According to the results of a 900-page independent review of the Murphy administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, schools in the state remained shut down for well longer than necessary.
“In hindsight, it is likely that New Jersey students would have benefited from schools opening sooner,” the report said, noting that New Jersey’s shutdown lasted 58 days – longer than 46 other states.
The report also mentioned that states with more powerful teachers unions were even more likely to resume in-person instruction at a later date. The New Jersey Education Association is considered the most powerful teachers’ unions in the country.
Although the state ordered the closure of all schools for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year, individual school districts were allowed to reopen for the following year if strict social distancing requirements, including six-feet of separation and regular testing were implemented. However, many districts, especially those with a majority minority student body, were unable to implement those requirements.
“Schools were essentially given the green light to open if they could open and observe social distancing and other policies in the fall of 2020,” one of the report’s authors told reporters in a briefing at the the statehouse. “Some schools did, but you have a challenge in that certain school districts — particularly schools with older infrastructure, urban schools — they were not able to observe those social distancing measures,” she added.
The report also noted that New Jersey’s scores fell more than the national average in 4th grade math and reading and 8th grade math.
One bright spot in the report was the fact that New Jersey was a model for other states with its food distribution program.
Lakewood Public School were open!
Lakewood Public Schools were open!!
@reply, and that’s why Lakewood public school students are doing so much better than any other students whose schools were closed….NOT
Nonsense: I think the Murphy administration did an excellent job during COVID. Unlike some republican states whom did nothing and let the vulnerable die sooner, and unlike some other democratic states whom caused unnecessary hardships. Gov Murphy whom he himself was recuperating from surgery and was very weak, sick and vulnerable during that time still did an excellent job.
But one thing I didn’t like was that tenants were not required to pay rent; but on the other hand landlords were required to pay full property taxes and everything else and fully maintain the properties which wasn’t fare but he had to show that to his Democratic Party, but thank g-d I don’t live off of rent money, I commute and work hard for a living.
The vulnerable died in record numbers in NJ too.