yes to everything and no to n3 i think we can come back and visit that a different time and mrs kazan [Applause] yes motion carries yes donations for the month of july it's albert paston

015sirhune school from the albert patient terune pto donation of two water bottle fillers cost of two thousand two hundred and twenty two dollars uh pregnancy early childhood center from the wayne education foundation donations to be used for the end of the year ceremony 500 to wayne valley high school from the wayne veterans alliance donation to the choral music program in recognition of their performance in the memorial day parade 175 dollars the packanack elementary school from stop and shop a donation for technology of 300 donations for this month to 3205 donations for the year 32 899 thank you to everyone thank you mr pablock okay at this time as we get ready to move into the second public portion uh there's a couple of statements that uh need to be read into the record starting with

016uh you mrs reichman sure at the last meeting there were a number of concerns that were raised and there have been a number of emails that were shared with me there was a parent who communicated at the last meeting that after the meeting she was going to share a spreadsheet with some resources that there were concerns about all of it the emails have been read the resources were looked at everything was reviewed all of the questions were gathered and on august 11th we'll be holding a community forum tomorrow morning at 10 30 an announcement will go out the forum will be held from 7 to 8 30 pm at wayne hills high school at this time we'll give an update on the district goal for diversity equity and inclusion we will provide answers to the

017questions that were raised at the june 24 quarterback meeting again if there's anything additional that you share tonight i will add that to my list i will make sure to add it to the presentation so that there isn't response the forum format will be a 45-minute presentation so that we can respond to what the concerns are that you shared followed by 45 minutes of roundtable discussions there will be it will be by sign up so a google form will go out tomorrow at 10 30 there'll be an announcement it is by rsvp because i need to make sure that we have adequate space and we prepare which rooms in the building so that you're comfortable you can be heard and they have enough staff there to address and listen to what you have to say

018the only other thing that i wanted to share is that all of these concerns have been elevated to the county office emma morell is the passaic county education specialist for the new jersey department of education she has been very very helpful um keisha drakeford is our county superintendent we're anticipating a visit from her on july 28th these concerns have been elevated by them we're in company it is a common theme across the state and they have been elevated to the trenton department of education we're being told that there will be ample resources there will be an faq put in place sample lessons i have yet to receive anything and and what i'm doing right now is working with um the standards that we're told should be implemented in the 2021-22 school year and looking at

019ways to in an age-appropriate manner deliver instruction that seems reasonable and fair again there's a lot of work we have a full year where we would be doing curriculum development looking at resources i do realize that there are resources that were questioned and i understand that and i apologize for that we do have a year where we have to look at resources and do an audit of these resources we have created a checklist so that all resources are vetted through our curriculum department brought to the education committee and approved and they will be posted online with our curriculum documents so parents will be fully aware anything that's included in the family and health physical and health units parents have an opportunity to opt out of and and we will also be able to communicate as

020time goes on what the procedures are for opting out of lessons i think there was a lot of misinformation and i know there were concerns about the consultant last year we brought in a consultant to educate us because this is not an area where i have background training expertise and it was a time for us to learn and seek information uh we we are in a much better place um you know have been seeking out training having conversations and listening to all of you and and again communicating with our county office and the state department so that we can seek out additional guidance and do this in a manner that's suitable and appropriate so you know i know that there are a lot of people here tonight i anticipate there may be additional questions and

021my goal tonight is to just gather up anything additional that i may have missed and make sure that we're prepared to respond on august 11th so tomorrow at 10 30 is when the announcement will go out and uh they'll be it'll be on our website and it will be emailed directly to all parents in the community thank you thank you mrs reischmann mrs put up i have an update to read regarding wea negotiations we understand that misinformation has been shared regarding the negotiations process between the wayne board of education and the wayne education association we are happy to share more information with the community the wayne board of education and the wayne education association have been engaged in contract negotiations for a successor agreement to the current contract which expired on june 30th 2021 however

022the terms of the contract remain in effect until a new contract is agreed upon while we have not reached a settlement the wayne board of education extended a written offer to the wayne education association which the board considers fair and responsible the written offer includes competitive raises for all staff members for the next three years excellent medical and dental insurance and increases for staff members at the very top of the salary guide the wea rejected the offer last week and made a number of counter proposals ultimately an agreement has not yet been reached and the parties have been assigned a mediator to help resettlement the key provisions of the offer made by the board of education include salary increases of 2.5 percent in the first year 2.9 in second year and 2.73 in the third

023year an additional 500 per year for staff members at the very top of the guide for each year of the agreement was also agreed upon also proposed by the board however in year one of the agreement where a 2.5 salary increase is offered this includes consideration of projected savings to many wea members from the new new jersey educators health plan which is equal to another increase of 0.8 percent of salaries savings to the employees and a significant loss to the board in other words in combination wea members in the new jersey educators health plan will see an increase of 3.3 percent when considering savings for the new plant the only other outstanding major issue is that a full-time release provision for the wea president full-time release for a union president means that the president of

024the teachers union works full-time on union business and does not maintain any teaching responsibilities while maintaining their salary and benefits no other bargaining units in wayne have a full-time release president very few districts in new jersey offer full-time release to their teachers union president while the board of education currently allows for full-time release under the current agreement with the wayne education association the cost for this falls in a large part of the members of the wayne education association while the board of education and ultimately the taxpayers of wayne cover the remaining costs including 100 percent of the benefits package and 25 percent of the union president's salary in consideration of the position of the wayne education association regarding a full-time release for their president the board offered a compromise the board proposed that the current

025wea president resume a partial teaching schedule like the prior wea president did instead of not teaching at all the board of education's proposal and the compromises offered are fair and financially responsible it reflects the board's appreciation and respect for our teachers and our secretarial staff thank you thank you mrs putta okay this portion of the meeting is open to comments from open to citizens for comment on any topic residents who 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 meetings

026under old business can i get a mover i'll move mr pavlock second mrs cher okay ready when you are sir just give me one second okay thank you my name is jack gavin 44 ellis road west caldwell i don't think it's on sir i'm sorry i don't think the mic is on unboxing check check you just talk thank you good evening thank you for the opportunity my name is jack gavin 44 ellis road west caldwell i'm known as the facts matter guy for obvious reasons that message supports science journalism history and truth in general i also support and distribute free copies of the us constitution see me later if you would like one i have two fine grown sons whom i dearly love raising them required constant care and attention when they would succeed i

027would be proud and cheer when they would be weary i encouraged be ignorant i informed or i corrected that is what a parent does also i have one constitutional democratic republic whom i dearly love likewise it requires constant care and attention when it succeeds such as in the moments when it does live out the true meaning of its creed i am proud and cheer when it's weary i encourage when it's ignorant i use my first amendment rights to inform and when it errors i petition for address of grievances that's what a patriot does these last two ignorance and error are very much involved in our national conversation today some politicians who themselves know better are promoting and even monetizing the big lie those false claims of voter fraud persuading and misleading the ignorant stoking unsubstantiated

028fears baselessly attacking confidence in our electoral system all as a hollow pretext to revive jim crow making voting harder for black brown indigenous young urban and otherwise marginalized citizens our democracy itself is truly in peril so i'm compelled to work tirelessly to save it but imagine if i had never heard of jim crow just a week ago a young adult who saw the stop jim crow message on my car asked me sincerely and without irony who is jim crow so i explained and was thanked our beloved american democratic republic requires an informed citizenry and that necessarily includes teaching them the history of our failure to uphold all our created equal lest we be condemned to repeat it the new diversity equity and inclusion curriculum is not crt the curriculum is a step in the right

029direction failure to prepare our young people to grow into informed active citizens would amount to criminal negligence thank you [Applause] miss kazan i'm sorry before he speaks can i just say that to everybody who's sitting out here and along the wall and everything everybody's do their time it's very i'm someone who's hard of hearing we're hearing aids it's very hard to hear what someone's saying when you're all talking around so if you can please just give everybody the respect and let them speak thank you mr cher i agree your time sir my name is robert nullman sixth farage court wayne despite what many of these history deniers wish us to believe the win curriculum does not teach crt it appropriately addresses actual american history directly and honestly it promotes respect fights bullying instills universal values

030of fairness inclusivity empathy and anti-discrimination so i asked what kind of complete education would leave out the factual historical missteps of our past just because they're embarrassing we have to own up to our past mistakes and learn from them so that we don't repeat them it's the way that we learn how to live together peacefully because facts matter the guy who just spoke before me is facts matter jack gavin he impresses upon everybody facts matter the truth matters crt is not being taught in our schools and just because right wingers say it doesn't uh it it isn't is being taught doesn't make it so it's the same as the the election wasn't stolen he lost we are teaching historical facts in social history and nationally coordinated scripted well-funded right-wing campaigns are not going to redefine

031the values that we treasure kudos to the board and to dr toback and the educational professionals we have for taking a common sense approach to what and how we teach our kids has nothing to do with making anyone feel guilty about our past we teach plenty about the good aspects of american freedoms and accomplishments but we also show the unfortunate warts and blemishes that are facts of life that's how our students learn and that's why it's important we certainly don't need political conspiracy theorists we don't need book burners or history deniers who are promoting falsehoods and chewing on theories telling our educators to revise history and to avoid the obvious facts are facts facts matter there is no my truth and your truth there is just the real truth teach it learn from it to

032make america a more just society to the board and to the administration stick to your principles and the established educational values you were taught don't let radical politics infect our students thank you [Applause] good evening everyone good evening board members mary youngquist 72 beechwood drive wayne at the close of the constitutional convention on september 17 1787 as benjamin franklin left the hall in philadelphia he was asked what kind of government have you given us dr franklin he replied a republic if you can keep it if we allow critical race theory to be taught in our schools we will not keep our republic crt is antithetical to everything we hold dear and that which is enshrined in our constitution our soil is drenched with the blood of patriots thirty three thousand soldiers died during the revolutionary

033war three hundred sixty thousand two hundred and twenty soldiers died to abolish slavery during the civil war [Applause] the blood of one hundred sixteen thousand seven hundred and eight troops american troops were spilled in europe during world war one four hundred and twenty thousand americans died during world war two in europe and the pacific 220 americans perished in the vietnam war in southeast asia in afr in iraq excuse me in afghanistan over 7 000 troops gave their lives in the name of freedom and to keep this republic and the ideals for which it stands on a personal note my brother served in vietnam and he saw his best buddy die with a bullet through his head my father spent the entire the entirety of world war ii in a pow camp in germany starving and

034he suffered from lifelong physical and emotional wounds i've served my country both here and overseas and i am beside myself to think that my service and that of my father and brother will have meant nothing if we give way to crt would you tell the dead i mentioned that their fight was also in vain because we are now going to turn our constitution on its head by teaching a doctrine that is marxist at its core it is unamerican it is un-american it is ungodly it is unjust it is divisive it is evil it is inimical to the rights of others it is child abuse it transfers the raising of our children from the family to the state and its agencies teachers unions with the advocacy of racism and the rejection of parents rights are playing

035a major role in divide and conquer the conquest of america by democrat socialism essentially they are doing china's dirty work at taxpayer expense and the expense of the minds hearts and souls of our most precious commodity our children in the new testament we are admonished to be careful about harming children i want you to pay attention to this please i beg of you in matthew 8 16 it says be careful if any one of you causes one of those little ones who believes in me to sin and i'm talking about sex education here as well okay it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the desert i hate to interrupt the bible but that's your time i i i'm sorry that i don't believe

036so it's three minutes ma'am no ma'am it is not i would like to finish please well you can come back i i have to treat everyone equally ma'am you can come back when everyone else has spoken and finished okay i would be yes you can do that you can do that [Applause] go ahead hi my name is lovely midar uh 23 bullins avenue um so i'm a rising senior at wayne valley high school first of all i just want to clarify crt is a legal theory that has existed for over 40 years it's not an educational theory it's not in the curriculum so just like educate yourselves before we talk um so i'm currently an intern at a museum um just like 10 minutes away from here and uh i'm doing research on the history

037of latino labor unions in america so last year last week we were going through artifacts for our exhibit um there were a really a lot of posters from women roman rights movement did you speak more close to the mic people can't hear you for some reason sorry so last week we were going through posters move it up move the mic up so we can hear you is this good i don't know is it even on lean in sorry can i restart or should i well just keep talking okay so uh i work at a labor museum um ten minutes away from here um and i'm researching the history of uh latino labor unions in america and um last week we were going through the artifacts we were looking at posters there are posters about women's

