Middletown BOE Member Speaks Against Masks At Senate Hearing

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — Middletown Board of Education member Jacqueline Tobacco testified at a public hearing held by New Jersey Republican lawmakers on July 8 to examine whether New Jersey schoolchildren should continue to wear masks in school.

The hearing was described as a gathering "to discuss the science and data for allowing children to unmask."

The hearing was organized by state Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Montville) and attended by Republican lawmakers including Sen. Holly Schepisi (R- Westwood), Sen. Kristin Corrado (R-Totowa), Sen. Mike Doherty (R-Morristown) and Sen. Bob Singer (R-Lakewood). Erin Pein, the Stafford Township school nurse who was suspended in May after she showed up to school not wearing a mask, also spoke. Pein has also called mask mandates "child abuse."

Before Tobacco spoke, microbiologist Maria Crisler testified, as did Martin Kulldorff, PhD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Paul Alexander, a clinical epidemiologist who used to work in the Trump administration. All three of them generally were critical of requiring children to wear masks, although Kulldorff encouraged people, especially those older than 60, to get vaccinated against coronavirus.

Tobacco starts speaking about one hour into the two-hour hearing, after Sen. Doherty encouraged New Jersey parents who are against mask wearing to run for their local school boards.

"Hi, I'm Jacqueline Tobacco. I am one of the parents fighting back that the senator referred to, who ran for the Board of Ed. this year, and I've been on the Board of Ed. since January," she introduced herself. "I ran on a platform specifically against the lockdowns and against the mask mandates."

Tobacco and running mates Frank Capone and Harmony B. Heffernan won the 2020 Middletown BOE election in a landslide.

Tobacco shared that her son has not worn a mask to Middletown public schools "since September, after a long fight and a lawsuit" she filed against the Middletown school district.

"He has successfully attended schools all year and never got COVID, thank God," she said. "We've had a very successful year once the masks came off."

"The point I want to make is we can no longer sit here and debate the science: The science is clearly, clearly on the side of anti-masking," said Tobacco. "We have not had any studies saying that masking is helping anyone. And at this point, going into the next school year, in September, to be continuing to have these discussions concerns me as a parent, as a Board of Education member, as someone who listens to the constituents that we have in Middletown. There is no scientific push as to why we should be continuing these conversations, and yet here we all still are."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published at least 10 studies from across the world (from Thailand, Beijing, U.S. and Canadian hospitals, and from one done in close living quarters aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt) showing that mask wearing can reduce coronavirus transmission by up to 70 percent. The Journal of American Medicine in this Feb. 10, 2021, report also supports mask wearing.

When asked why she said "the science is clearly, clearly on the side of anti-masking," Tobacco sent us these links: https://pdmj.org/ and https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/ among other links and studies.

The first link is from the Primary Doctor Medical Journal, which MediaBias/FactCheck describes "as an anonymously run coronavirus misinformation website. They do not name owners, editors, peer-reviewers or location."

The second link is from the New England Journal of Medicine; however, at the top of the study, the study's authors wrote: "Editor’s Note: This article was published on April 1, 2020, at NEJM.org. In a letter to the editor on June 3, 2020, the authors of this article state 'We strongly support the calls of public health agencies for all people to wear masks when circumstances compel them to be within 6 ft of others for sustained periods.'”

"For every CDC study that's financed by pharma, there's an alternate study," Tobacco told Patch this week. "The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) also recommended masks today ... and their biggest supporter is Pfizer. And there’s my first-hand experience listening to parental testimony. And what we all see with our own eyes. If masks work, why are we still in a pandemic? Why were we quarantining? Can you prove the masks don’t harm children? ... The CDC is not an objective source; look at their funding sources."

"There has not been any science to back this up," Tobacco reiterated in the hearing.

"So we have to start looking at the political science, I think, and part of that is ... which is the press from the unions, the press from the politics on all of this stuff and what the end game is," she continued. " ... These masks are hurting children ... There is an egregious violation of our children's' rights to a free and appropriate public education ... At this point we need to all come together and fight this however we can ... If we all agree we are harming children with these masks, if the science is backing us up, and we have doctors and nurses backing us up, where is the line going to be drawn on what were going to do to hurt the children next?"

In June, Gov. Phil Murphy announced there would be no statewide mask mandate come September, but said he would leave it to each school district to decide. At the time, Murphy also said he was awaiting further guidance from the CDC to come out later this summer, and said the state could always revise its policy ahead of the first day of school.

The Middletown school district let students take the masks off on June 8. Tobacco said Middletown schools will not require masks next year for schoolchildren, unless there is a statewide mandate from Murphy.

She also said the Middletown community has given "very minimal pushback" to anti-masking, with the exception of two Middletown Board of Education members, who she did not name.

"As a representative of our community, we are overwhelming in favor of getting these masks off the children," she said.

Listen to Tobacco testify; she begins speaking at the 1-hour, 10-minute mark:

Related: Middletown Students Join Anti-Mask Lawsuit In NJ Schools (July 15)

Masks Will Be Optional In Middletown Schools This Fall (June 29)

No Mask Mandate For NJ Students This Fall, Gov. Murphy Says (June 28)

Middletown Students Can Now Take Their Masks Off Inside School (June 8)

Be the first to know. Sign up to get Patch emails: https://patch.com/subscribe Contact this Patch reporter: Carly.baldwin@patch.com Editor's note: This article has been slightly edited from when it was published July 20.