Members of the Public turned away from the Wayne BOE October "Public" Meeting were forced to wait outside in the cold.

Earlier this week, Suzanne Pudup, the president of the Wayne Township BOE, without a vote of the board, changed the board's October public meeting from the spacious Town Council Chamber on Valley Road to a conference room in the BOE Administrative Offices building.

When parents and other members of the public showed up to express their concerns about a variety of issues, they learned that Ms. Pudup had added insult to injury.

The Town Council Chamber accommodates more than 200 people and has a video and audio capability that allows the BOE public meetings to be televised and recorded. In contrast, the conference room hosts the public in a tiny adjacent room which provides shoulder-to-shoulder seating for only 20-25 people.

Last year, a November workshop meeting was held in the conference and the overflow of interested residents stood in the first-floor reception area listening as best they could to a recording of the meeting being sent through the public address system. The tiny adjacent seating room came to be known as the "COVID Closet" because of the shoulder-to-shoulder seating.

Thursday night, residents started to notice that several of their number were not in the room. A few left the room to find out where their friends were.

A parent approached one of the four police officers in the otherwise empty reception area and asked what happened. Ever the professional, the officer politely explained: "We've been told to turn people away, Ma'am." Evidently the police were told that there was some form of security threat that necessitated expelling the citizens from the reception area. 

Meanwhile, in the COVID Closet, parents and others reported that no announcements were made by Ms. Pudup or anyone else to explain what happened and why.  Of course, such an announcement could have been missed because of the poor acoustics and sound system. It is unclear whether or not the meeting was televised.

Ms. Pudup is running for reelection this year (#7 on the ballot). The October meeting is usually the last public meeting before the November election. The timing wasn't lost on those parents who came to express concern over the cancellation of the traditional 8th Grade overnight trip to Washington D.C.

Residents standing out in the cold were furious. "I couldn't hear a thing," one parent declared. "This whole thing's rotten." Another said: "It's such B*** S*** in this town!"

Ryan Battershill, who is running on the "Children First" team (at #2 on the ballot) called the whole thing "disappointingly political." "She (Pudup) doesn't want people at home to hear any criticisms of the board before the election."

Barbara Riggoglioso, Battershill's running mate on the Children First team (at #3 on the ballot),  agreed. "This is especially true at a time when hundreds of families are opting out of the new sex ed curriculum that Suzanne Pudup pushed through."

Ms. Pudup is running on the "United Not Divided" ticket.