038rights movements labor strikes international unions black activists asian history in indigenous history farmers rights um and so many artists and other organizations and every single time the super supervisor would ask me oh you probably learned about this at school right do you remember this and every single time i had to say no i don't know about this i never learned about this and it was frankly embarrassing i'd like to consider myself a good student i took six honors and aps last year taking seven this year um you'd think that with taking this many advanced courses i would learn something you know learn about these events um these events shape all of history they shape who we are and to remove these events is to change history it's to remove history facts matter we need a

039comprehensive teaching of different people who can come out of the school system as educated and empathetic people with skills to positively contribute to our society thank you [Music] hi my name is rosalie sabatino 36 pittman place in wayne and i'm going in a totally different direction today the njea radical imagination summit for educators rise 2021 is taking place now i'm going to give you a little bit about their agenda it's a deeply intersectional keynote panel that'll explore and unpack the complexities of the prison industrial complex and the impact on our students families and school system that's number one next is oh they're celebrating life at their virtual dance party joy and justice then we have think global act local as educators who aspire to be conscious global citizens our thinking should expand far beyond the

040borders of the united states and a princess from south africa is sharing reflections that help frame our thinking around the movement for racial justice and equity paralleling the lessons of post-apartheid south africa these are our teachers folks then they have freestyle friday discussing ways educators are organizing and leading within their communities during and beyond the pandemic we also have body movement and exercising imagination in order to lean into the heat we must know what we are leaning with and where parkon resilience centers movement as a way to co-create anti-racist culture in this workshop we will shake roll and move out of the expectations and confines of white supremacy no experience is needed just a desire to build authentic relationships with one another and to center our bodies in our anti-oppressive practice um next the speaker

041will be cornell ronald west we all know who cornell west is he calls himself a non-marxist socialist whatever that means i'm not sure um all right educators have to with spite that i said educators have to aspire to be conscious global citizens i gave you that one i just want to make sure i give you all of these they have edu color mobilizes advocates nationwide around issues of educational equity agency and justice i found this all very interesting and there's another section about teacher teachers unions and social justice that's your timeline articles documenting the social sabbatino i'm sorry that's your time that's my time yes i'm sorry well i want people to really think about this long and hard good evening to the wayne board of education parents you have to state your name and

042address i'm sorry okay please my name is deirdre paul 96 oak street is my address i am dr deirdre glenn paul i have been a new york city public school teacher for seven years a communication arts teacher trainer for one and a teacher educator at a new jersey state university for 28 years in september i'm a widely regarded nationally recognized scholar in the field of multicultural literacy education and i have written several of the first multicultural courses that my specialization introduced into the teacher education curriculum at our respective so i am abundantly clear on the distinctions between multicultural education that values the experiences and contributions of all americans including rather than excluding white ethnic groups and critical race theory that it originated in law school classrooms and made its way into the college university classroom

043writ large as the college university classroom can be considered a quote-unquote marketplace of ideas where we explore and analyze new conceptualizations i would pause it that's where crt belongs i would also posit that it is a misuse and aberration of crt to introduce it in k-12 classrooms why because many of the concepts are developmentally inappropriate for young students and many of those advocating for crt's introduction in those classrooms appear to be confused about what it is they are inadvertently conflating the 1619 project multicultural education and critical race theory how can one effectively teach anything that she or he doesn't fully understand the response is one doesn't and instead runs the risk of doing very real harm so i was approached by a group of parents who asked me to speak on their behalf this evening

044i want to be abundantly clear as someone who's been black all my life i am especially attuned to authentic racism i can detect it anywhere and in any one i detected none in this group of parents here's that [Music] which i did detect they love their children just as i love my children they recognize that their children have lost a full year of schooling for reasons that are outside of their control the covid pandemic whether manufactured in a virology lab or organic was outside of our collective control but still altered the life of each and every person in this room these parents came to me because they felt that the board was non-responsive to their concerns and it lost sight of that which is truly important here's what that is how do we reverse the

045year-long learning loss that occurred so many i'm sorry no we don't yield time you now mr geppert excuse me yes you provided three minutes under our forward policy [Music] there's no yielding of time in our policy and if you'd like our board attorney can explain that your policy is five minutes your equipment should have worked from the beginning excuse me this is not an open discussion doctor yes there is a time limit there's a time limit and your time policy also indicates that no participant may speak more than once attorneys on the same topic who wish to speak on that topic have been heard this is a public body it'll be proceeding under the open public meetings act in accordance with law and and with the board policy ma'am you're entitled to come back after

046everyone else has spoken for three more minutes [Applause] [Music] so we we may not yield time we cannot do that we may not yield our time okay thank you everyone gets a second opportunity and that's didn't allow it i just didn't speak to it i gave the next person three minutes ma'am ma'am wilshire thank you luisa wilshire stone hill road i am a tax paying parent with children in school we hope you will have a keen ear to those who actually have kids in the school and pay taxes we are the parents we are awake and we are now in fight or flight mode unfortunately we either fight to change the direction of the board or we fly away to private schools we will find a way to get our taxes to pay for our

047children to have proper non-politically tarnished education one way or another we hope that you as a board will work with us so we do not have to do the latter we have sat back for over a year with full trust in all of your our board thinking you were working very hard to make up for our children's missed education instead the new sel program was silently brewing without any parent involvement or consent shame on all of us who sat ignorantly watching our children suffer staring at a screen all day thinking that you all had their best interest at heart and i'm not sure if you all did so i ask why the need for this radical fancy new mission statement right here how was this a priority in the middle of an academic crisis you

048guys this is a political piece of work all of it you write that you will take part in raising our children no you do not need to take part in raising any of our children to be culturally responsive accepting equitable consequences or whatever equity equitable we have asked that question to all of you what does equity mean to we still don't have an answer we don't know what it means to but it's everywhere in your mission statement so you clearly must have a definition for it please tell us what it means to each of you so we do not want you to turn our children into little global citizens working for a global community little activist that's not what we want you need to educate our children that's it ironically many of your educators who

049did not want us to return to school this year were quoted saying school should not be expected to parent your children okay no no thank you it shouldn't you were right so how about we delete all of this political activist jargon and we rewrite this to focus on academics you're the board of education please leave the parenting up to us and focus on improving education that has suffered tremendously for our children this past year what happened to academics it appears that the new priority is sel please know we are highly intelligent parents we know we will never find the word crt in our curriculum that's your time come on [Applause] that [Applause] hello my name is stacey abenstein 11 browning drive livingston and i am the field director for nj 11 for change i just

050like to make four points number one critical race theory is not taught in any k-12 school anywhere it is the discussion about how our laws both past and present have contributed to systematic racism therefore it is a theory discussed in law schools not ever with children the citizens of wayne and for that matter all of new jersey are very diverse and the schools follow suit each culture represented adds to the beautiful patchwork of ideas traditions and contributions that should be taught and celebrated by all of us we must teach our children not just respect for other cultures but also the similarities amongst all of us third history is not folk law facts matter right jack where to go we must we must teach our children about all the successes we have had in the relatively

051short time the u.s has been a country but our failures cannot be overlooked we must review our history as a whole and reflect back on what we have done well and what we could have done differently this critical thinking will help create true scholars who will be successful in college and beyond number four lastly the minority students in wayne which make up at least 30 percent of the school population according to the u.s news and world report needs to feel need to feel included they often experience being left out in many ways including telling the telling of our history because of this they grow up feeling like outsiders instead of real americans and white culture perpetuates this ongoing impact it's time to break this cycle and right this wrong the citizens of wayne of new

052jersey and of the entire us are counting on you [Applause] okay can we try to respect everyone's time [Applause] [Music] wow joan palmino 741 alps road former educator for the city of paterson for 31 years educating our children truthfully about their country's history is good for democracy and it helps them to understand the true meaning of loyalty so what is loyalty is it blind acceptance of everything that has happened good or bad if you are a parent does your love for your child blind you from seeing their faults or problems if it does you are not a very good parent so goes loyalty to your country loyalty should be such that you love your country enough to see its falls and mistakes in its history and you would do all you can do to fix

053it problems do not go away until they are recognized that is when the solving begins when our founders were laying our foundation john adams remarked that to keep a democracy there must be an educated electorate and this has been said before when ben franklin was asked what kind of government they had created he said a republic madam if you can keep it if you're smart enough to understand what it's about and what you have to fight for to keep it as the board of education you have that responsibility you have the power to educate our youth with the truth that they will need to understand our problems and issues so that they can work to solve them you must educate them so they can vote and participate to correct our country when necessary and preserve

054our democracy for those from those who want to destroy it it is your choice and i must add the truth will set you free and that's what this country needs the truth [Applause] my name is joseph lavibera hardwick road i'm a retired military officer and i'm a farmer uh ivic's i'm not trying to raid the bloody shirt i'm a five-time veteran of iraq and afghanistan i fought in ground combat in iraq and afghanistan 54 months and uh i'm here now to defend my country there is a lot of misinformation i do agree the law is called 4454 and it directly says we will teach sexual orientation unconscious bias to people as young as kindergartners 4454 directly says that i understand it might not be that's the law that the curriculum you have stems from law

0554454 signed it in march now i got it it may not be something perfectly matching critical race theory but it is a tributary of it critical race theory in terms of facts comes from howard zinn's history of the united states people's history of the united states where we want to talk facts howard zim says america is an illegal country that doesn't have a right to exist i read the book people's history of the united states and that is where critical hit is where critical race theory comes from our children are not going to be contaminated and told their country is full of racists my daughters five six years old three years old are not going to be told they're racist just because they're white you are sitting over at dominion right now where the future

056children of this country because the kids in wayne are going to grow up and they're going to move and they're going to go elsewhere and they're going to spread influence and you're overseeing their contamination by this ungodly and horrific law that is unamerican and it's sick and it's perverse and our children are not gonna our schools are not gonna become madrasas with our children becoming little fanatics educated in the lines of howard zinn that america is an illegal country you want to talk facts america is a great nation it's a triumphant nation america has led the world in freedom america liberated the world from slavery multiple times over and 300 000 white americans died to free the slaves and i'm not gonna have my country to fame protect our children thank you [Applause] hmm shayna

057kegelman ten bonita terrace my six-year-old wears glasses i mention this because it gives him a distinct look easier to recognize a few months ago while visiting a friend's house a neighborhood girl was playing outside she was yelling hi to my son by name but he was confused because he didn't know who she was she ran up to us and told us he was in her class at school suddenly i realized he didn't recognize her because he had never seen her real face before she was always hidden behind a mask every morning on the way to school my son asked why did coronavirus start why do we still have to wear a mask followed by masks are the worst for those you that wear glasses i'm sure you experience the frustration of eyeglass fog caused by

058wearing a mask all day imagine being a six-year-old with fogging glasses this causes anxiety in a child and the inability to concentrate let me add to that anxiety my son is legally blind in one eye he spent three years in speech and other therapies because of his loss of vision trying to focus past plexiglas masks and foggy glasses makes it difficult enough now trying to do all that with the use of only one eye kids rely on facial cues and develop socially from seeing expressions parents have shared their children coming home with headaches drowsiness dizziness as has my son how sanitary are these masks after their hands are all over them all day and they are dropped on the floor and picked back up and put on their face how many kids are putting on

059a fresh mask throughout the day last month in gainesville florida a group of parents submitted six face masks to a lab for analysis the face masks that were analyzed were new or freshly laundered and had been worn for five to eight hours during the person schooling by school by children six to 11 years old test results showed no actual virus corona or otherwise but they did find bacteria parasites and fungi present the less concerning findings were following pathogens that caused fever ulcers acne yeast infections strep throat periodontal disease and more the most alarming find findings included the following and half the mass they found one or more strains of pneumonia in one third of the mass they found meningitis causing bacteria and a third of the mass were contaminated with dangerous antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogens

060all sound healthy to you many of us are buying masks from our local stores are handmade on etsy these masks are offering zero protection from a virus with a particle size of 125 nanometers another thought explain to me the logic behind a mask break does the virus take a break for five minutes do our children get to breathe for those five minutes governor murphy said it was being left up to each district for the fall we are the taxpayers and we demand as parents that we make the decision for the safety of our children parents choice and the right to choose my children are thrilled to be normal again they actually go to summer camp rides on the boardwalk the beach play dates cheerleading the park etc all without math and what and guess what

