NJ Education Report

Editor’s Note: On Friday NJ Education Report published a petition that calls for Ocean City Public Schools to embrace the LGBTQ community, charging that those who participated in a local rally believed “gay & trans people and students are dangerous, ugly, wrong.” Today several members of the Ocean City Alliance for Sensible Education contacted NJER to say the petition is filled with inaccuracies and students were getting “death threats. This response to the petition was written by OCASE President Robin Shaffer, MEd, the father of two sons and an educator with 30 years experience as a teacher and administrator. 

A peaceful rally to support parental rights and oppose the inappropriate new NJ sex and gender ideology standards, which was held in Mark Soifer Park across from City Hall in Ocean City on September 8th, caused a huge backlash by LGBTQIA activists. They orchestrated a BIG LIE that our group wants to exclude LGBTQIA students from Ocean City’s schools (OCNJ).

Nothing could be further from the truth. We weren’t there to talk about diversity or inclusion and there was nothing we said that could be construed as seeking to deny access to the LGBTQIA community. Even so, LGBTQIA activists immediately went to work characterizing our rally as doing just that. They circulated an international anonymous petition (“Queers Belong”) on change.org which supports the rights of LGBTQIA students to attend OCNJ schools. I signed the petition, as thousands of others have across the globe, because it might as well say “Do you think kittens are cute?” Of course, kittens are cute, just as it is incontrovertible that LGBTQIA students belong in Ocean City schools. From the comments, it appears nearly all who have signed the petition live outside OCNJ. Somehow I doubt if you live in Dushanbe, Tajikistan or Kigali, Rwanda and sign the petition, you could even find OCNJ on a map. 

They even staged a march around Ocean City High School on Sunday, September 18th. The march included dozens of people from outside OCNJ, including a few from Pennsylvania. Their speaker was a teacher from Egg Harbor Township. Their message was “We Belong” and was focused on the idea that LGBTQIA students shouldn’t be shunned or excluded. As such, it was a message utterly disconnected from that which our group has advanced.

Our event was designed to show our community’s displeasure with the school board decision to approve inappropriate learning standards, and to express support for the City Council’s Parents’ Bill of Rights resolution. 

It was nothing more. And it was nothing less.

LGBTQIA activists, most of whom don’t live in Ocean City, are attempting to hijack our message by spreading lies about the rally and those who attended it. We are being attacked online and on social media. Christianity is being mocked. There have been death threats by members of the LGBTQIA community against those who attended the rally. People–including children—have been attacked and intimidated online simply for attending a peaceful event.

LGBTQIA activists are following a familiar playbook. Remember the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” in Florida, a law that doesn’t include LGBTQIA anywhere in its text? Similarly, no one said anything about excluding LGBTQIA students from schools at our rally. But to LGBTQIA militants, the truth doesn’t matter. They will continue to indoctrinate and groom kids—our kids—with lies and a perceived victimhood, fueled by a media and public that runs scared, lest they be labeled as bigoted, homophobic, or transphobic. When they cannot debate an issue on its merits, I suppose it is easier for them to start name calling instead.

Unfortunately, some people buy into the LGBTQIA activists’ strawman argument that our rally was about the LGBTQIA community and about denying access to public accommodations. They immediately jump the shark and call us bigoted towards the LGBTQIA community, even comparing one of the speakers (who was formerly gay himself) to David Duke. Even though the rhetoric is banal, many Christian conservatives shy away for fear of being labeled, and their children being hurt in the process—fears that have proven justified in Ocean City.

The bottom line is that we support the rights of any person to live their lives free from hate or intimidation. And we support the rights of the faith community and families, just as we do our public schools, to handle topics appropriate to each setting. Our schools are on the front lines. Things are only going to get worse for our children if we back away because of threats and intimidation. If we cede this ground, and do not push forward, our future generations will operate on false oppression premises, accept hyper-sexuality in schools and in pop culture, and turn their backs on faith. 

I pray that does not happen.

