Parents lay out concerns, fears, criticisms

An hour of public comment at Ocean City school board meeting

By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff

OCEAN CITY – A host of Ocean City parents laid out concerns, complaints and outright fears about their children’s education and mental wellbeing at the Ocean City Board of Education meeting Nov. 18.

They were met with a mixed response.

Some administrators and board members assured them that they were listening, others said they were limited by the state and federal guidelines or that the proposed solutions were already considered. One board member was outright hostile, saying she was tired of hearing parents’ complaints.

The Nov. 18 meeting started with board President Joseph Clark reading a roughly five-minute prepared statement, telling parents “we truly understand your frustrations.”

He said the board and administrators have heard the full range of requests from parents, including those who want students taught remotely five days a week, others who want the students in school five days a week, and some who don’t know what they want.

The district works on a hybrid schedule currently with students, split into two groups, in school two days a week and remote learning the other three days.

“There is no magic solution to operating our schools and educating our children,” Clark said, adding the district must remain flexible with the changing conditions of COVID-19 and adapt “at any given moment.”

The district will continue to balance protecting health and preserving “what makes Ocean City schools exceptional,” he said. “Never have our decisions carried more weight, affecting every single student and every single family.”

Clark noted the district and region have limitations with infrastructure, namely internet and phone service, that impacts the education offered remotely, and that experts they have consulted back that assertion, especially being able to have more face time on-line with students.

“This being beyond our control, this greatly limits our ability to teach classes concurrently,” he said, before asking for continued feedback from families, including the survey sent out to parents the week before. One thing that stood out from the survey, he noted, was that parents of high school students don’t want any more screen time for their children.

Clark got feedback and direct communication from parents during the public comment portion – basically an hour of it from parents at the meeting and weighing in virtually while watching the meeting online via Zoom.

When public comment began a half-hour into the meeting, it started with a pair of parents of field hockey captains upset about how their daughters were treated after they were told to quarantine for 14 days because they came into close contact with a student who tested positive for COVID-19.

Jennifer Bowman said three senior captains, including her daughter Katie, and the goalie have all been quarantined at the height of playoffs and won’t be allowed to watch in person as their team has a chance to play Saturday for a South Jersey title.

Bowman said while the senior co-captains were extremely grateful to get a chance to have a sports season this fall, and could be shut down at any time,  they “didn’t realize you could do everything right – not go to parties, be homebodies, set up a pandemic education platform, but someone coming to school feeling sick could end their hockey career just by the luck of where they sat.”

The girls followed the rules with masks, social distancing, open windows, but it still happened.

Bowman said she wasn’t trying to get the quarantine decision reversed, but asked if there were a way for the girls to experience the title game in person, even if far from the rest of the spectators.

She noted she was glad the school didn’t quarantine the whole varsity team, like it did with the freshman and JV teams, but also that she did not react well when she got the news from the school nurse.

“I didn’t know how to handle the news … I needed mental health help. My daughter needed help. The other girls needed help and the child who tested positive and her family especially needed help,” Bowman said. “You know we don’t really have an action plan in place when something like this happens? Do you know what it’s like to quarantine an outgoing, busy high school student for two weeks? The stigma? The rumors? It’s awful, but they are alive.”

She thanked the school board and elected officials for all the hours of their volunteer work. “However, we need to work on how we’re handling this pandemic and the educational plan because a lot of things are not working,” Bowman said. 

Wallace Gilchrist read a letter from his daughter, Nya, another senior field hockey co-captain who was upset that she, too, lost the end of her field hockey season without doing anything wrong.

Like Jennifer Bowman, Gilchrist said he appreciated the time and effort the school board members and administrators have spent. His daughter wrote that she had taken all the precautions and followed all the rules set by the school, “So why am I quarantined?” After putting in so much time to become a team and student leader, she wrote, “I don’t believe I deserve this.” She added that she didn’t want to see fellow classmates in the future “punished for something they can’t control.”

Her father said the one thing he “wanted to harp on” is mental health. He said to have a student say things like his daughter did, and to be a parent of that student, is difficult. Gilchrist added that he believes all the students going through this type of experience, and their parents, need more help. He said emails from the schools contradict each other and “there’s no transparency.”

He asked that guidance given to students be more clear “so they don’t feel like when these things occur that it’s their fault. It’s not. It’s my fault. It’s everyone else’s fault involved in making these decisions.

“These are guidelines, these are recommendations. We pick and choose which ones we want to stand by when it occurs,” he said. “It’s very simple. You have to take a stance even if that’s the most stringent stance.” Instead he said one day they’re told the guideline is by the state, or the county, or the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association.

“Let’s be more competent in the decision-making for the students,” he said. 

Brian Ruh, father of another field hockey player, concurred with what the other parents said.

