LACEY – Attendees who refused to wear COVID-19 protective masks during a recent Board of Education meeting caused that session to shut down.
Board member Harold “Skip” Peters told The Southern Ocean Times that the meeting began as a live event at its usual location in the lecture hall at Lacey High School.
“We started and went into private session. Everyone was notified you have to wear a mask or we’d adjourn the meeting. There were three people in the audience and they were all wearing masks and we said great.”
He added, “when we came out of private session and came back there were 40 or 50 people and 30% of them didn’t have masks. Our Board President Donna McAvoy made a speech if you don’t wear masks we’ll have to adjourn the meeting.”
“They (the audience) began screaming and hollering and she (McAvoy) dropped the gavel and the meeting ended and was moved. I’m not against the masks. I’m against the fact that it should be a choice. If you have a student in school and you want to put them in a mask that’s fine. If you are a school teacher and you want the vaccination that is your choice.”
Board member Regina Discenza also described the situation and noted her disappointment with those in the audience who refused to comply with the rules. The September 16 meeting resumed virtually on September 20.
Superintendent Vanessa Clark said “I know there are many, many personal feelings about this issue and I know emotions are running very high but I am imploring our school community to work together until the mask mandate is lifted. We’ve been talking about that we’ve wanted to get back to normal and we thought we were going to be back to normal without the masks and then in early August the governor made that announcement (requiring masks in schools).”
Richard Bidnick was among the residents who were critical of the Board and mask wearing. He called the ending of the first meeting “an example of how deplorably bad this Board has sunk. Another disgrace from a thoroughly disgraceful Board. I have been coming to these meetings for over a decade. I have watched boards and board members come and go. The one thing that never changes is the incompetence I see.”
He said, “this is not about your children. It is all about the money. That is why they are keeping the masks on your kids because of the money they are getting from the state and the way the governor is trying to manipulate and pull the strings of the school districts. We have a thing going on called COVID Nazism. It is the belief that the state should have utter control over our lives. Individual freedoms no longer exist.”
Bidnick said that while two members of the Board voted against the mask mandate (Peters and Kim Klaus before the start of the new school year) “and yet when push comes to shove, instead of standing up with the public they just caved. This is lip service not leadership.”
Executive orders have to be followed as if they are laws, according to the American Bar Association and Cornell Law School. Officials who do not follow these orders can find themselves facing legal consequences.
Prior to the public comment period, Clark said, “we know wearing a mask all day can be challenging and teachers and staff are working very, very hard to lessen the impact by providing students with frequent mask breaks throughout the day and in a safe way.”
“While there are many opinions about wearing masks, one thing we know for certain is that wearing a mask and maintaining social distance lessens the need for students and staff to be identified as close contact – missing 14 days of school for quarantining. The matrix that we follow to determine whether quarantine happens or has to happen is outlined in the New Jersey Department of Health Exclusion Criteria which is posted on our website,” Clark said.
“That last time that document was updated was August 31,” Clark said. She asked Assistant Superintendent William Zylinski to provide an overview of the current quarantine rules. “I recognize that this is very confusing as well and it is different to when we ended school in June. It is due to vaccination status and masks.”
Zylinski said, “isolation works whenever we deal with a COVID-19 case. We are trying to limit the best we can any school-to-school transmission of COVID-19 and that is why we have very robust contact tracing and we follow the quarantine rules as closely as we possibly can.”
At the time of the meeting, Zylinski said “we are considered in the high transmission risk category. We have been there for several weeks now in our region which includes Ocean and Monmouth counties. That requires that when a student or anybody is in close contact with someone with COVID-19 which is defined with anybody six feet or under for 15 minutes which typically would be a classroom setting, or at lunch, you would have to quarantine for 14 days to make sure you do not develop COVID-19.”
Zylinski said that “if you get COVID-19 you only have to isolate for 10 days. Contact tracing was extremely difficult over the past two weeks and the other piece of the puzzle that was introduced to us this year is the masking rule and students wearing masks and wearing them properly. If a student has COVID-19, no one has to quarantine if they are in the regular classroom setting if they are wearing their masks.”
“That will ultimately cut down the number of quarantines that we have within our school and makes contact tracing that much easier because typically in the classroom setting everyone is wearing their masks. We do have to look at the lunches because they are removing their masks at lunches and during after school activities,” the assistant superintendent said.
Zylinski added, for those fully vaccinated “you do not have to quarantine whether you are wearing your mask or not. If you are asymptomatic which means you have no symptoms and you are fully vaccinated – which means two weeks your second shot – there is no need to quarantine at this time.” He stressed that information should be shared with the school nurse.
