This Week's Middletown BOE Meeting: What To Expect

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — A lot of ground will be covered at the Feb. 23 Middletown school board meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Middletown Library Community room:

If you cannot be there in person, the meeting will be posted Thursday morning on the Middletown BOE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channe...

1. Sex ed. mandates from the state will be adopted: First, the board will be asked to approve this series of new requirements from the state on Sex Ed. and Health education in schools.

In November, a number of Middletown parents spoke up at BOE meetings and said they were very uncomfortable with some of New Jersey's sex education mandates, which include gender identity discussions with second graders and masturbation discussed by the end of fifth grade. However, those topics don't appear to be specified in the curriculum policy the board will likely approve Wednesday. Also, as always, parents can opt their children out of any health or sex education, said board vice president Jacqueline Tobacco. This is the exclusion form: https://sites.google.com/middl...

2. Diversity and equity mandates from the state will be adopted: Also, in addition to sex ed., the state imposed new diversity and equity education requirements. The Middletown school district said it plans to meet this requirement by including African-American accomplishments into all school curriculums; see bullet 24 of the policy being voted on: https://www.middletownk12.org/...

There are also policy changes in there that protect freedom of religion in Middletown public schools, but does not expressly permit prayer in schools.

Here is the "equity and inclusion" presentation the BOE heard Feb. 15 and that same presentation in PDF form: https://drive.google.com/file/...

3. Board will be asked to support a bill that limits governor's power: Finally, the school board will be asked to vote on this resolution that supports Senate Bill S1200.

This is a bill pending in Trenton that would significantly curtail how much power a governor has in declaring a state of emergency. The bill would give the state Legislature the power to terminate a public health emergency with a two-thirds vote and would require every emergency extension to be approved by the Legislature. Read more about the bill here.

BOE President Frank Capone already tweeted this week that he urges the school board to support the bill; he frequently refers to the governor as "King Murphy" and "King of the Navesink" for how he governed in the pandemic.

The bill's main sponsors are state Sen. Vin Gopal, a Democrat who represents southern Monmouth County (Red Bank on south) and northern Monmouth County state Senator Declan O'Scanlon, a Republican.

"It has bipartisan support," stressed Capone at Tuesday night's workshop meeting. "It would restore local control over decisions impacting the welfare of children of Middletown school district."

The Middletown school board also said at their Feb. 15 meeting they will be working much more closely with Sen. Gopal to try and secure more funding for the district. This is because Gopal was just named the new chair of the Senate Education Committee.

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