East Brunswick Parents Raise COVID Safety Concerns In Letter

EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ — Around 56 parents and guardians from East Brunswick have written a letter to school Board President Vicki Becker expressing concern over the school district’s COVID-19 mitigation plan, ahead of school reopening.

However, Superintendent Victor Valeski told Patch the district was “exceptionally optimistic” about having students back for in-person classes.

In their letter, sent electronically on Sept. 5, parents say that the district “appears to be doing less to mitigate risk for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year, despite data showing the delta variant to be 2 to 4 times more contagious than prior variants.”

East Brunswick will head back to school on Thursday.

“While we understand it is an extremely difficult task to come up with these policies and that there is no perfect solution, we do believe the district could feasibly implement more effective measures to help mitigate the risks to our children who are still ineligible for the COVID vaccine,” the letter said.

Parents wondered how the school district would ensure all students wore well-fitted masks correctly. “Should the burden be placed on teachers- who will be busy focusing on teaching, as they should be? This illustrates the need to have more/better mitigation strategies in place if we want to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and maximize the number of children in-person.”

They said masking becomes extremely crucial as physical distancing has been reduced from 6 feet to 3 feet in all classrooms statewide.

“Without a minimum distance requirement, East Brunswick needs to be taking extra precautions,” the parents said. They also raised concern over the school district doing away with temperature screenings, not using semi-permanent canopies for outdoor lunch, and not implementing increased quarantining “than what is required at the bare minimum” and not using HEPA filters in classrooms.

“We believe East Brunswick can do better than this; we believe our children deserve better than this.”

Superintendent Victor Valeski told Patch that all schools in the district “are as safe as humanly possible.”

“From a facilities perspective, we are well-positioned to welcome all students,” Valeski said.

As the school year begins, Valeski reiterated that the school’s partnership with the community will prove to be crucial in mitigating the spread of the virus.

“Individuals are at different positions in their feelings about the return from the pandemic or not having returned from the pandemic, being vaccinated or not, being masked or not masked,” Valeski said. “So, this partnership between the schools and community will ensure that we protect each other. Safety is essentially important to our success.”

Valeski also addressed the concerns raised by the parents in a letter to the community on Tuesday. You can read it by clicking here.

“I'm feeling optimistic about our ability to even serve lunch. And I think the staff concurs. They're anxious to welcome their students back. They're looking forward to getting back in front of our classrooms and engaging with students,” the superintendent said.

“We worked really hard this entire year, and this summer to get ready for tomorrow. A lot of people went without a rest this summer to make sure tomorrow was going to be successful.”

Thank you for reading. Have a correction or news tip? Email sarah.salvadore@patch.com

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