Special education,

individualized learning

Mikenzie Helphenstine said her 13-year-old son, who has an Individualized Educational Program (IEP), gave his permission to share his story. 

“He said people need to hear it. He doesn’t like the way he is being treated,” she said, noting her son was brought up to believe, like former First Lady Michele Obama said, “It’s the we over the me.”

He doesn’t understand why his peers are not being treated the way he is, she said. “He keeps asking, ‘Is it because I have a crazy mom?’ I keep telling him, ‘Yes, because his mom is the squeaky wheel.’”

Her son also agreed to share his story “because he doesn’t want to go to school here any more and he knows how much that is breaking my heart.” 

Helphenstine said she has followed the chain of command, talking to teachers, case managers and two administrators, “but nothing has changed.” 

As of March 17, when the pandemic closed New Jersey schools to in-person education, she said parents’ roles changed. She was still awaiting the outcome of administrators’ investigation into what happened to her son’s education from March 17 to June 9. She asked the school board to follow up on the investigation because she has received nothing.

Two days a week, she said, her son, who chose the hybrid model of two days in school and three at home, gets nothing virtual two days a week. “How is my son going to be successful?”

Helphenstine said it is not the teachers’ fault, rather it is the model the district gave them. “How are students with IEPs getting their services 180 days a year and not just the days they’re in school?”

She said her son gets one-on-one time with a teacher 20 minutes every Wednesday, but wonders why it is only him because there are other students like him. When he asks if he is getting that treatment only one day a week because he has a “crazy mom,” she said the school district is wrong.

“If a 13-year-old boy realizes that it’s not supposed to be just him, why doesn’t everyone else?”

The district, she said, has to look at all the subgroups of students, not just split the alphabet in half. (The district has two cohorts, O and C, that go in-person on different days.)

She said students with IEPs and 504 plans (for special education) are having their needs met. Helphenstine asked the board and administrators to rethink and reflect on how special education students are treated. Other districts, she said, are treating these students as a group.

“We are failing these kids. They are not getting the modifications and accommodations that their legal document says they’re supposed to get,” she said. 

“Please look at these subgroups of students,” she said. “And look at how we’re doing the services.” She handed out a state memo from April 3 on the topic to board members “because I don’t think everyone here has read it …. We have the guidance.”

District not evolving

Parent Robin Schaefer told the board members they are not evolving. They have the opportunity to lead and to turn the students into future leaders, but instead are not adapting to the changing environment and putting the future leaders first, instead putting adult concerns and fears first. 

He said the district has had nine months to develop strategy for educating the students full-time and is not being transparent. 

“The current direction, from the parents’ perspective, is one of avoiding answering questions, of running parents in circles and hoping they go away,” he said, adding they are avoiding discussions of new ideas. “If you have a plan, share it. So far our experience … is to point fingers at another party outside the district – the health department, the county superintendent, the state legislators.” After speaking to all of them, he said, everything points back to the school board. Whenever a solution is brought up, there is always an excuse why it will not work, he said. 

No livestreaming

Leni Young, a teacher from another school district, who has four children, including three in Ocean City public schools, said the teachers here are outstanding, but her concern was with “our district’s refusal to implement livestream teaching” to the students at home, which allows direct interaction back-and-forth between the teachers and students.

She said she teaches in Egg Harbor Township – “not far from here” – and they are live-stream teaching every day. “The children who are at home are connected to me as their teacher, they are connected to their peers. If they have a question about a concept I am teaching, they can simply raise their hand and ask me from the comfort of their dining room table or living room. They are getting their concerns addressed immediately,” she said.

“If this is a south Jersey bandwidth issue, why am I able to livestream and teach my students in Egg Harbor Township but why we can’t do it here” only 10 miles away.

While saying she didn’t understand the technical reasons offered by the district why that was not possible in Ocean City, she said, “I guarantee you the experience I am able to give my students in Egg Harbor Township is far superior to what my children are getting here in Ocean City. It breaks my heart.”

She said her children are on their computers three days a week watching videos and not having access to a teacher. 

“This is not a criticism of our teachers. I promise you that. I love our teachers. I adore our teachers, but we have got to come up with another solution because simply put this is just not working,” she said. “As someone who has seen how it can work one district over, please, please, please help make it work here.”

Mental health crisis

Another in-person speaker said parents are struggling right now. He pointed out how his son went from A’s to C’s going from in-person to remote learning.

He said it is tough for parents and students navigating assignments on different computer platforms. “I am concerned I am losing my son because he has experienced such a drop in performance. He is jeopardizing his future,” including his pathway for college, he said. The further behind he gets, the worse it gets.

He suggested the board take a look at grading policy and how missed assignments in their virtual work are doubly detrimental to a student’s average in a class. All the screen time, he said, doesn’t work for many students’ learning style.

