MARLBORO – Dozens of parents used their children’s shoes to voice opposition to mask mandates and potential vaccine requirements, in a silent protest outside of Marlboro Memorial Middle School.

Saying the shoes symbolize students negatively affected by masking and potential vaccine requirements — which they claim violate rights, breathability and learning — parents Tuesday lined them up, pair-by-pair, outside of the building prior to the regular Board of Education meeting.

“Masks aren’t healthy for the kids and vaccines I don’t trust,” said Lisa Johnson, a Marlboro mother of three who helped organize the event. “There is not enough study of them.”

But she said it goes beyond those concerns to one of personal choice, saying students and parents should decide if they need masks or vaccines in school: “We want medical freedom and personal choice.”

The protest came amid a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases, now fueled largely by the omicron variant. Also Tuesday, President Joe Biden urged unvaccinated Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and for those who are eligible to get the booster shot.

While noting that vaccinated people, increasingly, are testing positive for the virus, he noted that the unvaccinated have “a significantly higher risk of ending up in the hospital — or even dying.”

The focus in Marlboro, however, was on shoes and mandates.

Johnson said she and others sent out emails and other messages asking for shoe donations and received more than 200 pairs of shoes, many appearing to be new.

The parents chose to place them around the entrance to Marlboro Memorial Middle School prior to Tuesday night's regular school board meeting so that board members would be unable to avoid them. “We wanted to bring awareness so that the board sees we are serious,” she said.

Most of the shoes also carried messages declaring “vaccine by choice” and “kids need freedom.”

“I am pro-vaccine but not pro-mandate,” said Ashley McCormack, a parent of four who spoke as she helped line up the sneakers, dress shoes and sandals. “My children, my choice. We need the board to stand with parents and show support by pushing back.”

Parent Debra Venedam, the mother of a fifth-grade boy, said, “I am vaccinated but I don’t think I should have to be. I will not get the booster because I don’t trust it. I am also afraid I will lose my rights.”

After the board meeting began, the parents removed the shoes and planned to donate them to Habitat for Humanity.

Tuesday’s protest was the latest in a recent trend of parents using the footwear to show their opposition to mask mandates and other COVID-related school policies.

Just a week earlier, on Dec. 13, some 50 pairs of shoes were placed outside of the Jackson Township Board of Education administration building at 6 a.m., according to district officials.

Protests:The latest anti-COVID vaccine mandate protest tool for Shore parents: Shoes

They also included personal notes and signs from parents and students asking that mask mandates be ended and future vaccine requirements denied.

“The messages asked the district to work to end the mask mandate in schools, to oppose any future mandates related to masks or vaccines in school and conveyed the participating parents’ position that parents alone should be in control of whether their children wear masks or receive a vaccine,” a Jackson district statement said. “The signs included in the display stated the shoes represented the number of students who would be pulled from the district and homeschooled if any further mandates are put into effect.”

District officials did not remove the shoes, allowing parents to retrieve them later that morning. Prior to the removal, Jackson Superintendent Nicole Pormilli spoke with the parents and later issued her own statement.

“It’s important to me that our parents know that their thoughts and perspectives on masks and vaccines have been heard - whether they were shared through a creative display such as this, or at a board meeting, email, call or personal conversation,” Pormilli said in her message. “However, there are also requirements we must follow. The Jackson School District will follow the mandates of Executive Orders, as well as the guidance of the NJ Department of Education and NJ Department of Health.

“Our focus is on operating within these requirements - using input from staff, students and parents - to create a safe and engaging learning environment,” she added. “The district is expanding programs and services to repair what we have lost and to move forward. We are currently utilizing federal American Rescue Act (ARP) funds for after-school programs, to increase staff to lower class sizes, to make facility improvements, for professional development and for academic and social services our students need.”

Similar protests have been held outside of Holmdel High School and Wemrock Brook Elementary School in Manalapan on Nov. 23 while others occurred this month in Berkeley Township and Highlands.

COVID:Middletown schools make quarantine voluntary for COVID close contacts

“Basically if the COVID vaccine were to become mandated for children — and we know that it will be — we placed shoes for every child that will be forced out of school if they don’t get the vaccine,” Cara Segall, a Middletown parent of two children, said after their protest. “We are not saying COVID is not real and we have to take precautions, but we think it is up to parents.”

Much of the organizing is being done via social media, with New Jersey for Medical Freedom among the proponents. Its Facebook page and another group, NJStandsup.org, have promoted so-called “shoe drops” in Medford, Edison, Springfield, Glen Rock and East Brunswick.

COVID:NJ school COVID cases increased; omicron COVID variant in Monmouth County

“Leave a pair of shoes at your child’s school with the message that we will not comply with vax mandates for our children,” several of the promotional fliers state.

The protests are occurring as the latest variant, the highly contagious omicron, is spreading rapidly through the United States as well as Africa, Canada and parts of Europe.

In New Jersey, COVID cases have risen sharply in recent weeks, going from 2,471 on Dec. 1 to 6,533 on Sunday and 6,505 on Monday — two of the biggest one-day totals since last January. The state's COVID-19 dashboard showed some 9,700 new infections Wednesday.

Nationally, omicron is starting to spread rapidly. It accounted for 73% of new infections last week, federal health officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in omicron's share of infections in only one week.

The most recent data from the state Department of Health indicates 65% of Monmouth County residents are fully vaccinated, while 53% of those living in Ocean County have full vaccination. Both are below the statewide rate of 69%.

While vaccines are not mandated for students in New Jersey — and only for teachers and staff if they refuse to be tested weekly — many parents fear such requirements that have already become law in California may be next. 

Schools:Nearly 900 Toms River students out after COVID mask-optional opening

The most recent CDC guidelines for COVID prevention in schools, issued on Nov. 5, does not urge that vaccines be mandated, but states “CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status."

The shoe protest has spread among other states with parents from Orange County, California, to Nassau County, New York, leaving row after rows of shoes outside of public schools to push their anti-mandate views. 

Some nurses offered similar shoe imagery in their early pandemic demonstrations aimed at highlighting the demands on front line medical workers as far back as May 2020. Such imagery has also been used to protest gun violence and historically had a place in the Holocaust when piles of shoes were found at former concentration camps and seen by historians as among the lasting images of Nazi genocide.

Edie Nico, a Middletown parent who organized that district’s event, said the use of shoes is not meant to disrespect the Holocaust, but noted, "there are some parallels with people having their rights taken away slowly.”

Joe Strupp is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience who covers education and several local communities for APP.com and the Asbury Park Press. He is also the author of three books, including Killing Journalism on the state of the news media, and an adjunct media professor at Rutgers University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Reach him at jstrupp@gannettnj.com and at 732-413-3840. Follow him on Twitter at @joestrupp