Parents rally for return to in-person learning as group sues N.J. district – NJ.com

Ten-year-old Peter Kaplan took the microphone and fired up the crowd of more than 100 fellow students and parents from the South Orange-Maplewood School District.

“We’ve got to keep on going, because if we don’t now we’re going to lose,” said Peter, a 5th grader at Seth Boyden Elementary School in Maplewood, addressing the crowd from the steps of the town’s municipal building at dinnertime on Monday. “And we can’t accept the defeat from the district, who are just bullying us the whole way, and that’s just not right.”

Hollering, he added, “I say open the frickin’ school!”

The speech drew cheers from the crowd, which had gathered in the slushy snow outside the seat of local government to call on Maplewood’s mayor and council to join their fight to reopen schools for in-person learning despite coronavirus safety concerns that have led the teachers’ union to keep its members from returning to classrooms.

The situation in South Orange-Maplewood is not unlike one involving Montclair’s public schools, another Essex County district where many school parents are now demanding a return to pre-COVID learning. In Montclair, the school board has sued the local union tying to force teachers back into classrooms, though a judge refused to immediately grant the district’s request.

Monday’s rally occurred just before President Joe Biden led the nation in an observance of a grim milestone of more 500,000 deaths from COVID-19, with the president urging Americans to maintain their vigilance against the deadly virus.

The rally had been called by SOMA for Safe Return to School, a group formed in December by South Orange and Maplewood parents who say their children have become disinterested, distracted and depressed after a year of nearly all remote learning.

Maplewood Mayor Frank McGehee did not address parents and students outside his township office. But in an email to NJ Advance Media on Monday, McGehee reiterated remarks he had made during a Feb. 16 council meeting, insisting that he and council members were engaged in the issue.

“A meeting with key stakeholders in the School District Administration/Board of Ed as well as with our colleagues in South Orange occurred and we have a follow-up meeting scheduled for this week,” McGehee wrote.

“The Township is taking a collaborative role with the intent to be advocates for our children, our residents and our greater community. We want all of our 7,200 children from (the) school district to have opportunity.”

Following an all-remote fall semester, the district did switch to a hybrid approach for the first two weeks of February under an agreement struck by the teachers union and the administration calling for classrooms to be kept both well ventilated and adequately heated, among other provisions. But the union declared it was pulling its teachers out of classrooms as of Feb. 16, charging the administration with failing to honor the agreement.

Apart from the two rallies that SOMA has staged, including Monday’s and one on Dec. 12 outside the school board offices, a group of 11 district parents has filed a related federal lawsuit seeking to force the district to resume full-day classes, five days a week.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Newark on Jan. 29, states that the parents’ children and others in the district have experienced, “ineffective and substandard learning through remote means, all the while forcing children into isolation and causing academic stagnation and regression.”

The parents also believe their children’s mental and emotional health have been “harmed” and that they are at risk of “long-term mental health problems,” according to the suit.

Jeff Wolfe, a 48-year-old parent, said his 10-year-old son, Rohan, was losing motivation and interest not only in school with each day of virtual isolation, but in his family life as well. “I see somebody who every day is getting more and more frustrated by his experience, and it goes beyond when the screen is on,” Wolfe said. “It has a lingering impact.”

Remote schooling just wasn’t the same, Rohan said. “I mostly miss my friends, and reading real books,” said Rohan, meaning the kind that are printed with ink on paper and bound between front and back covers. “On every little box on Zoom, everybody’s moving around and it’s really confusing for me.”

Although Rohan’s fellow student Peter had railed against “the district” during his speech at the rally, it was actually the teachers’ union that SOMA for Safe Return to School holds responsible for keeping children cooped up at home in front of their computer screens, said Kate Walker, an organizer of the group.

“We had our first rally in December and kids went back to school in January, and then the union stopped sending teachers to school,” Walker said.

“We don’t feel that the union is putting children first,” said Walker, whose son, Jack, a first grader at Marshall Elementary School in South Orange, held a sign reading, “Please open my school.”

The union’s president, Rocio Lopez, did not respond to requests for comment on Monday. But in a letter to the school community announcing that teachers would not be returning to the classrooms, Lopez said it was the district that was “not capable of and not willing to comply with its agreement” to properly ventilate and heat classrooms, among other measures.

The letter said teachers would not return to classrooms at least until March 15.

The district issued a statement on Friday expressing hope that an arbitration hearing scheduled to begin that day with the Public Employment Relations Commission would result in an agreement with teachers to go back into schools.

In response to word of the parents’ rally on Monday, the district issued a statement that afternoon insisting it was the union’s decision to put off in-person learning, while reiterating its optimism that mediators could help forge a back-to-school agreement.

“The District is currently in mediation with SOMEA, our teacher’s union, and hopes to come to a positive outcome so we can have our students return to our schools for in-person hybrid instruction,” the statement read.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Chris Sheldon contributed to this article.

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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com.