The other point he brought up comes after speaking to members of the medical community in Ocean City, he said. “There is a significant mental health crisis happening right here, right now.”

He said students are missing out on social interaction with their peers and on learning opportunities. He urged them to get their students back in school or on a virtual day to have direct communication with their teachers.

Virtual learning is under par

Another host of parents spoke while watching the meeting online.

Amy Godfrey said she is the parent of three children, ages 10, 12 and 17. 

“It is important for our leaders to know the quality of the virtual education our children are receiving … is very under par.”

Using the example of language arts, she said the Zoom call with the teachers is not about teaching, it is about telling students what they will be doing on their own the following two days during virtual learning. “I keep waiting for there to be a lesson,” she said about her two intermediate school-age daughters.

“The point I want to make is … they are getting two days of education,” Godfrey said, and then three days on their own.

“We’re not happy at all with the quality of the education our children are receiving.”

Lack of empathy

“Our children need consistency and this schedule is not working,” said Elizabeth Fleming, who was speaking on behalf of her family’s eighth-grader and second-grader.  “They need compassion and the daily reinforcement of lessons. They need the education our district is capable of and at this time they are only receiving a small percentage.”

She said her husband spoke at the October school board meeting, saying, “I’m not asking for sympathy. I’m asking for empathy.” Fleming said that was the same message from all the parents – that the school board “hear us.”

“Let’s come together for a plan for improvement because this is not sustainable for our children,” she said. The entire community has made itself available, from students to city officials, “so why do we feel so stuck?”

“We’re asking you to listen collectively to our feedback. We’re asking you for the same flexibility and grace that our students are giving you,” Godfrey said. “Let’s create an environment of open communication and more effective feedback. Remember it takes a village.” She thanked all of the district’s staff.

An issue of space

Sean Scarborough said from what he heard earlier in the meeting, the issue was about needing more space. “Maybe getting back to a full schedule but spreading it over more real estate could be an answer,” he said. 

Student concerns

Student Owen Nelson said he agreed with most of what the parents said, but focused on the school schedule, saying it was harder on students and didn’t give them enough time to do assignments, making it more stressful, and that much of it is “busywork.”

“It’s not like I’m getting any extensive information from what I’m being taught,” he said. 

Get back to live education then in-person education

Suzanne Chew and her husband, Dr. Jason Chew, a family physician in Ocean City, spoke up about their daughters, a seventh grader and third grader.

After saying she agreed with all the other parents, Suzanne Chew said her 12-year-old daughter is 65 pounds and has to carry 26 pounds worth of books in her backpack because she can’t go to her lockers at the intermediate school, but that high school students can use their lockers. She asked for that to change.

She also questioned how quickly her Zoom classes were done for the day and that they weren’t getting enough instruction, the accountability to show up or to be excited about going to school.

Breaking into tears, she added, “We’re supposed to be the lighthouse of Ocean City and I feel like it’s failing and it’s really sad. I don’t mean to get so upset ….” Chew said the district is asking so much of the kids, “but how can they show up when our leaders aren’t showing up for them?”

After hearing a range of concerns from parents, she said, “Our kids need you to step up to the plate. Please hear us. Please.”

Her husband, Jason, said the district is hurting the students more than helping them with the hybrid schedule and calling for the students to be in school five days a week.

“The average person in the community may not see it, but if you saw what I saw, the collateral damage from this,” he said. He has had 258 cases of COVID-19 in his practice and “not one hospitalization,” but he has seen missed diagnoses, cancers, heart attacks and such.

“Let’s talk about the kids. I’m seeing kids that I could never fathom the ages that are getting involved with drugs, alcohol, the parents commenting about it. The anxiety, the depression in these kids is off the charts,” he said. When kids aren’t involved in school, with sports, they can get into mischief and that can cause a lot of problems and bad consequences, he added.

Dr. Chew cautioned against believing a vaccine is going to solve all the problems. It isn’t clear how long the vaccine will last or if people can get the coronavirus again. He also said children are not in the vaccine trials. “Best-case scenario is children getting this vaccine is two to three years away” and administrators and school board members should not wait to act, hoping everything will be solved in a few months.

“We could be in this exact situation again next fall and the fall after that and the fall after that,” he said.

“That is why we need live instruction as a crutch until we get back to five days in (school),” he said. “I think we all know we need to make a move here to get live instruction, not as a permanent thing, but as a crutch, maybe for the new few months, and figure out a way, like Mr. Scarborough said, and I’m not sure why this wasn’t addressed earlier in the year, but we either need less kids or more space to meet the governor’s guidelines. We can’t get less kids, but maybe we can get more space.” He suggested tents as a possibility.

“It is clear we are hurting more than helping right now,” he said.