061board of ed my children had the virus six months ago and they were more affected by the common cold last week or bronchitis last year my children will not sit in a classroom in september or november or the rest of the year with a mask and i'm prepared to homeschool if that is the case stop playing dictator and stop the maskedness unmask the children [Applause] [Music] dana aliquin 94 carroll place i'm here tonight to express my concerns for the unknown mass mandate for the fall many other districts in new jersey have come forward announcing that masks will be optional for their students no matter the status of vaccination my question is why has wayne not announced their plan these masks can impede breathing becoming non-consequential and do not function after 20 minutes due to saturation

062masks are only effective as long as they are dry as soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job as a parent we need to weigh the benefits and harms and if those harms outweigh the minor and questionable benefit in such a low risk group we cannot in good conscience advocate for mask use especially since the school setting remains one of the safest and lowest lowest risk environments and the entire board will be emailed the article citing my sources along with the letter i'm reading now my kids are four and six so get comfortable seeing my face and my name because i'm not going anywhere unless things take a drastic turn for the best we will not allow our children to be subjected to yet another year of

063let's be honest hell i have no problem pulling my daughter out of the wayne public school system if this is not settled by september we will no longer sit by and watch the physical emotional and mental damage of last year to continue now pulling my son that's not as easy for me which brings me to my next point masks in special needs settings my son attends the extended school year program at preakness early childhood center where he receives speech in ot as part of the special ed program why are some of his classmates his teachers and his therapists still wearing masks while the mandates have been lifted and all of new jersey is wide open do any of you remember when you were one two three or in my son's case four years old learning

064how to speak do you remember how you were taught you watched your parents lips move you watched and repeated the motions of their mouth how are these children with learning disabilities supposed to do this when their teachers and therapists mouths are covered you are setting these kids up who are already at a disadvantage for failure these masks will continue to have psychological damage and negative impacts on their cognitive development and will create more damage and delays as these children with special needs also need to recognize facial expressions as part of their ongoing development i can assure you we are here to stay until we tone down this new sex ed curriculum we will be here until you acknowledge that crt has already been making an appearance in our children's classrooms and remove it we will

065be here until you assure us that the coveted vaccine will not be mandated in order for children of any age to attend school we will be here and until you announce that our children at the very least will have the option to not wear a mask in september or ever again we will be here we are we will be here at every meeting to remind you that you have not been putting our children first and we will only be getting louder the number of parents and families that have the same feelings i am speaking to you about tonight are growing by the day never underestimate the power of a knowledgeable mother fighting for her child [Applause] good evening alex rogers also carol place um you all look like you're having a long night so i'll

066try to make it as quick as possible um mrs potter's nice to see a familiar face you're my elementary school librarian so it's nice to see you again so um i graduated from wayne valley three years ago but i felt compelled to come speak here tonight because i'm deeply concerned about a trend i've been noticing and that trend is the infestation of partisanship and k-12 education children deserve an accurate account of history the good of course but especially the bad how else can we learn from our mistakes and move forward as a country and improve on those grievous errors that we made in the past if we're not willing to teach it to our children at a young age the second point i would make is that diversity strengthens everybody it improves everyone's knowledge of

067each other's shortcomings each other's strengths and it brings everyone together as a class it makes them feel more wholesome it brings everyone together and it really was one of the most positive elements of my experience in high school and it's a critical critical element of higher education as well diversity training is present in higher education it's present in corporate america there's no reason why children from a younger age cannot be taught to love each other and respect each other this does not mean critical race theory i mean do we really want cable news segments to drive our education or do we want a thoughtful presentation brought by the board brought by experts about what our children need to succeed i mean the idea that we're going to have all of this garbage that isn't even

068pertinent to the curriculum how many people here have even read the curriculum it's not part of what we're teaching critical race theory does not exist and a lot of people came here i mean you could laugh all you want but in the curriculum it's not present it's not present right i think that i think that we all deserve better than allowing partisanship and petty bickering to affect our children's education i think we all deserve better as a town and as a community thank you [Music] my name is maria de luca pranzo i live at 14 chicopee drive and i've been a wayne resident for 46 years to dr toback president kazan and all the board members thank you for your time and all you do for our community this is a famous photo taken at

069the launch of a german army vessel in 1936 during a ceremony that was attended by adolf hitler himself within the picture a lone man stood with arms crossed as hundreds of men and women around him there held up their arms in salute and allegiance to the nazi party and its leader everyone in attendance is showing their undying support for hitler by blindly saluting all except for august landmasser who did not salute but instead stood strong in defiant what made this photo and landmaster's defiance unique at the time is that it represented the protest of one man who had the courage and moral conviction to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming pressure and most certainly dire consequences land messer who had joined the nazi party in the hopes of improving his chances of

070finding a job later defied their racist views and after seeing the world through the eyes of a jewish woman irma eckler with whom he fell in love with had children with and tried to marry um and tried to marry in hindsight i'm sure we all want to think we would have made the same choices landmaster to stand on the right side of history consequences be damned the thing about history is it repeats itself and those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them that is why teaching about the holocaust and the nazi era is mandatory in germa in german schools in addition to the classroom curriculum almost all german students have either visited a concentration camp or a holocaust memorial or museum ignoring the sins of the past and

071the pain caused does not rewrite our story celebrating our successes without acknowledging our wrongdoing both exacerbates and perpetuates those wrongdoings it only dishonors the memory of the victims on the other hand teaching the truth about our history the good the bad the ugly is how we learn from our mistakes and is the only way we can move forward and begin to help those harms start to heal our society is made stronger by being more diverse more inclusive more empathetic we are stronger still by providing opportunities for representation to those traditionally underrepresented i'm here tonight to employ the board members to make a hard choice and stand up to angry voices in service of the greater good our children and our society needs and deserves a curriculum based in truth that represents us all now is

072your chance to stand up to the right side and be on the right side of history all you need is the courage and conviction to do it be this guy thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] good evening board members my name is lorraine regan i'm a taxpayer oh i'm sorry good evening my name is lorraine regan i need your address we are with children in the schools i have a right to privacy i don't want to give my address thank you our nation the united states of america was founded on judeo-christian principles from the bible okay god made man and woman he did not make a cis gender and if anyone tries to call me a cisgender i will be offended okay i'm a woman i know who i am this should not be taught to

073young children this is part of the sex education curriculum it's unacceptable to pollute our children with these ideas and just because it's the cultural moment right now according to who's in the the white house this is not okay and i'm also speaking about the masks children have according to our constitution we have a right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness we have in the children have inalienable rights god-given rights to breathe okay to breathe and to be and to be happy and in the last year and a half they have gone through the worst experience of most of their lives they have been traumatized most of them have had to go to therapy many children have you know suicide rate has skyrocketed so talking about keeping masks on our children is just unconscionable

074and anybody sitting here who thinks that's okay has to seriously take a hard look at their heart and their soul okay because our children do not need to be masked anymore they have gone through enough okay enough and as far as the critical race theory is this is ridiculous absolutely ridiculous we have great leaders in this country martin luther king harriet tubman who actually fought for people and fought for equality and and they they moved our country in the right direction to start teaching racist ideas to our kids my daughter my teenage daughter told me this year that i was racist and homophobic okay i grew up in san francisco i have gay friends i'm not homophobic so these ideas must have come from the school and i also went to a church that was

075probably 90 percent african american i am not racist so these ideas did not come from her family she was born with love and with love in her heart and for anybody to deposit these ideas in our children is unconscionable and you should you should be ashamed you should be ashamed the nea bringing this kind of education into the schools is purely a marxist ideology and it's political and it's shameful and it's going to end because guess what again we are the people these are our children okay we elect you we are the electorate you work for us thank you that's your time okay okay thank you thank you hello my name is angela segreto i live at 11 deadly court i've been here living in wayne for about 20 years i have two children that

076have gone through the school system a daughter in college right now and a son that's going into senior year and basically all i have to say is that um teaching the truth about our history i don't see how that's become an argument it's going across the whole country everybody coming to the school board meetings freaking out when we all know i'm in my 40s many things that are a part of our history i never learned as you never learned we all know that truths were not taught so i don't understand how it's anybody has a problem with our kids learning the things that actually happened in this country my kids did even though they weren't learning everything in school they were taught it at home and as far as everybody's saying in this room and

077i'm sorry i was going to speak at the last meeting but the behavior i've never seen anything like it in my life so it's kind of funny to me that the people getting up saying that they don't need their children's morals and ethics or behavior to be taught in school if we're gonna judge on the behavior in the room at this meeting and the last one then i don't have high hopes for the children coming out of this room i'm sorry excuse me excuse me i was quiet while every person that got up here and smoke spoke i disagreed with unfortunately anybody that got up here that people in the room don't agree with they have screamed and yelled and called people's names i sat there last week and listened to it and these are

078adults you know so i'm sorry it's ridiculous but if anything has shown you that it's important to teach the truth in school about our history and to open up kids minds to people of different ethnicities religions sexual orientations sex ed is very important my kids have grown up in this school and believe me kids are doing things kids but this is your time continue oh my god long story short the kids in this town my kids grow up in this town i've heard plenty of racist comments homophobic comments these things go on everywhere in every town and all over the world all over the country this is why we're supposed to teach children to have empathy and to have compassion for other people that are different than them so again i don't get the argument

079for not teaching our children the truth about what has gone on in our history that is how you learn and that's how you do better and you don't repeat the mistakes of the past and as far as like i said as far as behavior more moral and ethics could be used in the school system because they're not being taught at home thank you [Applause] south shifano 46 normandy drive in wayne the focus being put on critical race theory is affairs becoming yet another way for the political right and its media to instill fear and provide more misinformation to their base in an effort to sway the electorate the fact is that educating our wayne students about diversity equity and inclusion in their curriculums as an attempt to address a root cause of one of the

080many problems we face as a nation with that in mind i came to the last board of education meeting hoping for the best but expecting the worst unfortunately i got the latter those speaking against the changes to the curriculum were greeted with wild applause while others who spoke for changes were frequently interrupted and heckled even a young female minority student who battled her way through tears as she made comments was subjected to tweens of snowflake so this is today's america where all too many are guided by alternative facts misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories it's no different here in wayne where many of those here tonight are once again trying to use fear not facts as their motivational tool by misrepresenting the changes to wayne school curriculum they want you to fear that the changes to

081to the curriculum or the beginning of the indoctrination of your kids they want you to fear the words diversity equity and inclusion and view them as code words for critical race theory rather than what they really are ways to make this a better wayne and a better country for all of us it's funny that some parents are so concerned about how the change curriculum will somehow be harmful to their kids yet don't seem to recognize the fact that their own behavior both good and bad is so influential in molding the character of their children go no further than the girl about 12 or 13 years old standing behind the former president at one of his rallies when the crowd started chanting send her back a reference to representative ilhan omar who was born in somalia

082she clearly didn't know what to do but after looking around the girl joined in the chan a moment that will probably stay with her for the entire life that is the kind of indoctrination that all of us should be worried about in closing i just want to say that i think our kids are a lot smarter than many of us give them credit some of them that spoke during last meeting clearly understood the purpose and the need for the changes being made to their curriculums they did not view it as an indoctrination but rather as a way to allow them to learn the entire history of our nation nation both good and bad and in turn better understand and accept one another without preconceived biases facts matter and it's up to all of us to

083understand that hopefully one day that will happen and when it does we will truly become one nation and our township can truly become one way one lane [Applause] good job my name is reverend andrew smith i live at 34 lucas lane in wayne i'm a minister of word and sacrament and teaching elder ordained in the presbyterian church usa and pastor of grace united presbyterian church here in town and i'm the parent of two i will wait i'm the parent of two as of september three children in the school system and even though i'm clergy i pay taxes because i believe in contributing to the common good madam president members of the board after last month's meeting and some of what we've heard tonight i think it's important for the board to hear that there are

084people of faith who affirm diversity equity and inclusion as a matter of faith both in general principle and in the specific findings and recommendations of the committees and consultant as presented in the report last month people of faith particularly christian people of faith have been decrying diversity equity and inclusion as indoctrination as someone whose vocation deals in large part with questions of doctrine i'll tell you that indoctrination is the insistence on an enforcement of one monolithic quote-unquote right way of thinking as a form of social control understood in this way an education informed by diversity equity and inclusion in which a wide variety of voices and perspectives are included is the opposite of indoctrination and is indeed inoculation against indoctrination exposure to diverse voices and perspectives and the critical thinking this encourages do not infringe

