By MADDY VITALE
Ocean City residents attended a City Council meeting to urge the governing body to oppose the school board’s approval of curriculum that includes explicit new sex education materials that some critics call “soft porn,” “disgusting” and “borderline porn.”
The Ocean City Board of Education, in a 6-5 vote on Wednesday, approved New Jersey’s 2020 Health and Physical Education Standards.
Councilman Tom Rotondi, who attended the school board meeting, said that the more he has learned about the revised curriculum, the more he is concerned. Fellow Councilman Bob Barr was in agreement.
While there is an opt-out, Rotondi and other parents are concerned that their students would still learn about the curriculum because they would hear about it from their friends and fellow students.
During a City Council meeting Thursday night, Rotondi urged the governing body to pass a resolution at the next Council meeting in support of proposed state legislation known as the Parents Bill of Rights Act.
In April of 2022, the Cape May County Commissioners passed a resolution opposing the revised state standards on sex education due to the “lack of transparency,” as well as “age inappropriateness of certain content.”
“When the county signed off and passed a resolution supporting the Parents Bill of Rights, I thought it was prudent for the city of Ocean City to stand with them,” Rotondi said.
He added that the state is “overstepping its bounds” with the curriculum and essentially “forcing it down our throats.”
Video courtesy of Ocean City and Martin Fiedler, of Just Right TV Productions
“I have people saying I am out of line and should worry about the Council I was elected to, but I am a parent first and I care about my children,” Rotondi noted. “And with the little, tiny power I have in this seat, I want to raise awareness.”
At the same Council meeting, Barr said he is in favor of passing a resolution showing support for the Parents Bill of Rights because “the bill lets parents know what’s going on.”
Like the other speakers, Barr said he is upset by the revised sex education curriculum.
“I am no prude, but some of this stuff is just absolutely disgusting,” Barr said. “Parents should have the opportunity to know beforehand what their child will be learning, especially since some of it is so explicit and, in my opinion, is borderline porn.”
Liz Nicoletti, Catherine Panico, Cape May County Commissioner E. Marie Hayes, all Ocean City residents, and a host of other stakeholders in the community told the Board of Education what they thought of the revised curriculum on Wednesday.
Hayes noted during a statement she read to the Board of Education that she sees many issues with the new state standards.
“What I see with these new standards is the total lack of transparency and lack of respect to the parents,” she said. “These standards were passed in the middle of a pandemic at a time when parents were working to survive financially, and their lives were turned upside down.”
And on the following evening, Panico and Nicoletti addressed City Council.
“It is opening Pandora’s box. It is soft porn. It is really sick,” Panico said, adding that even with the opt-out option, the child’s peers could share the information.
Nicoletti, who frequently speaks out at Board of Education meetings about her opposition to the new curriculum, said it makes her “really upset.”
“The website is disgusting,” she said of curriculum on the state’s Board of Education website. “I am fighting this. I have been fighting this.”
She added that the curriculum will create a negative ripple effect in the community.
In a statement released on Thursday, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Matthew Friedman explained in more detail the revised curriculum.
“We amended our health and physical education curriculum with a team of teachers and administrators with the goal of compliance with the minimum requirements,” Friedman said in the statement. “We made revisions in a thoughtful manner and want our school families to be involved.”
The health and physical education standards are posted on the district’s website for parents to review at oceancityschools.org.
The amended curriculum and supporting documents will be posted in September. Teachers are preparing lessons to meet these new learning goals in an age-appropriate manner, according to the school statement.
