The Media and the Toms River Regional School District are in open war this evening, Save Jerseyans.
For example, APP dropped two opinion-posing-as-news pieces on Wednesday – here and here – accusing the school of fomenting a major COVID-19 outbreak by opening the school year without enforcing masks. Other outlets including NJ.com and NBC New York ran similar stories.
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The district felt compelled to issue a formal response later in the day.
“Information published today by external sources about our school district and its number of quarantined students demands clarification,” the district explained in its statement. “It was falsely reported that more than 1,100 district students were in quarantine as of yesterday, but that figure combined the number of students who have reported testing positive, a cumulative figure (217) that is largely inclusive in the number of quarantined students.”
Much of the recent discussion surrounding Toms River Regional Schools’ number of Covid cases and quarantined students and staff aims to connect these figures with our district “beginning the school year mask optional,” which is misleading and unfounded. For eight school days to begin the year, TRRS exercised the “excessive heat” exemption in Executive Order 251, but masks were only optional in buildings and spaces which did not have air conditioning. Since Sept. 20, the wearing of masks in all spaces has been required throughout the district, as per EO 251.
Currently, the number of students in quarantine—which, again, includes those who recently reported testing positive represents six percent of our student population. Generally speaking, our numbers are consistent with a community at high risk of transmission, as Ocean County currently is.
Superintendent Stephen Genco issued his own written missive on Thursday.
“In any case, I felt it necessary to reach out and assure our school community that, contrary to what you may have heard, there is no Covid-19 “outbreak” in our district. Our numbers of cumulative positive cases and current quarantine numbers– which are published on our website and have been throughout this pandemic, and which are updated daily– are clearly and consistently trending down,” wrote Genco in an open letter to the community. “As of this writing, the number of students in quarantine is 791, less than 5.5 percent of the student population, and down 28 percent overall since just last week.”
New Jersey is currently acknowledging 39 “outbreaks” across 16 of the state’s 21 counties.
It didn’t need to be this way. Florida has led the way by refusing to quarantine students simply on the basis of COVID-19 exposure.
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