085on religious rights and pose no threat to a faith that is vibrant alive thoughtful and expansive if my faith can't stand up to scrutiny and is threatened by the existence and acknowledgement of other ways of thinking and other worldviews it wouldn't be much of a faith diversity equity and inclusion broadens our students horizons teaches them a deeper way of engaging with a complex and diverse world and gives them tools to navigate that complexity in a responsible ethical and intelligent way for these and a host of other reasons i commend and encourage the board to continue pursuing diversity equity and inclusion as a guiding principle for our children's education thank you [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] hello my name is eleanor bahoy el dorado drive we moved to this great town because of its stellar school system

086i know you're doing things for the betterment of our children teachers and staff i trust in the board's decision-making capacity to always do the right thing for our children i read the file that was released by the boe as it relates to the findings of the consultant tamika reese as an asian american resident in this community i wanted to point out the slides regarding quote to increase diversity of text middle eastern asian and indian authors need to be included for elementary students and quote overall need to bring in native american latinx asian american and arab american authors to diversify american literature and one more quote additional information on asia post-world war ii should be included in world history this is for high school students and those three points resonated with me these types of initiatives

087make me feel seen they make me feel heard and validated in particular calling out my own history of my relatives and ancestors my grandfather served side by side with world war ii veterans in manila philippines as the attorney in the u.s war veterans office the thought of my child having an opportunity to share her rich history in a collective manner at school and learn about the role of asia in the world gives me great pride and hope for our district it is so heartening to see attempts to make complete world history and improve how it has been taught all these years i am thrilled that we will finally include books and authors that look more like the america i know i fully support the board's move towards these initiatives and endeavors i do not see

088anything controversial about these findings we are raising our students to be valuable and productive citizens of the world and if you want just wayne new jersey or new jersey the earlier they experience and understand diversity inclusion and equity the better equipped they will be to serve their fellow neighbors and community it is our god-given duty to teach them compassion empathy which will facilitate strong character development this in itself is priceless so i hope you listen to my plea to the diversity and inclusion and equity initiative to move in this right direction thank you for your consideration [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hi my name is annette collicerdo i think i've been in wayne since 1965. i have spent close to 40 years as an educator i taught in several places hackensack high school passaic uh south bend

089indiana uh i finished my last 30 years at passaic county tech and i think i've broken up more fights than most of the cops here in many different places i really have but it's really funny these kids they fought over the sneakers they fought over jewelry they i can't remember any fights over diversity over over uh and believe me these kids were of all races religions colors and everything it just wasn't in the curriculum to focus on what color the skin was or anything else and i think the united states is a melting pot we just learned how to get along with each other the kids got along with each other they didn't care about color cared about the food what was going on in the cafeteria so i just think we're going in the

090wrong direction here because this is a theory can any of you tell me one school where this theory has been tried out and successfully done any any anybody have it you mean it hasn't been in any school and we're gonna drop a theory universally on ki you know i know we're going to have meetings with uh great thinkers people from law school all these experts but have they ever been in a high school class i mean have they you know i have made the greatest plans on paper in theory these plans were wonderful i came in front of that classroom and i go uh uh threw it out the window it didn't work and that's what's going to happen if we don't we had plenty of teachers meetings and every time they wanted something new

091in the creek i would say well why are we doing trial and error here let's go to a school where it worked and then we can stop all of this stuff and follow that good example that we see now until you come up with an example why would you envelop these kids in a veil of this guilt about our race why should we be guilty our grandparents came here from all over the world look around the room and you know as far as labor unions my mother was in worked in a sweatshop she was proud of that labor union and and and she said don't call it a sweatshirt i said but no that's one they were happy to work and do these things so what i'm saying is before you should object everybody to

092this theory that has never been proven ma'am you know the titanic was supposedly unthinkable all right [Applause] law school students her time is up ma'am your time is up i'm sorry anyway we are a melting pot okay next and why are people jumping over fences to get to the united states we need to fix that cue by the way if people haven't spoken yet they come first so if you haven't spoken yet come further forward in the line and those who have spoken need to go to the rear thank you very much go right ahead brittany coral 36 lawrence road i'm sorry i didn't hear you something's wrong with the mic what'd you say britney coral 36 lawrence road when i pick up a book do i ask myself hmm what nationality is the author

093what race is he or she of course not because that's ridiculous it doesn't matter i care about what's written on the pages that's all that should matter the content why do we have an obsession with color it sounds awfully shelf selfish to me to hear people cry that they're forced to read shakespeare and are upset because they didn't get a chance to read a book from anyone who looked like them how shallow and fragile have we become and are we raising our children to be that this is the issue that is the epitome of racism to every single person here who still finds themselves denying that crt is being implemented into the curriculum ask yourself what is the difference between equity and equality if there's no difference then why would we feel the need to

094substitute one word for the other one would have to be completely fast asleep to not notice the comprehensive swap that has taken place to remove the word equality and replace it with equity a word that still has yet to be defined by anyone i don't think this is working we hear you what i really hear when i listen to this is an obsession with injecting race into every facet of our lives please tell me what possible good can come from telling children that they are oppressors or oppressed for that matter what good is that going to do for their self-esteem i'm genuinely curious to hear from one single person what i really hear when i hear so many people crying about the need to address our implicit biases is a bunch of agitated adults who

095should direct their age at themselves if they want to create change they should start by looking in the mirror our children are pure and good and unadulterated have you ever heard of the power of suggestion we will reap what we sow and you will see a self-fulfilling prophecy if we continue to point out their shortcomings their implicit biases and the racism that they are told pervades their little beings what i really hear when someone says we should be taught the truth about our history and all the bad things america did is someone who's filled with shame and hate for the country and what i want to say to anyone who is ashamed of our country in the words of the great aaron lewis is there's your freaking door [Applause] hello i need to put that

096up yeah sorry jacob van loonen uh 48 lake drive east uh so i've lived in wayne most of my life uh wayne school has been really good to my family my grandmother was head of the english department at wayne hills for over 20 years uh my younger brother and my mother were both salutarians from wayne valley they both went to ivy league schools i you know did really well in college sorry thanks to the education i got in wayne school so i'm really thankful for that i read through the presentation last week that was presented previous to last week and there's nothing controversial there there's no mention of critical race theory there i don't understand how people could be upset about words like inclusion or equity or equality um right now i i see a

097bunch of people here who are angry and there doesn't seem to be anything happening people are talking about you guys trying to put something on them without talking to the parents when the directive you put forth was just from governor murphy it wasn't even something you guys wrote i see people like talking about how like you guys serve them you don't serve yourselves but you guys don't even take salaries like you guys are here to serve our community like to the best of your ability and i'm thankful for that um the presentation in my mind didn't have anything controversial the controversial part is stood up by some like national media storm by op-eds by columnist and those people are sending these people out here in droves and it's happening all over the country talking to

098friends in other places they're seeing the same thing happening and this has no bearing on reality at all and i wanted to speak tonight because i wanted to let you know that this is a loud and angry minority they are not speaking for parents in this community i'm a father i have two daughters who will be going to wayne schools one will be starting kindergarten this fall and the reason my wife and i moved here is because i wanted our children to have a good education and a good education includes learning true information and the the only qualms i see that are relevant to what was actually spoken about in the presentation are people upset that they're including authors of different backgrounds and it's just wildly confusing to me how somebody would be upset about

099that i think people are here tonight because they've been riled up and they want to be angry about something and there's nothing to be angry about and the the truth of the matter is that more more diversity more inclusion those are good things those are positive words those are things that everybody should rally around we want our kids to understand people who are different than them that's a really good thing that's a really valuable thing and that's that's all i have to say have a great day hello my name is marissa budnik and i'm going to list off a few events in history policing started as slave patrols to lock black and brown people up after they were enslaved america has five percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners redlining

100fenced off where banks could give investments and loans based on racial makeup christopher columbus and other european colonizers stole the land of indigenous peoples misnaming them indians juneteenth is a holiday to commemorate the end of enslavement on june 19 1865. the tulsa race massacre in 1921 destroyed what was known as black wall street the residential and business district of black residents and workers in tulsa oklahoma 300 people died 800 injured and 35 city blocks laid in ruins because a black man and a white woman were in an elevator and it was exaggerated that the man assaulted the woman the black panther party started a free breakfast program in 1968 to serve underprivileged community members with free breakfast these are only a few incidents and events in this country's history that i did not learn when

101i was in the wayne public school system the curriculum that i learned promotes that we are the united states of america we've made mistakes in the past but we overcame them because we're the usa and we can wave flags for that when really the curriculum erases tons of history that won't allow us to acknowledge that america really isn't that great and is extremely whitewashed if we are not [Music] if we are not listening to the true and violent history that is being erased how are we ever going to progress as a society and i'm not saying white people today are at fault it doesn't make us all complicit but as white people in 2021 we have an obligation to learn what other white people did in history to people of color and to never let

102it happen again and that starts by learning the truth in the classroom and listening to black indigenous people of color when they simply want their history and literature taught just as white literature literature is taught in schools [Music] okay if the noise doesn't stop don't make us clear the room stop disrupting the meeting good evening board my name is michael fatale stonehill road i'd like to bring your attention to the summer reading list particularly a book called ghost boys mr padleck what happened to totality of the circumstances proper use of force mr duffy the same why are we putting a political agenda in front of our kids do you think any one of these five officers woke up with the intention to shoot somebody exactly no why are we stuffing this down our kid's throat

103let's stick to the meat and potatoes let's create a positive learning environment for our children let's go back to our core values let's stop with this let's move forward as a group and let's push forward to do what's best for our town and for our children thank you very much [Applause] hello my name is hello my name is nicholas stelliness 576 valley road we hear a lot of opinions from adults tonight but none from children and i think you would want my input first i'm going to start with masks there's a little small part of our agenda next year that will make us wear masks in school and no one asked me how i feel about that you know how i feel about that i feel that i am going to sit through gym class

104not breathing again get dizzy after class again and then i'm going to have to know that i'm wearing a mask when i even shouldn't be because there is no risk for me let's look at this we don't wear masks during flu season the survival rate of the flu is 99.9987 the survival rate of cloven 19 is is 99.82 99.9982 it is a 0.0005 percent difference there is no difference there why are you blind [Applause] there is no reason that i need to be told by a bunch of masculine adults that i need to wear a mask on september 9. it is on it is it is unacceptable that i am being told that that is what i'm going to have to do when the people telling me i have to do it are not even

105doing it themselves why why do i have to wear a mask give me one good reason when children children don't die children don't die some older adults do some adults with conditions do adults are going to work without masks when children are going to school with masks and children do not die then i want the i'm going to give an opinion on people who are telling me that us children are homophobic us children are racist i'm sorry that's your time [Music] should i treat them differently [Applause] [Music] i don't know if you would bring your kids to read your species okay ma'am ma'am ma'am ma'am don't address the we can't hear you address the chair only please my name is beth marmalejos and i live on five miller road i am the former president of

106the special parents association in wayne i am the manager of the workforce development board founder of the wayne flag of greater wing chief diversity officer of the women's university association university of wayne and i'm telling you there's other roles that i play in town and i'm telling you this not to be cocky i'm telling you this because i have worked since 1998 to have a more inclusive district mr pablo you've been there with me and what i suggest from all of you is to do what i've done when i notice that safety town that training that your kids go when they're five was not allowing our children to be part of it i work with the district and our mayor to modify the program so they could attend when i noticed that our children were

107not part of the saturday's cultural workshop i didn't come here complain and yell i came in and worked with our district to change the program to include them because they broke ma'am when i noticed that our transition program didn't really allow our children to experience life in the university i work for two years with our district to develop a plan where right now they have an apartment at valley where they learn to do laundry cook and clean and go to shopping and then some of them who can get transported to william patterson to take classes through the district so why am i telling you this i am telling you this because we're a civilized citizen and we need to be the example for our children getting upset getting mad and throwing yourself on the floor

108like my son matthew used to do he's high-pointing and autistic is not gonna get you anywhere tell me tell me tell me how many of you right here lift your hands would like to work in a committee with the border bed to make sure that what you are aspiring for gets done with this program education restoration i'm sorry it's my two minutes it's okay no no but i'm not saying address the care please rattle up to excuse me guys let me be very explicit i'm not saying to form an alliance to work against the district i'm saying to work with the district when i realized that our children could not get on the school buses because some of our drivers and aides could not deal with their behavior we roll out a training for them

