A contingent of parents and other community members came together Tuesday afternoon in a show of support for the teachers of the Long Beach Island Consolidated School District, ahead of a planned mediation slated to begin at 4 p.m. Negotiations between the district and the teachers union began earlier this year before the board declared talks at an impasse in June.

“This isn’t about animosity,” Colleen Neil, a New Jersey Education Association/UniServ field representative for Region 7, which…