A letter appeared in the last issue of The Ocean City Sentinel written by Marie Taylor, which included several inaccuracies. For starters, she cited a couple of the less objectionable standards and claimed our group has been “sounding fear alarms.” She claims that gender dysphoria has been a significant issue among teens for some time and that the standards will help these children not to be “kept in the closet.” What she fails to understand is that aggressive promotion of LGBTQIA lifestyles by Ocean City School District staff and outside activists can lead teens to make life-shattering decisions about their bodies during a confusing and vulnerable time. Walk around the schools sometime and you’ll see a plethora of pride flags, safe spaces such as the wellness centers, as well as staff who identify as advocates and allies of the LGBTQIA community. What we don’t know yet is how these activities are contributing to the rising numbers of teens who identify as LGBTQIA.

Ms. Taylor goes on to mock my assertion that pandemic learning loss is a critical issue. She states “learning lags…were not caused by school board or governor’s decisions.” That is patently false. Governor Murphy’s mandates, and the school board’s decision to keep Ocean City schools closed or in shortened school days/hybrid teaching, directly led to learning decay, as well as a host of social and emotional consequences. 

Ms. Taylor claims that according to US News and World Report, Ocean City High School is ranked 81st in the state. That is not accurate. OCHS is ranked #122. And if you look behind the ranking, you will see that it isn’t all about teaching and learning. 

According to US News, this is how OCHS ranked, first nationally and then within New Jersey:

• College Readiness Index Rank: #1,625 #86

• College Curriculum Breadth Index Rank: #1,618 (tie) #92

• State Assessment Proficiency Rank: #6,516 (tie) #152

• State Assessment Performance Rank: #12,300 (tie) #273

• Graduation Rate Rank: #4,637 (tie) #135 (tie)
• #2,966 in National Rankings
• #122 in New Jersey High Schools

If you examine Ocean City Schools’ performance data, especially in reading and math, you will find gaps across the board. OCHS falls in the bottom half of school districts in the state on important teaching and learning metrics.

Ms. Taylor says she “applauds” those who voted for the standards, including her son-in-law Ryan Leonard. She reasons that the silent majority of Ocean City stakeholders who did not speak out against the standards or stand up for their children are actually in favor of teaching radical gender ideology and explicit sex topics to children as young as 5. She suggests that even though not one speaker has ever gotten up at an OCNJ  school board meeting to support the standards, most stakeholders do. And she opined that only 13 school districts in the state have taken action to oppose the implementation of the standards in their curriculum. Our county commissioners denounced the standards unanimously at their April 26, 2022 meeting. Our City Council approved the Parental Bill of Rights unanimously at its meeting on September 8. At least 17 New Jersey school districts have rejected part or all of the 2020 standards. And there is a growing list of school boards willing to show courage in the face of threats from Governor Murphy and activism by the LGBTQIA lobby and the New Jersey Education Association.

Our school board had the opportunity to reflect the will of the electorate at the August 24, 2022 meeting. Instead, they sold our kids out. Moreover, the six who voted for the standards–Halliday, Leonard, Kane, Roche, Sooy, Clark–created an extraordinary amount of work for our school district in administering the new standards. The new superintendent Dr. Friedman is doing an excellent job thus far and should be commended for his level-headedness, transparency, and collegiality in working with various stakeholders. Even so, implementing the new standards is taking up far too much of his time, as well as the time of Curriculum Director Lauren Gunther and teachers. The opportunity cost in implementing these controversial standards is high. The school district has done a great job in helping the public understand what it will be implementing, and how it will carry out the standards to the minimum degree possible. If the school board had nixed the new standards, Dr. Gunther, Dr. Friedman, and OCSD faculty could be focusing on curriculum and pedagogy—interventions and supports, scaffolding and differentiation—in reading, math and other core subject areas to address the deficiencies that arose during the pandemic.  

Electing representatives for the school board who don’t narrowly vote for their own children’s special interests, or cave to extortion by NJEA or the governor,will be critical to restoring faith in our school board. It will also go a long way towards ensuring parental rights aren’t trampled and our children are kept safe.