109to sensitize those that's your time so at the end of the day please let's work together thank you [Music] hi my name is evan taglorini i'm a wayne valley graduate last night i attended the paste county young republicans meeting and the most important topic we talked about was having a competent board of education that works for us and not the liberal state that is of new jersey that is run by the radical leftist governor phil murphy the real reason why liberalism is being forced upon our children is because conservatives that uphold real american values have more children than liberals and the liberal machine needs activists if this board of education is perfectly fine with removing american values from our school system in a town where the majority of the taxpayers uphold american values this november

110we will vote you out [Applause] philip rizzo 45 millbrook road i was here last month and i had an opportunity to address the board and i'd like to address you again with two quick stories about two years ago i made a phone call to somebody i loved dearly as i watched instagram photos of her son every time he was posted on instagram he was holding up his perfect blood sugar score because he's a diabetic i called her and i said this is unsolicited advice hang up on me if you want to i just want to let you know that accidentally i believe you're going to create your son's identity as a diabetic in 1980 in a home accident while roller skating in the basement of my house the lolly column fell on my arm and

111i became an amputee at just four years old at that time my parents every single time they took a photo of me didn't say hey phillip show us your sleeve if they did my identity would be as a person with one arm they did not do that instead they encouraged me with positivity they did not show me that i was different from everybody else and they made sure i actually felt like everybody else that allowed me to go on to play sports through grammar school and into high school i played four years of high school football at morris catholic in denville and i was the team captain my senior year i was inducted into the italian american [Applause] i was inducted into the italian american sports hall of fame for playing football with one arm

112and i was the team captain my senior year i went on to villanova and got my business degree and i started in my family's real estate business i was called to preach i successfully started two conservative churches in deep blue hudson county because i love democrats also i recently finished my gubernatorial campaign as the runner-up in the gop primary why because i was given positive reinforcement my entire life and i was not told this is why you're different this is why you're different this is why you're different that person i called two years ago i have never once seen another picture of her son online with his diabetic sugar score she made a mistake and when she heard the story and the correction she responded only if she was arrogant and deliberate to create her

113son's identity as a diabetic would she have been continued to do such a thing you have all been put on notice we will see if you are making a mistake and you change your ways or you will put down your heads you will plow forward and make an agenda decision to push and create identity for young black students at your time young white students that they are different we are one blood you've been warned [Applause] hello my name is ishaan mahajan i'm in 44 bullingsley drive i'd just like to point out that diversity and teaching kids about diversity is inherently a good thing it is fundamentally good and i don't know why it's such an issue that teaching kids about the failures of america is inherently at fault we teach kids about the struck about

114native americans in the navy and the native american genocide and we should continue to do so because that's inherently a failure on our part but but to denote that experience for native americans and to act like there haven't been any problems with america isn't simply history it's a fairy tale we must acknowledge the failures of this country no matter how troubling it may be because it is inherently the right thing to do thank you [Applause] [Music] cindy simon ratzer road when i entered the wayne school district in kindergarten i was the blind almost blind girl who couldn't speak clearly enough to be understood when i left nine years later i was still the blind girl i was regularly tormented by my peers i ate teachers lower their expectations for me in fourth grade my teacher

115told me i didn't have to do current events because it required us to read from the newspaper and i couldn't see it at the age of eight i looked at her and i said why can't i just write something down i saw in the news the night before she went oh okay that works i wanted more than anything not to be seen as the blind girl i wanted to be liked or not liked for my personality or lack thereof for my sense of humor or that which doesn't exist i wanted to oh maybe it does finally no um i wanted people to look at me as cindy not as the blind girl but and i believe that whatever you guys do with curriculum you've got to make sure that we're looking at people as individuals

116based on their character their personality their interests their skills etc however i'm going to share one more story with you this is from college i ran for student government secretary recording secretary then my freshman year they sent us out of the room i actually was out of the country at an international bible contest but they send the candidates out of the room and they say to the folks okay let's talk about who we're going to elect and they said we can't elect cindy simon recording secretary she can't see who's talking now these were supposed to be the real liberal folks i still can't figure out why you have to see who's talking when you're listening to them in order to take notes but you know these were the real liberal folks guys discrimination ignorance is

117real a month later i went to a meeting of an organization called the national federation of the blind it's a blind group of people that advocates for us wants the world to know that we can live normal lives etc anyway i met two totally blind elected officials one democrat one republican got a newspaper article about a guy named homer page who was one of the people i met i hung it up in the student government office it was his story i wrote on there blind people can serve the following year i was elected through the recording secretary's position my point is this maybe in fourth third grade if we spend a little more more time telling about the lived experiences of all of us instead of reading about some gross bug from i don't know

118where and we can still spend a little bit of time reading about them maybe i would never have experienced that when i got to college maybe my life wouldn't have been to live in hell in the school district because my peers tormented me and i was told by the adults sticks and stones will break your bones and don't be a tattletale we need to learn about the lived experiences of others we need to remember that we are all people we need to celebrate the accomplishments of everybody whether they be irish americans italian-americans you name the group we've all contributed wonderful things to this country and we also need to learn about how people go about living their lives and yeah we do need to learn something bad and the ugly too thank you [Applause] mark

119dacey pines lake drive uh a little power outage uptown so i just came down here for the air conditioning basically but it seems like things are heating up just a little bit maybe there's a book burning tonight maybe that's why i don't know way back in time in the very beginning there was all kinds of love and there was no kinds of sinning but then adam took an apple from the tree of knowledge he began to dine he said it seemed like a good idea at the time galileo that's the guy who invented the telescope saying no galileo said the earth revolves around the sun but the pope said telescope man your scope and days are done and he sent him off to prison just for speaking his mind and he said it seemed like

120a real good idea at the time so the witches of salem were women who wanted to read can you yeah they wanted to read you see knowledge is power but knowledge is dangerous so throw the girls in the lake and if they float their witches and if they sink oops so if you're following what i'm saying my friend john pennington spoke here last time and he was booed and harassed and he was jeered at and you say you're worried about your kids being taught how to behave i mean is that the way that you want your children to act in public as well is that the example that you want to send to them i might be wrong and i might well you you might as well label witchcraft to label it a critical race

121theory as well critical race theory is some kind of misnomer that some have tried to paint all over the historical truth history is what this brave board of education commissioners is trying to implement no matter what political organization is trying to make hay of it so come on rosa parks happened martin luther king happened you know who goodman schwartner and cheney were i don't think so maybe you know who james meredith was maybe not does that ring a bell santiago said if you don't know the pastor condemned to repeat it so know your past know your past that's what the b-o-e is preaching the first things nazis did before they tried killing everybody else was book burning so let's chill this fire i say let's chill this fire can i get an amen my name

122is stephanie katz i live at three anyway wait wait wait start it start up three three mua my name is stephanie katz i'm here to talk about a personal experience that my son has had this past year in his sixth grade social studies class there's been a lot of debate here about whether crt social emotional learning diversity equity and inclusion is really a thing here in wayne and i can tell you it is i'm all about teaching history correctly and knowing our ugly past learning from it moving on and looking towards the future that is not what this is about in fact i see kind of named as a joke the social studies class i now call it his social activism class there is no debate what political bias his teacher had in this class

123which is a shame teaching social studies there are more than two sides in america we've got the republicans we've got the democrats we've got libertarians we've got independents the class knew where she stood on the political spectrum my son was very uncomfortable anytime he had an opinion that clashed with what she thought and the kids who aligned with her thought he was mimicked and mocked he lost his best friend who ridiculed him sitting behind him followed him around the school and ridiculed him throughout the day they no longer talk best friends for years the book on your summer reading list stamped the remix by ebra max kennedy was taught in this class because it is over a sixth grader's head at 11 years old she let them listen to the audiobook and she would stop

124it and break it down for them so my son comes home one day and says mom did you know that racism is only one way can you explain that yeah whites can be racist towards blacks and it can be no other way there is no other racism so i had to digest that and i said i think some people believe that but my last name is cats so let's go back and look at the holocaust and the prejudice and the discrimination that they faced he didn't say anything to his teacher because at this point it's futile what's the point next next lesson was on privilege 6th graders 11 years old they played mother may i get started in the middle of the classroom take a step forward or take a step back under the following

125conditions if you have two parents take a step forward if you have one parent take a step back or a guardian take a step back if you live in a house take a step forward if you rent a house or an apartment or have a townhouse take a step back if you have a cell phone take a step forward if you if you don't have a cell phone take a step back by the end of the exercise my kid had no idea what this is for but he could tell you where every kid lined up in the class who was far back who didn't have anything or didn't have two parents or whatever and who is privileged and in front and entitled so where is the inclusion in this this is perfectly and totally division

126in my opinion you have the oppressed and you have the oppressor right people are oppressed in the back because the people up front that have everything are oppressing them it's not it's not years of hard work and dedication and and all that and i know i'm going to get timed out but there's so much more i'm sorry am i done yes that's your time i'll come back thank you [Applause] [Music] madam president i believe you're on the second round that still haven't spoken yet i know you're back so if you haven't spoken yet come to the front of the line please the greatest respect well that those we want everybody to be treated fairly and everyone needs to speak first before people speak as i offer the gentleman that and he well there's people that

127haven't spoken yet you'll you'll still have your chance please you'll still have your chance i'm sorry no that's okay i'm just trying to keep the line fair no i didn't mind waiting okay i'm gonna listen to everything again those are the rules we'd like to follow them absolutely thank you very much go ahead so i'm pam masick i said before where many of us are representing the uh wayne education restoration parent alliance so we introduce ourselves and um what i wanted two things i just wanted to address one as a substitute teacher i'm at preakness this month and i honestly i love being there but i don't understand how some parent some adults wear masks some adults don't some put them on sometimes and these little children with learning disabilities do not take them off

128unless they're given permission some of them when we go on our break they you know they have an opportunity to whisper in my ear or see me smile as the mother testified it is affecting them and i want to believe that you in the board of ed care so please address that immediately and tell them over a preakness that these children with learning disabilities do not have to wear their masks that's number one number two i'm going to go out on a limb here and be vulnerable because it deals with shame i'm i'm really going to be vigilant about the sex ed curriculum exposing children to different types of sexual information at an early age is damaging i was [Applause] as a young girl i was exposed to pornography throughout my childhood it affected my

129teen years i was i was molested by neighbors and the boys and part of that was because of that our children need to be protected there was no one to protect me and the parents know best that when my children were older and they were old enough to make decisions that they bore consequences because they had information that's what we do we equip our older children to handle what's out in the world but when they're young and their innocence needs to be kept and maintained and helped uh do you know i guess to be protected i i don't know how to say it anymore i i will not stand by and allow this curriculum to go forward in in these young ages the parents know best the parents are the expert god gave the parents

130these children to raise you're helping the teachers are helping but they are our responsibility and we all must work together to protect them this the sex education is grooming them for horrible atrocities out in the world today please let us know that you are with us that's your time thank you go ahead okay if they don't want to come forward that's fine wow i tell you i'm you guys must be tired i'm really tired too but i have before i finished what i was saying i have to address the few people here could you say your name again i'm sorry mary youngquist that spoke disdainfully about this wonderful country of ours i've been all over the world and i've been some horrific places and i suggest that the people that despise this country go visit

131places like afghanistan where if women show their hands they will have them cut off by the taliban and the taliban has made a resurgence by the way i suggest they go to cuba i suggest they go to north korea where they pit where there's hundreds of thousands of people in extermination camps for all intents and purposes okay where they pit families against one another i suggest that those people take a little trip there and then come back and tell us if they still think this is such a horrible country talking about the sex ed curriculum i just i had mentioned matthew 8 16 about not causing our our little ones to sin and i hope that you go to bed at night and you think about this and i'm going to repeat what i said

132but if any one of you causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck or her neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea and i hope and i say this with all sincerity i hope that is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you think of when you go to bed at night as a former speaker of the house a representative said what should we be promoting as a curriculum that teaches that all children are created equal have equal moral value under god our constitution and the law and our members of a national community united by our founding principles i say we keep our

133republic ladies and gentlemen and refuse to succumb to the marcus marxist propaganda known as critical race theory thank you [Applause] hello my name is nicholas stelli nss 576 valley road i'm back for about three minutes and after i have people at home that timed well i was it was two minutes and three seconds and that's unacceptable you are mistreating children and you represent children and here's the problem i want you to acknowledge that we are also who you represent not just teachers not not you don't even represent the parents i want you all to stand up for us do not send us to school with masks and i pray that you do not teach us anything involving crt and teach me i should be ashamed of the way i was born born because that's unacceptable

