By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – Some school board members said they were sympathetic to parents’ concerns; two said the parents should also complain to state officials. Another bluntly said she was tired of the complaining.
A handful of board members responded after about an hour of public comment at the Nov. 18 Ocean City Board of Education meeting.
“We are listening and we did hear what you all had to say,” school board member Cecilia Gallelli-Keyes said. “There are some really good ideas brought up tonight.” She said she had students in school “and it is hard.”
“Believe me, we do want kids in school five days a week,” she said. “We’re going to move forward, we’re going to keep trying for you guys. Hopefully some positive stuff will come out of this. But we are trying and we have been listening.”
Board member William Holmes said parents are the best advocates for their children and that parents shouldn’t think they’re crazy for supporting their students. “Keep up what you’re doing,” he said. “Pre-pandemic, we didn’t have anybody coming to these meetings unless we were doing an awards night for everybody. Don’t give up. Come up with these great ideas.”
Holmes said there are different resources in different towns. As an Upper Township representative, he said he gets calls from both sides of the bridge.
“We’re at the whim of the governor,” he said, adding he covers all of these topics every morning at the coffee table, wondering “when I turn the news on will I be talking about one more thing that is imposed on us. I share in your frustration, but I also know this can’t be the only place we can advocate for our students because it comes from the top down. We’re mandated to do certain things. We’re stuck with what we have.
“We may not be in the same situation they’re stuck in in north Jersey, but we have to follow the same rules because up there they’re scared of their own shadow,” Holmes said, “and rightfully so because they have a much larger population. So don’t take this as I’m pointing somewhere else, but don’t stop chewing at our pant leg, start chewing the pants off of the people who tell us what we have to do.”
Encouraging the people who spoke up to come back to the meeting and speak again, Holmes said, “If you don’t bring it to people’s attention, nothing changes.”
School board member Greg Whelan, who has two children in the district, thanked the parents for showing up and said he appreciated their comments. He echoed Holmes about following guidelines that are set outside the district and said the administration “is doing a great job and doing everything they possibly can.” He also said the students and teachers are also doing everything they can.
One school board member took a different approach to the comments.
Suzanne Morgan said she is tired of listening to complaints and there is no easy solution.
Saying she has three daughters, one left in the high school who is having a hard time, “but she’s doing it. I’m not saying that is going to solve everybody’s issue. She’s reaching out to her teachers, she cries some days and she’s OK some days. The point I’m trying to make is there isn’t a magic solution. We’re all trying.”
She said the board and the administration has done a lot of work from March until present “and all I hear is complaint, complaint, complaint. I never hear anybody say anything good … about our administration. They are working their butts off and it’s frustrating for me sitting here to hear it because I know what they have done.”
Morgan said she works in the pharmaceutical industry and Centers for Disease Control guidelines are what they are.
“If your child is with someone who tests positive, then it is what it is. There is nothing we can do liability-wise as a school district to overcome that,” she said.
Morgan added she wasn’t trying to minimize what the parents said during public comment because it “all hits home, it’s all important, but I think we all have to take a bigger scope.” She said she appreciated the suggestions and that some are worth looking into but she urged everyone to “look at the big picture and understand we’re trying to do everything for everybody.
“We’re all trying to work this out and attacking our school system, our administrators, our teachers, is not the solution,” she said. “We’re all in this together. We’re a family. That’s all I want to say.”
None of the parents criticized teachers, heaping praise on them instead. Many also couched their concerns with thanks for aspects of what administrators have done and the time school board members have spent.