NJ Class of 2020 is frustrated with the lack of a plan

As a local elected official, community member and parent, I know a lot of students, parents, community members, and even other elected officials are extremely frustrated with the lack of a plan for in-person graduation. I share your frustrations on so many levels, not just as an elected member of the Toms River Board of Education but I refuse to promise our students anything I might have to take back. In an effort to relieve some of that frustration I sent a letter to Governor Murphy asking for local control to be restored in the area of commencement ceremonies. The text of that letter is below. If you support that concept I hope you will echo it. You can read the actual letter here. https://drive.google.com/…/1fIRkYM-O_Ytiy4_dcOj7QQAz6t…/view?

Dear Governor Murphy

I hope this letter finds you safe and well and I thank you for your efforts to keep New Jersey safe by flattening the curve. I very much appreciate that your position is not an easy one. Thank you for your service and for taking the time to read my letter. A hard copy is attached.

Last night my 17-year-old high school senior asked me a question. “Mom will I be able to graduate with a friend?” It seems like an odd question and any year other than 2020 it would be quite strange but she really wanted an answer and she fully expected that I would be able to provide it. I understand and appreciate her faith in me, after all, if your parent is the President of the Board of Education of the largest suburban school district in the state you might reasonably assume she knows what in the world is going on with High School Graduation. It hurt me to have to tell her I don’t know. This morning my neighbor asked me another question, “When will the kids walk and how many people can we bring?” Again it pained me to say I don’t know. I have been saying “I don’t know” for months. Everyone agrees on one thing only. Our students deserve to walk. Parents and community members shout and write that message to you, to me and our colleagues each and every day. A decision has to be made. When will we allow them to walk? Is it logistically feasible now or will we wait? Thanks to your announcement Tuesday, May 26th on Twitter “TO THE CLASS OF 2020: Beginning July 6th, schools WILL have the opportunity to hold outdoor graduation ceremonies that comply with social distancing – ensuring the health and safety of all in attendance.” Students and parents statewide think that time is now.

The NJDOE guidance released to the public late in the evening on May 27th and revised late in the evening on May 28th reads ”local school districts have three options for commencement ceremonies: virtual; drive-through/drive-in; and modified in-person, outdoor ceremonies.” What it doesn’t say is that the County Executive Superintendents have made it clear to District Superintendents that the modified in-person celebrations must be planned using CURRENT maximums for outdoor gatherings. Our Executive County Superintendent has made it exceptionally clear Friday that the total number of attendees that we are currently permitted to plan for including staff, students, and guests is 25. He also suggests an ultra-low number of student participants that would require Toms River Regional to conduct more than 1000 modified in-person, outdoor ceremonies if we were to celebrate both intermediate and high school graduations. The suggestion is ludicrous and suggests that NJDOE and your Administration really doesn’t want us to have in-person celebrations for our students at all. As local elected officials, I and the entire Toms River Regional Schools Board of Education find this situation unacceptable.

Deliberately or not your appointees have made Professional Educators and local elected officials statewide look incompetent. Nothing could be further from the truth. New Jersey Schools are the best in the nation because our professional educators are the best in the nation. There has been a baffling lack of clear leadership and direction from NJDOE lately. Supporting direction on how to interpret guidance changes often, sometimes multiple times on the same day. That lack of leadership would have remained invisible to the public but thanks to your announcement Tuesday, May 26th on Twitter “TO THE CLASS OF 2020: Beginning July 6th, schools WILL have the opportunity to hold outdoor graduation ceremonies that comply with social distancing – ensuring the health and safety of all in attendance.” without public dissemination of the supporting direction from NJDOE staff, local leaders statewide are being attacked through no fault of our own for failing to give our children what you promised. We need your help to fix this for our students.

Over and over again for months, our own Toms River Regional Schools Superintendent Healy has told our community that our district will make sure our students will celebrate in person graduation when it is safe and legal. I am extremely thankful he never promised anything specific that we would have to claw back from our students. Sadly that is not the case in many other districts statewide. Toms River district leaders both elected and paid have taken much heat from the public for refusing to commit to any plan other than “In-person graduation when it is safe and legal” but we are satisfied that we have done the right thing and have not broken any promises to our students and our community unlike many other districts in New Jersey. New Jersey students, their families, our communities and our state have lost enough. Many of our loved ones have not made it safely through the storm COVID 19 has wreaked on our nation. None the less the Toms River Regional Board of Education and Dave Healy our Superintendent of schools like many other districts are committed to providing our own students and community the graduation ceremonies they deserve to celebrate the successful preparation of our students for their next phase of life. Think of graduation as the rainbow at the end of the storm. We know we need to give our students this sign that life goes on and it is still beautiful despite the sad parts. It is our opportunity to help our community “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”(Cormac McCarthy, The Road) The Toms River Regional Schools community like communities statewide, has always taken the education of our students seriously. We as a community appreciate that a well-rounded public school education is vital to our mutual success. That is just one of the reasons thousands of community members celebrate graduation at each of our three high schools and three intermediate schools each and every year. District staff with the support of local officials have the execution of the graduation celebration down to a science and the planning for those graduations begins at the beginning of the school year. This year that plan has been revised more times than I can count due to the COVID 19 public health emergency. District Administration has held countless meetings with building principals who also spend many hours collaborating with each other and their respective staffs to make sure our students will have a wonderful graduation celebration when it is “safe and legal” as Superintendent Healy promised. Local law enforcement has also been consulted on multiple occasions.

Recently you made the decision to open beaches subject to capacity limits set by township officials with proper social distancing. By doing so you restored control to local elected officials. It is time to do the same for local elected Boards of Education and the professional educators we employ to care for our students. Our communities trust us to do the right thing. You have taken our authority away by executive order due to COVID 19 and at the time we appreciated the need for a state-level solution. That time has passed. New Jersey believes in local control of local school districts. Home rule is sacrosanct here. It is time for some semblance of that local control to be restored. Local elected leaders need to be permitted to make the decisions that are right for their own communities.

Governor Murphy at this time I am asking you to allow Toms River Regional Superintendent David Healy and his colleagues across the state to make the decision about if, when, where and how to celebrate appropriate outdoor Graduations for their communities, let them and their staff in collaboration with local law enforcement and the advice and consent of local elected Boards of Education decide how many attendees can be accommodated with proper social distancing 6ft apart at our outdoor venues that normally accommodate thousands of spectators. Districts can then send locally approved Graduation plans to NJDOE seven days before any scheduled event. Let elected local Boards of Education do the work that we were elected to do. New Jersey is the best in the nation at public education for a reason. Our school districts care for kids better than any other state in the nation. Please trust that our professional educators and local elected Boards of Education will do no harm to our students and communities by restoring local control in this matter.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Anna Polozzo

Board of Education President Toms River Regional Schools