134[Applause] i have noticed that i'm the only middle school student who was here today and or elementary or anyone had talked maybe some high school students but us i'm speaking for many of my friends many people i know that agree with me and you guys continuously fight against us and i'm a big this whole year you had us virtually for at least a few days a week or the whole week or for a period two months and that was unacceptable and i'm asking you for the one time one time in this district stick up for me stick up for my s for this my fellow students and do the right thing don't send us to school with masks when none of you are masked right now because that is that's just unacceptable and it's forcing

135me to do something that none of you are doing that's what other countries do dictatorships do that where they feed their people they don't feed their people when they feed themselves it's hypo but it's hypocritical that's what this is when you're not me when you're making us wear a mask it is an option it's an option in america we have an option of what we wear we have an option of how we dress an option how we talk but we don't have an option to breathe well or or not breathe well we don't have an option to stay to stand up and say i don't want to wear a mask in a classroom because you could be sent to the office you could be you for what i know you might even get the tensioner

136in trouble i'll be on your permanent record just if you want to breathe and that is unacceptable and i can't believe in this country that is what we are doing in this town no less this town is a wonderful town i love this town but the students continuously have their rights taken away just because they're kids and assume that they don't know better they might what what's the big deal they're just kids you treat us like pawns you talk about us like we are pawns and you guys are the big overlords of us do the right thing and stick up for the students for once for once that is all i have for you today thank you [Applause] i don't think i can say anything after that thank you nicholas i think we have a

137future lawyer in the room and as far as i'm concerned you won't be you'll be breathing in september if i have anything to say about it go ahead lisa will shire i'm continuing go ahead facts we are not against history we are not against incorporating a richer curriculum to enhance history to enhance all the different cultures that might not be included in what we have in wayne we are not against that we are against crt history and crt are two different things i think some people here need an educ a little bit more education on what crt is because they're grouping crt with history it's not the same thing okay we are not against history again crt is an ideology it's not going to be found in the curriculums we've all been told there's no

138crt in the curriculum we know that it's not there we agree with you however where it is as you've heard some examples it's infused oh so delicately infused and massaged into lessons and we're not blaming you for that what we're saying is some teachers have full autonomy to just go about and develop lessons as they please as they please to inject their own political agendas into our children's very delicate fragile impressionable minds and we don't want that we need you to work with us so that these teachers can be controlled so that they don't have that full autonomy to do that i think that would solve a lot you've seen various examples i've given you my examples of my own child who was taught to identify others based on the way they look race color

139appearance disabilities my child has a disability i don't want him to be identified as the child with the disability ever that's why i'm here because of that example he also had a strange sexual um situation that they were taught about in school and it lent itself for a lot of ridiculous joking on the playground because it was not taught appropriately we don't want that okay so sel is infused in the curriculum it's it's there okay we are seeing it now in summer schools it's now highlighted in phys ed and the health sector so which really now if you look at k through 2 really looks more like a psychology and sex ed course okay there's nothing about health there's all stuff about sexuality pregnancy parenting why do k302 need to learn about that so there's

140nothing about health there is one bullet point on motor skill development and nothing about healthy eating after a pandemic that left us with increase in obesity and increase in type 2 diabetes for children there's nothing about healthy eating it's all about psychology and sex ed how can that be so the gym teachers you think they want to teach that i can't imagine any gym teacher wanting to teach that let them do their jobs let them teach what they went to school for which was not psychology or developmental practitioners they went for gym let them teach that if you need to add sel let me make one quick recommendation please do it as an elective maybe after school for parents that want their kids to have it and for those of us that don't want it

141please stick to the educational curriculum thank you [Applause] i need a tylenol i'm just going to pick up where luisa left off luis's last point is on diversity not a single parent here is against diversity it's disheartening that even our wayne media has to encourage the divide of a town and call one group of us anti-crt and one group pro diversity no tap into guy you're wrong we're not that much different in our goals if we stop calling each other names and take political affiliations out of the mix we need to come together and figure this out we are all pro diversity this group though who is also against crt has done their research into the damage damaging effects of this never tested non-proven pro-racist theory again it's not a curriculum it's not evidence-based unsupported

142theory with damaging effects do you know one study that supports crt so how are you going to allow it to be infused into lessons without any proof it does what the marxist sociologists are promising that it does do you really think this is going to promote diversity and inclusion or quite the opposite as we have already seen in our examples from the parents that you all have and the damage of this sex ed program this non-age-appropriate non-developmentally appropriate hyper sexualizing sex ed program can do to our children and communities is irreparable it's all political divisive and wrong you can end it we are no longer ignorant and asleep we are awake incredibly aware and now we are waiting for you to do the right thing and stand up to governor murphy for our kids we

143hope you put our kids educational academic needs first as you have taken an oath to do and one last thing i'd actually just like to add in myself i'm sure everyone's familiar with the song human family by maya angelou i just think it would be insightful and helpful for us all to hear it just the last few lines we seek success in finland are born and die in maine in minor ways we differ in major we're the same i note the obvious differences between each sort and type but we are more alike my friends than we are unalike i just do that to point out that highlighting the differences between us is all well and good but when we focus on them and make them the thing that defines us it's just going to divide

144us and separate us more and more [Applause] good evening my name is norman robertson lievenberg lane here in wayne first thing i want to do is to thank the members of the board i've been in your seats i know what it's like i've been in seats at the front of a room where that took up an entire gymnasium when i was privileged to represent wayne township in the new jersey senate i was on that judiciary committee that took up the issue of racial profiling and was actually the prime sponsor along with with a a black democrat senator from an urban area it is possible to work together if you should be proud of anything tonight it should be proud you should be proud that your system has turned out fine young men like the one

145we just heard from [Music] and when i heard our veteran neighbor get up i was proud of that and i thank him for his service and i thank everyone who's wearing a uniform tonight for their service so you understand i spent a lifetime dealing with these issues growing up in patterson graduate of kennedy high school coming from a poor family there [Music] all the way through you knew me perhaps as an elected freeholder dealing with our educational institutions at the county level and in the senate where in addition to the judiciary committee i was also chairman of the abbott versus berg subcommittee on the joint committees on public schools i wish i had known what you were doing not that you have any obligation to know that to call me or anything but the point

146is this you've heard everybody tonight and i appreciate that i think as i stand here uh that this this room full of neighbors could have done a better job than some consultant in putting together something that we all could agree on and for my neighbors who keep saying well it's not crt it's not crt we know that that's a complex thing please let you know appreciate the intelligence of regular people and by the way if if you believe that these curricula have nothing to do with crt i suggest you pass a note to randy weingarten because she seems to think it does [Music] the only thing that i ask of you tonight is to approach this question openly approach this question looking at this room full of neighbors uh understanding that they are your consumers

147and you're in the business of knowing what your consumers want and i believe in diversity and i always have and i've grown up in it i believe in equality anybody who wants to correct me on that can feel free to do and your smile tells me you understand the distinction between equality and equity and inclusion and this is exactly what we should be looking at but i'll quote one of the things i know about regular people because i grew up in a working class family that's where you're going to hear the intelligence that's simple using words with which you're familiar not words that have to uh arrange themselves in such a way to put together some sort of complex construct i'm sorry mr robertson that's your tutor is my timeout i'm sorry yes all right

148then i just uh i would just urge you then to keep an open mind an open heart and if people ask questions if people file things uh to get documents you can go well beyond uh the minimum that's required thank you deirdre paul again i'm coming to finish my remarks and i want to start by saying this that you know we're talking about diversity but everyone is not living up to their understanding of it so one example that i would see is that in terms of diversity we talk about intellectual diversity we talk about the privileging of all perspectives and what i have seen consistently is that when parents who have a differing perspective stand up and share their perspectives they are villainized they are called ignorant and that they don't have a good grasp

149of reality one of the things that you learn as a scholar is that there are different perceptions of truth and in addition to that you also learn that you don't know everything and you don't have a right to think that your thoughts are superior to anyone else's so for those people saying that they don't that there's no critical race theory going on here in new jersey you heard examples here in the wayne school district but i'm going to take you a step further for those of you are in disbelief about the fact that there's absolutely no critical race theory in new jersey well let me enlighten you yesterday the njea sponsored a conference as the woman previously stated that was entitled the radical imagination summit for educators now here's what she didn't mention one of

150the listed keynote speakers was tj whittaker of the sundiata akoli alliance now in case you're unaware let me explain who sandiata akoli is and discuss his alliance's mission sundiada akoli also known as clark edward squire is a former member of both the black panther party and the black liberation army he and joanne chesimard paul is also known as asada shakur were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the murder of new jersey state trooper werner forrester the purpose of the alliance is to have this man's sentence commuted what does commuting the sentence of a cop killer have to do with educating a single [Applause] child and why why did the njea's mem leadership believe that it was appropriate to expend membership dues on such an event now that's your time again

151okay at that conference as well there was a blm organizer ma'am respectfully that you talked about the group about ways that educators could organize and lead within their community that's your time and if anyone is naive enough so here let me let me tell you one last thing blm says everyone gets the same amount of time the nuclear family again why was this speaker at nj why are you still speaking your time is up alison rocco spruce terrace um okay so i have the summer reading list here i'm sorry i didn't even hear you begin did you i'm sorry did you state your name allison rocco allison rocco thank you um so i have a summer reading list here and you're saying that crt is not in our schools however on their reading list here

152there is a book from ibrahim ex candy okay ibra max kendy has stated white identity is inherently racist the only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy for current discrimination is future discrimination in order to be truly anti-ra racist you also have to be truly anti-capitalist so and then we have a book on here called ghost boys okay that's about we have five officers in this room that says that 12 year old jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat as a ghost he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as unjust and brutal killing so i i do not think this book should be on our kids list okay [Applause] both of

153those books my second point here is the new new jersey learning standards regarding sex ed fifth grade focuses on transgenderism gender identity and expression and transgender inclusive pronouns sixth to eighth grade focuses on same-sex relationships same-sex attraction define vaginal oral and anal sex okay my daughter is 11 years old 11 okay she will not be learning about vaginal anal and oral sex at 11 years old [Music] high school focuses on coming out being out staying out being outed homosexuality taken out of dsm in 1973 gender dysphoria changed it's like you're damaging our children i'm done thank you [Applause] stephanie katz just finishing up my son's examples for the people who don't believe that critical race theory social emotional learning diversity equity and inclusion and all that doesn't exist implicit bias he had a lesson about

154that where he had to choose his 10 most trusted people and categorize them categorize them divide them into categories such as name age race ethnicity gender and sexual orientation for what purpose was this about diversity or is this about dividing up your friends into superficial categories we live in the melting pot of new jersey where pretty much nobody cares nobody gives it nobody gave it a second thought until recently with all this brought up nobody in this room cares why are we doing this why are we dividing our friends up the kids don't even have a say they can't help what family they're born into who their parents are what race they are if they're in a mixed family who their aunts and uncles are and what neighborhood they even live in to to make

155these diverse lists and if their lists weren't diverse enough what was the teacher going to do my son didn't share his list he had three people on it me his brother and his father but what was the point of this so while this might not be in the curriculum i do believe that the book from where these exercises came from are in the summer reading list it is the ebermex candy book and i believe this stems from there these little learning things me if i were a teacher which i'm not i think a better lesson would be let's write down your 10 most favorite people and why are they your favorite do they make you laugh do you like to play board games with them do they play your favorite sport with you rather than

156these super official categories so while this doesn't exist in the curriculum i just want people to be aware that you are going to have teachers that will sneak this into their lessons if they so choose to and their personal biases will also leak into the into if you're not careful and you're not paying attention thank you [Music] maria de luca pranza there has been much discussion regarding making the educational curriculum in town more diverse inclusive and equitable many people including some of those in this room would argue there is no need to make a change that there are no issues of racism or bias here in wayne to those people i would share the words of american scientist eo wilson who said the greater problems of history are not solved they are merely forgotten with

157this in mind i would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of wayne's past to demonstrate how we might all benefit from a more diverse inclusive educational foundation march 1967 conover versus pakinac lake country club pacquiaonec lake prohibited admission and homeownership to persons of italian latin american jewish and african-american descent as well as all other persons not of a northern european or christian background 2007 wayne was under federal civil rights investigation for delaying the construction of a mosque wayne township delayed a mosque's building permits for several years and then tried to use its eminent domain power to seize the land and leave it undeveloped august 2018 2018 a confederate flag was raised on alps road flagpole an unknown person flew the confederate flag a symbol of division and racism on a flagpole near the

