Latest news with #ChalkbeatNewark
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Jersey city lowered the voting age for school board – only 4% of teens showed up to cast ballots
Only four percent of teenagers showed up at the polls for a school board election in Newark, New Jersey, after the voting age was lowered to 16. In total, 73 teen voters took part out of the 1,851 registered. This comes after weeks of efforts to get out the vote among 16- and 17-year-olds. The election took place on April 15, and it was the first time the city lowered the voting age to 16 for school board elections. City leaders hoped the initiative would boost turnout, according to Chalkbeat Newark. However, overall turnout came in at 3.47 percent, just below the 3.94 percent turnout among young voters. It was an average turnout, with about three to four percent of voters typically participating. At the start of February, school leaders and local groups started campaigns and hosted events to push voter registration and to mobilize young voters who gained the right to vote in the Newark school board elections last year. Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and other elected officials participated in the effort. New Jersey Institute for Social Justice community organizer Assatta Mann told Chalkbeat Newark that the election laid the foundation for future teen voters, adding that the learning curve, the short period to register voters, and existing voter challenges were factors in the low turnout. 'I do think that going forward in future elections we will see the turnout rise, and hopefully, in part because some changes will be made to make voting easier and accessible, especially for this group of voters,' said Mann. Last year, Newark became the first city in the Garden State to lower the voting age for school board elections. However, voter registration problems prompted the youth vote to be delayed until this year's election. Advocates began registering voters on February 1, ahead of the deadline on March 25, facing the challenge of ensuring that teenagers were informed about the candidates ahead of the April 15 vote. Mann noted that some teenage voters faced challenges similar to those faced by adults when they showed up to vote. Some found they weren't registered, others found it hard to get to the polls because of transportation problems or other engagements. 'In spite of all these challenges, we still saw youth come out at 4 percent, which was higher than the adult vote,' Mann told Chalkbeat Newark. 'Long term, it's a good sign for civic engagement. And the possibilities for democracy, youth power building.' 'I think going forward, more school-wide events, assemblies, initiatives like that, that promote this opportunity for young people to participate in our democracy will go a long way towards making sure that they do,' Mann added. Local elections tend to be held at different times of the year and get less attention, but moving them to be held during November's general elections could help. 'All of the towns that still have school board elections in April usually have lower turnout rates than those in November,' Mann told Chalkbeat Newark.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lawyers in school segregation case want appellate court to weigh in
A group of parents and activist groups want the state's appellate division to hear a case alleging segregation in the New Jersey public school system. (Courtesy of the New Jersey Governor's Office) Attorneys representing a group of New Jersey parents and activist groups are asking a state appellate court to weigh in on a case that could reshape the state's public education system. At the center of the fight is whether New Jersey schools are unconstitutionally segregated by race and socioeconomic status. A lower court judge in October 2023 acknowledged the state's public schools are segregated by race and that the state must act, but also found that the plaintiffs had failed to prove the entire system is segregated across all its districts. The parents' attorneys filed a motion last week with the state's appellate division asking it to hear the case. 'It is imperative that no more students be deprived of these rights by the trial court's avoidance of the straightforward conclusion compelled by the facts and the law in this case — that the state defendants, who are legally obligated to take action to desegregate public schools regardless of the reasons for that segregation, have acted unconstitutionally by failing to do so,' the attorneys wrote in the filing. Gov. Phil Murphy and the state Department of Education have until April 28 to respond to the plaintiffs' new filing. A spokesman for the Murphy administration declined to comment. News of the new filing was first reported by Chalkbeat Newark. The case dates to 2018, when the Latino Action Network, the NAACP New Jersey State Conference, and several other families and groups sued the state alleging New Jersey failed to address de facto segregation in public schools. The plaintiffs cited data showing that nearly half of all Black and Latino students in New Jersey attend schools that are more than 90% non-white, in districts that are often just blocks from predominantly white districts. In New Jersey, students typically attend schools in the municipality where they live. Plaintiffs argued that long-standing housing policies that led to segregated residential neighborhoods led to segregated schools also. New Jersey is the seventh-most segregated state for Black and Latino students, the plaintiffs say. In October 2023, after Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy issued his ruling that acknowledged racial segregation in New Jersey schools but said it was not widespread, both sides entered mediation talks in hopes it would resolve more quickly than continued litigation. Attorneys for the parties said in February that it's unlikely continuing the talks would 'be constructive.' The plaintiffs' attorneys say the lower court's October ruling should be reversed. They want a judge to review what they say are six errors in the 2023 order, like the fact that Lougy did not identify a disputed fact. 