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Vol. 5 – No. 48 ♦ The News Leader of the Pines ♦ September 4 - September 10, 2021

A STEADY HAND AT THE HELM

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Asia M. Michael, new superintendent of the Southampton Township School District.

As Southampton’s New School Superintendent, Asia Michael Has the Advantage of Familiarity with the District, Whose Curriculum She Had a Key Role in Crafting, as She Embarks on the Formidable Task of Steering It Through Turbulent Times

By Bill Bonvie Staff Writer

SOUTHAMPTON—In her new role as superintendent of schools for Southampton Township, one of the main things Asia M. Michael would like to accomplish is to help mold students in the district into “global citizens” with an understanding of cultures in the larger world.

At the same time, however, she would also like to focus on strengthening the role of the local school district that she’ll now be heading as the heart and soul of the community it serves, with strong ties to parents and guardians, business owners and local government.

Those two seemingly divergent aims, she believes, are actually complementary, because while it is important for kids to develop a strong appreciation of and association with the place they are growing up, “we don’t know what this world is going to bring, so we have to prepare them to live in a very diverse world, which is changing every day.”

That note of uncertainty about what See MICHAEL/ Page 16

LRHSD Superintendent States District is ‘Eager’ for ‘Masks to Go Away,’ Calls Decree ‘Gut Punch’

Remarks Come After Governor Reverses Course by Mandating Masks in Schools for Beginning of Academic Year Due to Variant

By Douglas D. Melegari Staff Writer

SHAMONG—A late-summer mandate from Democratic Governor Phil Murphy – representing a reversal in his early summer stance on school masking and a return to a previously-held position of his in late spring – requiring masking inside all public, private, and parochial preschool, elementary, and secondary schools, with limited exceptions, for at least the “start” of the 2021-22 school year, has left Lenape Regional High School District (LRHSD) officials “really disappointed.”

It was just weeks earlier, on July 21, that Superintendent Dr. Carol Birnbohm had announced at a LRHSD board meeting that the district was “moving forward” from the past school year of “many, many disruptions” caused by the Coronavirus pandemic with “Operation Open LRHSD: Better Than Ever 2021,” which included passage of a board policy that masks would be “optional” inside district facilities for the new school year, following June 28 guidance from the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) leaving the decision over masking to school districts.

At the time, Coronavirus cases were on the decline and inoculations against the potentially fatal respiratory virus were on the rise.

But since then, according to an Aug. 6 press release from the governor’s office, the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention See MASKS/ Page 15

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Back To School.......... 3

INDEX

Marketplace ................21