Some Hopatcong Parents Hope To Challenge Mask Order

HOPATCONG, NJ — A mother who attempted to challenge the Hopatcong Borough School District by telling them she wouldn’t send her five-year-old to school in a mask, said she was told if he’s wasn’t masked and refused one, he would be sent home.

Heather Fiore, who is planning to run as an independent candidate for the Hopatcong Borough Council in November, said she and other parents were told if their children accrued too many absences after being sent home for being maskless, they could face truancy charges.

She said she initially told the district’s Superintendent Dr. Joseph Piccirillo before that, that her son would not be masked and the district wouldn’t be permitted to mask him.

Fiore said at her request, her son is repeating kindergarten for the 2021-2022 school year, after she found during the 2020-2021 year, he didn’t develop the skills that he needed in writing and speech, she feels because he and his teacher were masked.

Fiore believes her son could be given an exemption to Gov. Phil Murphy’s Executive Order 251, which provision 1h offers an exemption for masks when they create “an unsafe position in which to operate equipment or execute a task.”

She said his speaking is muffled by masks and he can neither “display his speech to ensure he is correctly pronouncing letters and words” and because he’s muffled, he can’t easily be corrected when children are just learning the basics of speech in school.

“Unless the teachers plan to have the kids mute all day, this is a task completed throughout the day,” Fiore wrote to Piccirillo about keeping her child masked.

During a special single-interest meeting that the Board of Education conducted this past Tuesday, Aug. 24 - no longer available online - Fiore said parents were told if they sent their child to school unmasked, they’d be sent home if the child or parents subsequently refused for them to be masked. That would count as an unexcused absence, she said, with parents additionally told if their child had enough of these absences, parents could face truancy charges in court, which could involve New Jersey’s New Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency becoming involved.

Parents discussed this on a page that Fiore and another parent started, “Hopatcong parents against masks.”

The parent who started the page with Fiore, as well as one another who would have liked to have seen a mask-optional environment within the schools, declined interviews with Patch, expressing fears of retaliation.

In a letter to Patch on Friday from Piccirillo and Board President Alexander McLean in response to questions from Patch pertaining to Fiore’s situation, as well as the truancy charge possibilities, they wrote, “We do not believe it is appropriate to discuss publicly specific students’ issues or possible responses to hypothetical situations.”

Piccirillo and McLean, however, offered Patch the district’s “Road Forward” document, with COVID-19 policies and Q&A information.

In their letter to Patch, Piccirillo and McLean said that “as a matter of the law,” the district is required to follow Executive Order 251 and Executive Order 253, the second pertaining to district workers, which mandates each school staff member either receives COVID-19 vaccines or undergoes weekly COVID testing.

“The district does not have the authority to disregard the requirements of EO 251 or EO 253 or take actions designed to thwart their provisions while they remain in force,” Piccirillo and McLean additionally wrote.

They did say with what they called “the narrow exemptions” within Murphy’s Executive Order 251, the district’s physician and legal counsel would work together to evaluate cases on a case-by-case basis “using their professional training, experience and common sense, in view of the actual facts presented in each case.”

Her Child’s Classwork And Her Concerns About Masking Him

On the parents against masks Facebook Page, Fiore posted samples of her child’s work, including the one below from the 2020-2021 school year, in addition to her correspondence with Piccirillo.

She said she found his writing illegible, with the teacher’s interpretation of what he wrote beneath her son’s writing.

At this early stage, she said she is uncertain if her son has any type of learning disability yet, but wrote to Piccirillo that his speaking was muffled by the mask which “does not allow for corrections in a time when learning/letters/words/sentences, etc are first started.”

Fiore said she was shocked to learn, based on what she’d seen come home from his school work, that his teacher would move her son up to the first grade.

“Last year [2020-2021 school year] was a complete waste of time,” Fiore wrote.

Fiore expressed that while her child was masked throughout the 2020-2021 school year, he had experienced some health impacts, including coughing, sore throats and problems concentrating from wearing them, writing to Piccirillo the district doesn’t have an “active policy to have younger children change their masks consistently.”

While she said Piccirillo did suggest to her she apply for a medical exemption, Fiore said the medical question wasn’t the main issue she had.

The school year was also straining on her son’s learning and overall experience, as even though she said masks were mandated for the children in his class, children were still separated by dividers, which set each child up in their own cubicle.

Additionally there was an emotional toll and frustration, Fiore said, with his teacher consistently separating her son and another child throughout class time, who Fiore said are like siblings and spend about 16 hours daily together each day of the week, outside of school.

The group of parents that has formed through the Hopatcong mask Facebook group, is seeking the assistance of a civil rights attorney, Fiore said.

Hopatcong Before And After Executive Order 251

In previous interviews with Patch before the latest Executive Orders, Picirillo - when he was assistant superintendent - and former Superintendent Art DiBenedetto, expressed that they had been aiming for a mask-optional environment prior to the Executive Order, based on the requests of many of the district’s families.

With DiBenedetto in June and more recently his letter with Board President Alex McLean in mid-August, they told Murphy that there was “dissonance with his messaging” on masks, stating it goes beyond CDC recommendations.

"This messaging seems to indicate that schools are safe as long as students mask up," the two wrote in their letter, which Piccirillo posted on Twitter and the district’s website. “There is dissonance in this messaging, however, when the State of New Jersey itself does not have a mask mandate."

Piccirillo and McLean suggested to Murphy that local control should be given back for the decision-making.

In early August after Murphy’s announcement, Piccirillo told Patch that the mask mandate “will upset many of our families, we have no other comment at this time other than that we will comply with whatever regulations are handed down to us by Gov. Murphy and New Jersey Department of Education.”

In their letter to Patch on Aug. 27, Piccirillo and McLean summed up that they were grateful for the community’s support.

“Our community has come together previously to help the district move past very difficult situations,” they wrote.

“The district asks for the cooperation of all the school community members during this extremely difficult and dangerous period,” Piccirillo and McLean said. “We believe that despite the divisions that have characterized our society and discourse recently, the love and caring in our community will enable us once again to move forward with mutual respect and understanding.”

Questions or comments about this story? Have a news tip? Contact me at: jennifer.miller@patch.com.