By Steve Spurr
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Like most New Jerseyans, our family felt tremendously vulnerable in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I feared for the health of my parents as well as my wife and our two daughters.
Thankfully as much of the uncertainty passed we learned to navigate daily life with a healthy dose of commonsense and tools like face masks, sensible social distancing, and soon widespread vaccination.
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What has not changed however is our Governor’s near total control over the State’s COVID-19 response and the mounting consequences of his ill-advised decisions. The Murphy Administration is responsible for the tragic deaths of thousands of long term care residents, the closure of over a third of New Jersey small businesses, and the sad reality of too many children being out of the classroom for too long.
Our family is fortunate to be able to take matters into our own hands when it comes to our children’s education. My oldest daughter will begin kindergarten in the fall and we are already hedging our bets by enrolling her in both public and private options so she receives no less than five days of in-person instruction each week starting in the fall.
This may come at a substantial financial cost for our family as we heap a tuition payment on top of our already sizable property tax bill, but for our children and their education there is little we won’t do. There are however many families struggling right now to make ends meet while managing at-home learning for their children. This is an incredible hardship – and an avoidable one.
I am running for State Assembly to return public education firmly back to local control and by doing so welcome more children back into the classroom sooner. Being physically present in the classroom is both safe and critical for our children’s development.
The fact is, Governor Murphy has unilaterally extended the state’s public health emergency order eleven times now. This declaration is a loophole in the law that allows him to govern like a king and mandate policies that have created a patchwork of school shutdowns.
We need to take power away from the Governor’s office and return it to the people. As your Assemblyman, I will fight for legislation that requires the People’s House approve any extension of an emergency order. It is time to take power away from power hungry politicians like Phil Murphy and move it closer to the people.
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STEVE SPURR is Summit GOP Municipal Chairman and a Republican Candidate for Assembly in LD21.
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