Long Valley School Board Meeting Heats Up Over COVID Policies

LONG VALLEY, NJ — The Washington Township Schools Board of Education meeting was interrupted for a brief recess during its public session after some attendees refused to wear masks.

Board President Jessica DeCicco called for the 10-minute recess on Tuesday night, as things grew heated when she asked some attendees to mask up, one of the people she addressed pointing out two Board Members who were attending remotely, were unmasked.

“They’re sitting at home,” DeCicco said after looking back at the screen where those board members were visible.

DeCicco had advocated for mask-optional environments within the schools before the start of the 2021-2022 school year, writing a letter on behalf of the board to Gov. Phil Murphy asking that decisions be made locally on mask mandates, prior to his Executive Order mandating them.

“Here’s the difference sir, we are in a school, it is required, you can thank Gov. Phil Murphy for this mandate,” DeCicco fired back to the audience member before the break.

Prior to and after the recess, several residents addressed the board, two them newly-elected board members - Cynthia Ruggiero and Rob Waskis, against two new policies up for adoption, one “The Road Forward COVID-19 - Health and Safety,” the other about school employee vaccination requirements.

The Board Members ended up tabling the measures by a 6-2 vote, for future discussion. Board Member Jason Koestenblatt expressed that he planned to vote "no" on the policies up for adoption, in their current form, because he felt they were discriminatory and divisive between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, among his reasons.

Koestenblatt thanked his colleagues for their diligence in working on the policies together, but said the framework comes from handed down CDC guidelines and Murphy’s Executive Orders. He said that the initial Road Forward policy permitted optional masking, until Murphy’s order 253 came along. He said DeCicco has attempted to have earnest discussions with Murphy about why the local control was taken away during these uncertain times.

He said the mandatory vaccines or testing in lieu of vaccines wasn’t something the majority of the board had aimed for, but instead the board has “had their arms twisted by state and federal mandates at every single turn.”

The district, Koestenblatt said, could be subject to loss of insurance and “dealing with draconian ramifications" if they don't comply with the mandates or craft a policy they feel is more suitable for the district.

“Not necessarily because the guidelines and mandates are right, but because we’ve been given no other choice,” he said.

José Lourenço, one of the outgoing members said he would abstain from voting if those policies were adopted, calling it a policy he would not be there to implement, with Tuesday his final board meeting.

Watch the full meeting discussion in the video below, including comments from all members of the board and audience in both public sessions:

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