Speakers tell board of ed Ocean City is conservative and curriculum objectionable
OCEAN CITY — Calling Ocean City a conservative community, a few speakers at the Ocean City Board of Education meeting last week said the district should not adopt a new state health education curriculum because of its “objectionable standards” or at least require parents to opt-in to the teaching instead of the current practice allowing parents to have their students opt out of sex education.
Pastor Jay Reimer, president of the Ocean City Tabernacle, made a similar plea during a board meeting a few months earlier. He said the school board represents the values of the community and that parents should have the authority of teaching values and morality to their minor children.
He said there are things in the new state guidelines that are objectionable, including teaching abortion as a pregnancy option, gender confusion and gender selection, teaching about sexuality including oral and anal sex, and more.
Reimer argued if the district rejected the state standards, it would encourage conservative families from across the state to move to Ocean City. Otherwise, he said, local families would continue to move their children into private schools, reducing funding to the district and causing cutbacks in teaching and staff jobs in the district.
“It seems that in a conservative community such as ours, the default should be that these objectionable standards were not taught. For those parents who believe their children should be taught these objectionable standards, they could be the ones to opt in,” he said. “This would seem like a win-win and provide the authority of these issues of morality and values for each student in preschool to through age 17 to the parents.”
Parent Liz Nicoletti said she agreed with Reimer and that Ocean City is a conservative town known for its values. She said a lot of money is allocated to individual students, including her four. She said she wants them to stay in the district but could pull them out and send them to another district.
“I don’t want this new sex education curriculum taught to my kids,” she said.
Nicoletti said part of the instruction is having teachers refer their students to websites. That means they would go home, look at the internet and “learn how to do certain acts. That’s scary stuff.” She said if something similar were done in the workplace, people would be arrested.
She noted this is a national conversation about education.
“It is not just me or Pastor Reimer coming up here wanting parental rights to educate our own kids about sexuality,” she said. “That is not the teachers’ jobs. They are strangers. Yes, they are teachers and we love them, but this is not their forte. I’m letting you know where I stand. I know there are a lot of people who feel the way I do.”
She urged the board to reject the state standards.
Parent Robin Shaffer also spoke, urging the district to reject the state standards. He said he was conducting a Facebook poll and, at the time, even though there weren’t many responses, the vast majority were against the state standards.
“I think the board needs to take a strong stance. It is in your power,” he said, adding they shouldn’t be “in fear” of Gov. Phil Murphy, the state Department of Education or the New Jersey Education Association.
“It is totally up to you what the curriculum will look like next (school) year. I ask you to do what’s right for our children,” Shaffer said.
School board member Jacqueline McAlister said when the board was interviewing candidates for the vacant superintendent position, they made clear one of the most pressing issues that had to be dealt with was the new health education standards.
She explained that the state Legislature and Department of Education create the standards together. Those standards are given to the districts, which then create the curriculum to be taught, choosing what to use or not use from those stands. She said it is up to each district what will be taught.
“We do have options,” McAlister said. “Pastor Reimer had a good idea about opting-in to certain topics. That’s certainly not out of the question. I have heard of that before. It’s a good option. When our new superintendent starts, that will be first on the list of things to cover. It’s not that we’re ignoring it. We will have open discussions.”
The district has been under the supervision of Interim Superintendent of Schools Dr. Thomas Baruffi this past school year after the retirement last August of longtime superintendent Kathleen Taylor.
The board chose Dr. Matthew Friedman as the new superintendent of schools. He will take over the position in July. His first official day in the district is Monday, July 11.
Most recently, Friedman was the assistant superintendent of the South Orange Maplewood School District which has 7,200 students, 566 teachers and 34 administrators and a budget of $154 million, according to his resumé. Before that he was the chief academic officer of the Downingtown Area School District that had 13,000 students.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff