CARLY SITRIN | APRIL 17, 2018

NJ Spotlight

Jill Marino is scared for her son Jaxson’s life. The second-grader attends school at Parkview Elementary in Westville and with the nearly weekly reports of school shootings unfolding across the country, Marino says she will do whatever it takes to make sure Jaxson comes home safe every day.

“When Sandy Hook happened, I lost all of the oxygen in my lungs for days,” Marino said, referring to the 2012 elementary school shooting. After the tragedy at Parkland, FL, in February, she set up a Facebook group for New Jersey parentsconcerned about school safety to talk about what they can do to protect their kids. “All of us are trying to be involved and make sure none of this ever happens again anywhere. But statistics are not on our side,” she added.

With concern over school safety growing, the Legislature just added an additional $500 million to a proposed bond issue for vo-tech and community colleges. The bond — now totaling $1 billion — is expected to be on the November ballot. It will set aside $500 million for school security upgrades at K-12 buildings. The bipartisan legislation calls on acting Commissioner of Education Lamont Repollet to develop procedures, project plans, and criteria for school security grants, without requiring the schools to match funds. This additional funding could go a long way to help schools upgrade their security systems.

MATT KATZ | WNYC NEWS | APRIL 16, 2018

NJ Spotlight

Ahmed Abdelbasit posed with one of his students from Rising Star Academy, Yusef Haddabah, who is trying to prevent his deportation.

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A New Jersey physics teacher who says he faces death by hanging in Egypt because he's a pro-democracy dissident is being held at an immigration detention center in New Jersey and may soon be deported.

"If they send me back to Egypt they will kill me, and I will not see my wife and children again," said Ahmed Abdelbasit Mohammad, who goes by Ahmed Abdelbasit, in a scratchy phone interview on Sunday from Elizabeth Contract Detention Center. The 33-year-old father of three said that he was sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt, so if he's deported he will be taken from the airport, tortured and then hanged. "The Egyptian government will not wait one minute to kill me," he said.

Abdelbasit was a physics professor and doctoral candidate at the University of Cairo, but he was fired in 2014 after working as an organizer and spokesperson for protesters who opposed the military coup that led to the election of the current Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

By NICK CORASANITI and BRAD PLUMER

THE NEW YORK TIMES

APRIL 12, 2018

Gov. Philip D. Murphy has expressed his support for nuclear energy. “I believe the biggest bridge we have to our clean energy future are the nukes,” he said in an interview.

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TRENTON — New Jersey significantly altered the future of its energy sector on Thursday, passing two bills that set ambitious goals for expanding renewable power and curtailing greenhouse gases in the state.

The bills, which require power companies in New Jersey to generate 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and subsidize existing nuclear power plants, mark one of the biggest new policy steps that any state has taken toward cutting greenhouse gases since President Trump was elected.

The central piece of legislation, Assembly Bill 3723, sets the renewable energy goal and anchors much of the growth in wind and solar energy, aiming to hit 35 percent renewables by 2025 and eventually 50 percent by 2030. That goal would pull New Jersey in line with some of the leading states on the issue, like New York and California.

By KATE ZERNIKE

THE NEW YORK TIMES

APRIL 11, 2018

Paymon Rouhanifard in a prekindergarten class at the Catto School in Camden, N.J., which was on the list of the state’s worst performing schools when he took over the district, but is now starting a gifted and talented program.

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CAMDEN, N.J. — The state takeover of this troubled city’s school district gambled on a big question: After years of experiments with more money and charter schools, could anything improve education in Camden?

Five years in, Camden’s answer seems to be yes. With a new model of charter and a new superintendent, student performance and the graduation rate have surged. The dropout rate has been cut in half. When the state arrived in 2013, 23 of the city’s 26 public schools were on the list of New Jersey’s worst performing, eight are now.

The takeover also promised to answer a question that has dogged charters since they were created 25 years ago: Can they produce impressive results if they have to take over neighborhood schools, rather than creating new ones made up of self-selecting families? On that score, the new charter schools have a higher percentage of special education students than the district’s traditional public schools — highly unusual, and maybe unheard-of.

By Christian Hetrick • 04/10/18

Observer

New Jersey State Assemblywoman Elizabeth Muoio.

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Acting treasurer Elizabeth Muoio told skeptical state lawmakers on Tuesday that Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed tax hikes are necessary to help fix New Jersey’s shaky finances.

Testifying before the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, Muoio tried to sell Murphy’s $37.4 billion budget that includes $1.6 billion in tax increases. She said a “status quo” budget that doesn’t raise new revenue would lead to a budget deficit and a depleted surplus.

“This is not only unsustainable, it’s unacceptable, and the governor is proposing a series of new revenue and budget initiatives to get our fiscal house in order,” she said.

BY Michael Aron, Chief Political Correspondent | April 9, 2018

 NJTV News

Gov. Murphy continues to check the boxes on many of his campaign promises. Monday, it was his promise to expand pre-Kindergarten education statewide. The governor was in Jamesburg to restate that commitment.

Murphy is putting $53 million new dollars into his goal of universal pre-K. That’s on top of the $25 million Gov. Christie and state legislators expanded the program by last year. The governor toured a pre-K class inside a Jamesburg elementary school Monday where they have a dual-immersion program, teaching preschoolers in English one week, and in Spanish the next. It gave the governor the backdrop for his message that preschool makes good sense.

MATT KATZ | WNYC NEWS | APRIL 6, 2018

NJ Spotlight

The NYPD will pay more than $1 million in legal fees and damages, and pledge to end religious-based surveillance, as part of a settlement with New Jersey Muslims who alleged that police officers crossed the Hudson River in the years after September 11 to monitor their mosques, stores, and schools. 

The lawsuit followed shocking revelations in the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press series that the NYPD cast a wide net in its surveillance of Muslims — even traveling outside New York to photograph license plates parked outside mosques and infiltrate Muslim Student Associations at colleges. The settlement mandates that the NYPD now notify New Jersey authorities, like municipal police and county prosecutors, when operating in their jurisdictions. 

Also as part of the settlement, the NYPD confirmed that it dismantled the Demographics Unit that surveilled Muslims, and certain records from the Muslim surveillance operations will be expunged. 

By NICK CORASANITI

THE NEW YORK TIMES

APRIL 5, 2018

Andy Kim, a Democrat, is running against Representative Tom MacArthur, an incumbent Republican. It is one of five congressional races in New Jersey targeted by the national Democratic Party in its effort to retake control of the House of Representatives.

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TOMS RIVER, N.J. — The tables inside the hotel room were full and Andy Kim, the candidate responsible for filling them, was pleasantly surprised. It was a weeknight fund-raiser after all, rescheduled once already, for this relatively unknown Democratic challenger in a Republican district and a thick fog on Route 37 had obscured the tiny sign directing drivers to the hotel.

“Seven months before Election Day this is not normal, to be able to pack a room on a weekday,” he told a crowd of about 150 supporters, each of whom contributed at least $10 to listen to Mr. Kim and snack on donated croissants.

Ever since the election of President Trump, Democrats across the country have seen a predictable surge in energy among a base eager to take on the White House. What has been perhaps less expected is the uprising against the president coursing through more moderate suburbs, including many Mr. Trump won. Democrats buoyed by recent victories in Republican districts have lofty aims in suburban New Jersey as they work to wrest control of the House from the G.O.P., given Democrats’ surprise victories in Virginia, Alabama and, most recently, Pennsylvania.