District addresses COVID-19 concerns for upcoming school year
The Board of Education held an in-person meeting in Pascack Hills on Monday. During this meeting, the community discussed their concerns regarding the COVID-19 restrictions for the upcoming school year, as well as the BOE discussing the search and process of finding a new superintendent.
During the Comments from the Public sections of the in-person Board of Education meeting at Pascack Hills on Monday, August 30, community members discussed policies such as COVID-19 restrictions on masks and vaccinations, as well as the ongoing search for a new superintendent.
After concerns were raised from the public about students being required to wear masks in school, the BOE explained that Governor Phil Murphy’s announcement on mask protocol in New Jersey schools says that all students and faculty are required to wear masks inside the school building.
According to the NJDOH Exclusion Criteria, vaccinated students are not required to quarantine in the event that they are in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19; however, unvaccinated students in New Jersey are required to quarantine for up to 14 days depending on their community’s transmission levels.
After a question was raised from the public about the possibility of a teacher needing to quarantine, the BOE said that the students would come in-person to class as the teacher taught virtually, whilst an adult was in the classroom to supervise.
BOE President Tammy Molinelli suggested creating “small workgroups to explore everything that goes into the [superintendent search] timeline.
Business Administrator/Board Secretary Yas Usami brought up the process of finding a new superintendent.
“We developed the request proposal and then [Interim Superintendent Daniel Fishbein] had identified some search firms that he was aware of and I was aware of,” Usami said. “Two are national search firms and four were local firms. Tomorrow at four o’clock is the deadline [for superintendent applications]. Once we get that [the BOE] wants to set up interviews with them and then decide who you would like to select as a search firm.”
Molinelli said that the new superintendent search firm proposals will be put into packets for each board member to review, and she also proposed the idea of having a few board members be on a small committee to figure out the next steps in interviewing the candidates.
During the Comments from the Public section of the meeting, the topics of masks and vaccinations sparked a lot of discussions.
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