The health emergency is over, folks. If the latest mask news doesn’t convince you then I don’t know what or who could. You’re officially hopeless. Good luck!
The NJEA and its shrinking pool of allies in the “keep schools remote indefinitely” movement are running out of excuses. All the same, there are 12 school districts in New Jersey that remain full remote as of Friday morning. Hundreds of thousands of other children are still on “hybrid” schedules. We’re talking about over 900,000 K-12 kids.
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Some have argued that it’s time for Phil Murphy to order schools to open.
As a fan of local control, I have to admit to being a little divided on the subject. I 100% believe children should be in school – without masks – going about their academic and extracurricular lives without the Faucists’ influence needlessly wrecking their childhoods.
But enough is enough, right? The students in these districts are being left behind. The remaining fully-remote school districts also disproportionately lie in “blue,” heavily Democrat areas which also receive a large amount of state aid. Pleasantville (Atlantic County) is slated to get a 3.88% aid increase for FY 2022; that’s $2,528,573 more for a grand total of $67,639,716 in a city of approximately 20,000 residents.
It’s absurd enough how the state awards school aid.
It’s offensive and unacceptable that the taxpayers of New Jersey are paying THAT kind of money for kids to sit at home on laptops and drift, and those are the kids whose parents are actually able (and willing) to guarantee to their participation. Any teacher will tell you that truancy rates are through the roof.
Republicans should draw a line in the sand: if school districts aren’t going to guarantee a full week in the classroom? They forfeit their state aid.
Yes, there would be legal challenges. Yes, the NJEA and their allies will play the “Republicans hate kids” card. Let them.
New Jerseyans are getting wise to the joke here. Our kids aren’t thriving on Zoom; they need the social interaction, structure, and in-person instruction that only a traditional education model can provide. Continued unwarranted school closures also highlight the idiocy of the school funding formula both inside and OUTSIDE of a “health emergency.” This is a fight worth picking, folks, and Republicans would be wise to advocate this strategy now while the memory of what the NJEA did to their children over the past 15 months is still fresh in their minds.
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