158former paris in paris inn property march 2019 an arabic sign on a pakinac lake home created racial controversy a racially tinged letter was hand delivered to residents of pakinet lake after a sign with arabic letters which roughly translated to god bless was put up on a neighborhood home by their contractor as a gift june 2020 black lives matter protest in wayne this peaceful protest organized by our own wayne high school students was met with vehement opposition from many in town stores and businesses overreacted and boarded up windows social media blew up with angry racist fear-mongering comments and in the end a peaceful positive rally was held without incident june 2020 a wayne township public school student made hateful comments on social media about african americans in the wake of george floyd's murder march 2021 a

159report released has wayne's ranked hasween ranked third highest in new jersey for reported hate crime incidents according to the report more than 13 percent of those incidents occurred at schools parks or playgrounds april 2021 department of water pollution control lawsuit filed by a transgender woman the lawsuit alleges a transgender woman faced hostility and discrimination at her job and was working in a hostile work environment as i have shared with you there are clear examples of our town's history with racism and discrimination and this is by no means an exhaustive list teaching our children about true history of the past and supporting a curriculum that celebrates diversity instead of shaming will go a long way that's my job from the division that has plagued our society as e.r wilson wrote exclusion makes us suffer inclusion makes

160us thrive this is exactly what we want for all of our children to thrive thank you [Applause] [Music] hello good evening hi i'm evie wenting seven seminole i've met you before um so thank you for staying here this late sorry i came a little late to the party i had something else to attend but i wanted to put you board on a notice we as parents here had created this wayne education restoration parent associations and we are on to you we created an email contact w were yahoo.com and we're soliciting examples of what already happens in school nothing made up but parents are coming out and telling us what is happening while you say and dr tobacc who's not here says it's not happening we know it's happening there were plenty of examples even while

161i was here that were being set so we're putting you on notice while we solicit these we will report them to you at the board meeting when they happen and we will tell you what happened and what school what grade we will not divulge details obviously um but we will let you know what is happening because you're saying it is not so again contact were for those who are watching at yahoo.com and we're really we'll be putting you on notice from now on thank you [Applause] i'm speaking again i'm evan taglerini parents have already spoken about the problems the teachers in wayne schools have brought upon their children so i thought i'd share my experience with liberal teachers in this school system in my junior year of high school at wayne valley i had two

162different history teachers in the same class one was a self-proclaimed communist and the other a self-proclaimed proclaimed feminist on a regular basis these two teachers had no problem preaching communism and why they thought the kill the why they thought abortion the killing of an unborn child is a good thing to very impressionable high school students wayne schools doesn't need more liberalism he needs better background checks on the teachers that they hire [Applause] ashlynn mukel ate wowie ave and i'm gonna finish for deirdre so at the conference she was um referencing there was a blm organizer who was to speak to the group about ways that educators could organize and lead within their communities and if anyone is naive enough to tell us that the blm organization is about george floyd's murder and achieving racial justice

163save it prior to having its website scrubbed blm's goals included disrupting the nuclear family so my so we question you again as to why did the ngjea leadership determine that this was amongst the most pressing educational issues for new jersey students and their families and again we're our membership dues or educators membership dues are used to sponsor an alliance devoted to commuting the sentence of a convicted cop killer and introducing blm into local communities so in her closing when you as the board ask these parents to disbelieve their lying eyes you make them a mockery of your case and engender strife fear and division in the process so here's what they need you to do and i concur with them do that which you were elected to do educate these students in the educational basics

164so they can recover from tremendous learning loss from the tremendous learning loss they have suffered find ways to address the psychological trauma that the students have undergone after months of screen watching and separation from their friends period and here's a warning a clue however you wish to characterize it it is fine be mindful of the fact that you serve at the pleasure of these parents that you denied and that you deride and have lied to if you choose to continue you might need to map out a post boe service life plan asap [Music] hi shayna keagleman coming up again um i just wanted to touch again on the um education for physical education k through two and what they're teaching so i feel like maybe not everybody knows i do again say my son is

165six i just want to give an example of his innocence this past weekend we were at my parents pool and their friend was over and she doesn't have any kids of her own and she said you guys are the sweetest kid i just love you guys i wish i had one of my own she's in her 50s my son said so why don't you just go and get one right so he's six so in the education plan some of the examples um on that are relationships sexuality pregnancy and parenting i just don't understand how like i can't find any benefit i feel like we didn't learn this until like fifth grade maybe or older and even then i was immature about it i remember laughing with my friends so i can't imagine my six-year-old learning

166this and then drugs and medicines medicines alcohol tobacco other drugs dependency addiction and treatment like i don't know about anybody others home but like my kids definitely aren't experimenting with drugs and alcohol in first grade i mean so i mean didn't we do dare in fifth grade i don't know like how this got pushed like i don't understand one benefit i can't find one benefit of teaching kids this age this information that's all jim freeswick 1212 summer hill road first of all let me uh thank and thank the board for adopting a statement on diversity equity and inclusion pursuant to state law by the way uh you did the right thing and uh keep up the good work uh and also i'd like to uh thank the superintendent for organizing this august 11th community forum

167on the diversity equity and inclusion mission statement that was adopted by the board i think that's a good idea clearly there are people in our community who are concerned about the state of education in our schools and they have a perfectly you know they have every right in the world to be to express their opinions and and i think that forum will should go a long way towards hopefully making people more aware of what is going on in our school system and maybe they'll be more understanding of your your position but i'd also like to speak about something else i i've been wearing a mask in the audience i'm not wearing a mask now but i have been because the pandemic is not over uh only about half of our population has been vaccinated we

168have not achieved herd immunity and we we won't until we get about 70 percent of our population vaccinated now my question for the attorney of the board is under state law would it be lawful for this board of education to mandate vaccinations [Music] his time is not up continue sir you have 30. ask me a question would it be lawful for the board of education to mandate vaccinations against clover 19 for every employee of the school district [Music] including especially all teachers and if it is lawful i think the board should seriously consider enacting a mandate requiring all teachers and all employees in the district to be vaccinated against culvert 19. it's your time mr freeswick thank you [Applause] he listened quietly to you everyone has listened quietly to everyone can we calm down please

169we're almost out of here come on everybody please let the speaker speak all right good evening jonathan long 15 pilgrim way i just wanted to to come up and hopefully this is for for your benefit because obviously language is important and the words that we use the people that are using the words and the people that are hearing the words should understand what they mean so for you that um you're going to have the meeting i guess in august at wayne hills this might be a good topic of conversation i think it would hey you have a lot of parents that have obvious grievances they want you to hear um there's concerns about the direction where education is going in wayne so the um the um your mandate right includes equity inclusion which obviously sound

170very nice words i just want to read a definition of equity so that you could confirm with us that this is what is meant by the word or if it means something else equity commonly understood to mean fairness or justice but is now used by many to mean something much more specific equality of outcomes between different groups so when you hear people demand equity what they're actually saying is that the basic american value of equality of opportunity the rules should apply equally to everyone regardless of race is actually racist because equality of opportunity doesn't always guarantee equality of results so the solution is equity or attempting to achieve equality of results through discrimination now [Applause] i think we can agree that discrimination is inherently a bad thing right everyone should be opposed to racism however

171the term anti-racist is an orwellian phrase whose meaning is the exact opposite of how it sounds to be an anti-racist you must agree that our society and the people in it in every aspect is in itself racist and that the remedy is to embrace sweeping new forms of racial discrimination schools frequently assigned the book how to be an anti-racist written by activist and writer who you've heard ibrahim x hindi kinney writes that the most threatening racist movement is the regular americans drive for a race neutral society candy has admitted that anti-racism really means the only remedy in practice i'm sorry the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination in other words supporting anti-racism actually means supporting racism no he doesn't discriminating against people based on

172the color of their skin anti-racism is incredibly destructive to our schools sir that's your time and our communities thank you thank you very much [Applause] brian battlefield 63 kilo drive one second start over ryan battleshield 63 kilo drive i have nothing supposed to have so he can carry on i'm sorry no you can't yield your time brian whatever it is my second time all right i'm done um so the goal of anti-racism is to separate people into racial identity groups and then encourage feelings of shame guilt anger and resentment toward the other groups which is i think someone gave an example of mother may i and that's exactly what it does and i think that i would just i would kindly ask that you consider these words and what we're introducing into the curriculum and

173what impact it has on our children all right thank you very much [Music] [Applause] madam president seeing no one else come forward i moved to close the second exactly second mrs put up moved by mr patlack sorry ma'am we just closed executives we just closed the public portion okay is there any old business is there any new business i'm sorry mr share go ahead um mr cher we didn't hear your motion i'm sorry we closed public portions go ahead mrs my name is pat leskowitz ma'am the public portion is closed i'm sorry i thought you said it was okay i'm sorry no no i'm sorry that's the public portion is closed there was no one in line we closed public portion go ahead mrs cher we've been listening for two hours i think we've heard

174what you had to say ma'am stop disrupting the meeting it's her it's the board's turn to speak more right now it's the board's turn to speak go ahead mr chair okay so um there's a lot to take in right now um i did have i did have a whole speech plan um first i want to apologize for not being here last week it was unavoidable for myself um i stand and you're gonna have to listen to me for a few minutes i'm sorry that's just the way it is i stand confused at the moment the reason that i'm confused is because i'm a mother of two and i embrace diversity in my household i i teach my children to treat not equally to just treat everybody how you would want to be treated that's that's

175what i have pushed on my children because i'm their parents so i'm allowed to push things on my children i agree with many of you and just just hear me out before you say anything or whatever but i agree with many of you that the school is not here to push things on children that's not the purpose um i understand that looking at the the sex ed curriculum it's confusing it's confusing for us it's confusing for parents when i see because i've looked at it myself and i see i have older children now but when i see k through two as learning about parenting pregnancy and sexuality what does that even mean like am i teaching a kid that there's a baby in the back i don't even know what that means and that is

176what the job of the district is because unfortunately coming from above at the state i think that they pass the buck and say hey let's just make it broad and we'll just say sexuality and now the district has a huge decision to make on where do we go with that so there's a lot of steps involved so the district now has to look at this then they have to give it to the people that write curriculum then the people that write the curriculum have to give it to the teachers and now the teachers have to come up with a lesson plan what i can tell you as a board member that i can do is i can ask the district to look deeper into the curriculum and look further into when when we're writing the

177curriculum do not just give the teachers the basis of pregnancy we need to break it down more in depth for them so they know where to go with it and they cannot go off on a tangent because there are things that the kids shouldn't be learning um based on what their parents want them to learn um so the sex the sex ed thing is it's a very tough thing because it's mandated but again as a board member i will work with administration i have advocated for professional development for our teachers on everything since i've been on this board for five years and one of them is teaching them how to give the curriculum my next point and please just bear with me here so i think the bigger concern that i'm seeing among the parents

178isn't specifically critical race theory because the bottom line is i could ask half the room what does critical race theory mean and they're going to give me a definition and i can ask the other half and they're going to give me a totally different definition so for us to just use that broad term not everybody's even thinking it's the same thing which is part of the problem um i think the bigger concern is what are our children specifically being taught and are they only being taught one side of the issue and to me that's a huge problem and i am not going to sit here so people are saying the board's saying it's not here you've never heard that out of my mouth because anybody who in this room who's friends with me or knows

179me knows that my own son got berated for wearing clothing based on a president and i did not sit back because i was a parent not because i was a board member but because i was a parent i did not sit back i reported that teacher that is the avenue that we need to take you guys are giving so many examples and i hate hearing all these examples we don't know about them they're not being reported and i'm a teacher i'm not looking to throw the teachers under the bus however i believe and i stand by the fact that i am a non-biased teacher teaching 101 is here's the toolkit for you to give to your students i am to teach these students how to think critically not what decisions they should be making so

180in order for me to do that i need to teach them here's one side of this the point here's the other side of the point and let them know that it's an open environment where they can come and they can fight whichever side that based on fact not their opinion or their hearts based on fact and i can honestly tell you i work in an urban district there is not a student that you can ask in the 15 years that i have had where does monsieur stand is she a democrat is she a republican does she care about politics i guarantee not one of my students will ever be able to tell you that and i agree that diversity is important we need to read things by as many authors as possible we don't need

181to read things that are about going against police that's completely not what we want to teach our children they have to obey law and order but a teacher's job is to teach you how to think and how to find out on your own not to tell you what i think and you should believe it and please report any incident that you have report them to administration let them investigate and if it's not being done then include i won't speak for the board include me because anybody who knows me knows i have a big mouth you can ask ms reichman i'm going to speak up so please just use the avenues that are there and keep looking and seeing what your children are learning it's important thank you [Applause] [Music] mr pavlak um i echo a

182lot of the same comments as mr chair that i made last at the last meeting students in school as a teacher were supposed to teach students how to think not what to think and dr paul you hit the nail on the head tonight and we've lost all vision in this country as far as what education is about prj is not cold in his grave and we forgot everything he's taught us about cognitive development because we're too busy today in this country having companies and politicians drive curriculum and again as i said at the last meeting the biggest example of this and a proven example of failure from big business and the government is common core prime [Music] any curriculum that looks to divide classes into either the oppressor or the oppressed and again i go

183back to you dr paul absolutely that's a graduate study class where we have that discussion not that discussion in an elementary classroom when children cognitively have no idea or clue what we're talking about enough [Applause] you know we go back to and we don't even have to go back yet seems far in 1983 there was a study conducted called the nation at risk that many of you in education know about and we've forgotten about this in the last few years not that long ago we were talking about preparing our children for the new global economy we've lost focus folks in 1983 they were talking about it in the the in nation at risk we're stated that students should be a founder should have a foundation in five basics reading math science and technology where are

184we we're forgetting it we forgot it enough and you go back our kids are coming back into a new world next year i don't care whether it's in college i don't care whether it's in school districts we're coming into unknown territory where our kids are coming from kids who have lost parents lost grandparents lost siblings possibly parents who have lost their job and may still even be out of work today there's no yardstick to measure all this stuff what about nobody i don't hear much about social emotional the development and what we're going to do for our kids we're too busy talking about all these other things let's get the focus back to education and education where it needs to be for children of in their cognitive levels stop pushing everybody agrees they want to

185the truth should be told it's fine to present the facts but don't present the opinion [Applause] mr giordano good evening everyone well it's been a long one i've seen the best that i've seen the worst of wayne and i'm proud of both of them frankly this is how the process is done when you got a problem get your tail down here get up to that microphone and speak your heart this is the process we're having a deal right now with the state law that came in march it was quoted by one of our fine veterans thank you for your service and he said it's here guess what folks it's here we can't push back against it now until you go back to your senators and say we need to repeal this good but in the

186meantime august 11th august 11 is part of the process i'm looking at this room right now and i can see one half of the room feels one way and through migration and natural movement the other other half went over to the other side of the room i got to tell you i'm pretty much down the middle i tend to lean a little towards conservative but i'm down the middle and most people in here probably identify that way you look at yourself and say what am i i'm pretty much down the middle i've heard people saying we have to res on this side of the room we have to respect race we have to show dignity we have to show courage we have to show that these people deserve to go as far as they can

187in the land of opportunity and it was said the same over here but it wasn't much different until i heard something come out and i went uh-oh now i'll be the person who confesses right now because i'm going to get slaughtered in the next couple of months because i'm running for the board again i'm a member of the njea i've been a teacher for 30 years i'm a science teacher just to let the gentleman know by the way galileo didn't know that the telescope was hans lippershay and when they burn the witches of uh in massachusetts it was because of a fungus grow on the rye bread that they ate cause hallucinations to it so sometimes you take a piece of knowledge and you kind of mold it around here and they're doing that with

188crt right now crt is an economic study that came out of harvard but somebody latched down and said we're going to do this i'm going to do this it would do this and to my shame i have to stand up here and listen to people put up at an nga meeting which i'm gonna have a long chat with our new incoming president about this new movement that i don't recognize and by the way i'm also a local leader i'm a president of a union down in bloomfield i watch out for contracts i watch out to make sure people's rights are ahead i make sure there's ventilation make sure your kids are safe that's what the job was when i signed up for it it changed overnight and i'm really scared right now because of it

189i got a long uphill battle because of that but getting back to the more important ones the people here this is part of the process i want to see every one of you here at the august meeting i want to see every one of you here at the september meeting i want to see every one of you go to august 11th and have that conversation because that's the way it gets done board members do not rule we can't we don't invent these rules and say ah here you go it's all out there for all you guys that's great we have to take what's handed down from trenton and think about all the stuff that's happened in the last year and a half that you've come in here for different reasons masks virtual learning um the

190crt stuff sex education none of us up here invented that we walked in the morning good morning here you go have a nice day and we're like oh god what do you do now so what do we do now we ask you to write to us we ask you to call and talk to us we ask you to approach us on the street hi i'm matt you're down and nice to meet you i'll talk to anybody anytime here i've been in this position for two and a half years i've talked to one person on the street he was a friend of my wife he didn't like sex education i sent it to the committee in march nobody came out and talked about it so now somebody said over here you're awake love it you guys

191are awake love it somewhere in the middle we're going to find the right solution because believe it or not you guys aren't that far off you all believe in dignity of mankind you don't believe in the opportunities that america has given you you haven't gone so far as to say and this is the group over here we're willing to look at the mistakes we've made we talk about the trail of tears we talk about manzanar and education i'm a scientist not great on history i apologize if they got those things wrong here but we do talk about doing that and we talk about the picnic and the courage of those people who rose up there isn't a person over here that could tell me that martin luther king stinks not one of you i guarantee

192you every one of you probably says don't judge a person by the color of their skin but by the content of their heart and you say it also so we're really not that far away on this could curriculum be changed it always should be changed you know we should be tweaked i'm a science teacher stuff comes down the pipeline rocket's going to space new technologies invented we have to get back to looking at that also but we have to do this together and we have to stop tossing bombs at each other because both sides are not listening to each other and both sides have value but i will say one thing and it was over here on the side and it was from the person who wasn't from the town you mentioned the word white

193culture uh-oh that's what just causes the fear over here politics has two things it wants you angry or it wants you scared and both sides are scared and ticked off right now some are some are afraid for the future of their children that's fear ladies and gentlemen now go through the process we can't do a whole lot legally right now but good old governor murphy said we're going to bring this stuff down but at the local level you can kind of you can kind of work and massage it out that's august 11th be there and work this out because otherwise yelling is going to do you no good both sides good luck and congratulations on being here this is a part of the process that makes america great thank you [Applause] just two points or

194three points i missed one i will not support wearing masks in school in september based on where we are today right secondly ghost boys yes i brought that up to the administration i was very unhappy with that thirdly thirdly thirdly when the njea decides they want to have a cop killer and feature them as their main speaker there's a problem folks [Music] [Applause] any other board comments mrs puttup i'm concerned about the pendulum i mean i've been on the face of the planet long enough that i've seen the pendulum swing many times and i'm concerned that we reach a place in our politics that has become so divisive that the repercussions will be something that we leave to our children and it will not be pleasant um so well unfortunately many things that we don't

195want to be politicized have become politicized and we don't that's right and it should not become so in schools you're totally correct so i appreciate the fact that even though i do not always respond to your emails that things are brought to my attention mrs wetnick i did go in and i clicked on the link you forwarded to us that was read here this evening and i was disturbed by it because having been an njea wea member for so long and i can only speak to the national level or the state level right now um the program that they presented baffled me i'd like to know why and what was the idea behind what they wanted people to participate in it for um i'm also concerned about september and children wearing masks and virtual school

196because we know we know that the last year and a half has been horrific teachers have done an amazing job trying to move their students forward but the whole setup is something that was very difficult for parents students teachers the entire community i don't want to go backwards but i have a concern my concern is the delta variant no don't tell don't please don't let me tell you a story when people don't follow science i have a nephew that teaches outside of penn state university because of the beliefs of the community and that's their right they're not allowed to teach evolution teaching evolution is immediate grounds for dismissal so i don't poo poo hoo the fact that he can't teach evolution and i'm sorry you should not pooh-hoo the fact that our scientists are telling

197us the delta variant is here more easily spread and that young man that came and spoke i totally understand i don't like to wear a whole mask okay but we we do have a solution our students returning to school without mass is dependent on the adult population getting vaccinated [Music] if the positivity rate goes up in new jersey like it has in mississippi or arkansas where they have children on ventilators i cannot promise what the school year will look like in september we will follow the science you can vote me out go ahead this is not a backing point ma'am ma'am the public's turn to speak is over i am this is not a back and forth discussion i am asking you to please be mindful of the science for your children thank you okay

198are there any other the public session is over can we speak now we listen to you for several hours it's now our turn to speak anyone else okay mrs reichman did you want to add anything before i conclude just real quick i wanted to thank you all obviously for sharing and expressing your ideas and opinions um and beliefs it's important for us to hear all of this and we will look into any of the lesson plans things that you shared that you have concerns about of course we will look into it we always do what is best for children it's our responsibility to provide professional development for our teachers you know i i know that the common core was referenced and it was a time when i was a teacher and it was a very

199difficult time because we do not have resources and guidance i would just encourage you all to continue to contact our county office you were not being discouraged in any way they were very open to hearing from you they will elevate all of your concerns to trenton we do not have any resources we do not have any guidance from them and we are anxiously awaiting and anticipating these things and and this will be really helpful because then we can look and evaluate and make some decisions about how we feel about this but we were told we were going to be given things that we have not had an opportunity to look at the road forward plan was just released two weeks ago there's a lot of information in there we have been dissecting it reading it

200and and we will share what our plans are but this was new so no decisions or determinations about anything has been made there will be a presentation and this is also information that we'll discuss at the forum so again thank you and i appreciate you sharing your ideas tonight okay i get the dubious honor of being last um a couple things uh the board is cognizant of the fact that we represent everyone both sides uh it's our job to seek common ground it's also our job to communicate and that's what this public forum is meant to do i hear a lot of fear i hear a lot of misinformation um i hear fact-based stories of what's going on in your child's classroom and those things should be reported absolutely it's your job to be a

201partner in your child's education i i ran for the board years ago because there were board members forcing through a curriculum for one skill set when it was the other uh area of education that was uh suffering more in our district and it got left behind and i thought well why in god's name are they doing something so crazy introducing a new math curriculum when our kids are failing english and our test scores were we're proving it time and time again but you know they they were apparently just not thinking of the district as a whole and that's not something any of us should do and i don't think that's what we're doing here i think we've come a long way from those days where board members drove the curriculum bus we rely on our

202well educated staff to do that but we hear your concerns we absolutely do and this whole mandate is new i think the common ground is is obvious everyone believes in teaching a proper history not to identify anyone by their race creed color religion uh ethnicity um that's not what we're looking to do here and crt i don't even know what the heck it is i know it's a higher education theory when you use the word theory we already know it's not a fact but that's not mentioned in legislation 4-4-5-4 it's not something we're even considering but again the we have we have a process and we have a chain of command if something goes on in your child's classroom you need to report that you need to first discuss it with the child's teacher could

203you please explain this to me what happened here as a parent i have a right to know and you also have a right to opt out if you look at our policies online you'll find it you can opt out of almost anything that's not required to graduate and you can discuss that with your teacher you can discuss that with your principal we have policies for that as far as trenton is concerned you've never met someone more passionate about spending her time there than me i've been on state committees from the day i arrived on this board because they used to complain well this was mandated this was an unfunded mandate i'm like well what are you doing about it so i've always gone down there and said hey whoa breaks before that goes through the

204education committee this is what i think this is what the school board association thinks and we advocate and that's what you're doing here and this is this is great this is what this country is built on and what we're all about so uh unfortunately this one landed on our desk we have to do it until like you said you want to go down there and get it overturned have at it please do um that's up to you good luck it's not easy it's much easier to stop it before it gets legislated than it is to turn it back i've experienced that it's taken us eight years i sit on the state finance committee to get our fair funding in wayne this is one of the reasons why we have money now to start full day

205kindergarten without a referendum because we lobbied for that and we got it so yeah your voices will matter if you continue to express them but please do it through the proper process coming here to tell us the story of something that happened in your classroom six months ago is not the right approach uh you have to tackle it there if you go to your teacher and you don't get a response who do you go to next you go to your principal if your principal doesn't give you a response then you go to that person's boss the director and at the end of the day if you still don't get what you're looking for or an answer then you come to the top the superintendent and copy the board and it'll be looked into and that's

206all i can say i hope everyone keeps this level of enthusiasm on both sides but comes to the forum with an open mind to listen to the facts that forum is not going to be about us doing what we did here this evening we've heard that what you need to listen to now is what our educators are planning please come and listen with an open mind with open ears and let us tell you what the plan is and we'll take it from there so have a nice summer what's left of it and hopefully i will see you all on the 11th and at our next meeting [Music]