'Rather than reach the only logical conclusion that followed — that the state defendants violated plaintiffs' constitutional rights — the trial court left the question of liability for another day,' the filing reads. If the appellate court denies the motion, the case would return to the trial court, or could be appealed to the state Supreme Court. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘I'm Just So Worried': Newark Educators Fear Federal Funding Cuts Will Have Devastating Consequences
This article was originally published in Chalkbeat. Jennie Demizio, a special education teacher at Park Elementary School in Newark, stood in a crowd full of dozens of educators and union members and listened to speakers talk about the Trump administration's threats to cut funding for education. One by one, speakers listed the potential impacts of federal cuts on programs at New Jersey's universities and colleges, health care, and research. Protesters yelled 'shame' and 'boo' after speakers detailed the effects of funding cuts on schools. After the rally on Tuesday, Demizio held back tears and her voice cracked as she told Chalkbeat Newark how her students with disabilities rely on federal funding to get to school and for services such as speech therapy and classroom aides. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter 'Half of my students arrive in ambulances. They're on oxygen, they have seizure disorders, and just their transportation alone to get to school costs thousands of dollars a year,' said Demizio as her voice cracked while holding back tears. 'I'm just so worried we're going to lose this funding.' Demizio's fears echo those of many educators in Newark and across the state who feel that students will lose essential resources because of the administration's threats to education. The protesters hope school districts, higher education institutions, and local leaders will band together to fight looming cuts and protect students and staff. The protest in Newark was part of the 'Kill the Cuts' demonstration, a national day of action with protests in over 30 cities across the country. About 50 city educators and labor unions gathered in front of a bust of John F. Kennedy at Military Park on the windy Tuesday afternoon, where they held signs that read 'hands off my students' and chanted 'stand up, fight back.' The protest in Newark centered on threats to health care, immigrants, research, and the Trump administration's threat to withhold federal funding from school districts and universities that don't eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs deemed unlawful by the administration. Last week, federal officials gave state education agencies 10 days to certify the elimination of DEI efforts in schools or risk losing federal funding. That directive threatens roughly $1.2 billion in federal funding for New Jersey schools, including $77 million for Newark Public Schools, the state's largest district. That funding makes up around 5% of the district's $1.5 billion budget for the upcoming school year. 'There's no way that municipalities can totally foot that bill,' said Demizio.'I'm in a classroom where there are nurses, aides, and, you know, I think I feel like special education teachers, especially, are vulnerable at this moment.' Last week's attack on DEI programs in schools comes days after federal education officials also announced they would revoke deadline extensions to spend federal COVID aid that had been approved by the Biden administration. As a result, 20 school districts across New Jersey could lose an additional $85 million in federal funding for infrastructure projects already in progress. That includes Newark Public Schools, which was approved for a $17 million extension to finish installing artificial intelligence cameras last fall. Paul Brubaker, the district's director of communications, did not respond to questions about the status of the district's AI cameras project or budget plans if federal funds are cut. For Shelby Wardlaw, a professor and vice president of non-tenure track faculty at Rutgers University, the attacks feel personal. International students are worried about getting their visas revoked, and immigrant students fear they might be targeted due to their legal status, Wardlaw said. In recent days, roughly a dozen Rutgers students 'in good academic standing' learned their visas were revoked 'without explanation,' according to an April 6 letter from Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway. Across the country, more than 300 international students and recent graduates have had their legal status changed by the federal government. Additionally, some Rutgers faculty members are concerned about cuts to DEI initiatives and the impact that could have on teaching and learning. Melissa Rodgers, a professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, spoke to the crowd on Tuesday about the devastating effects funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health and anti-DEI initiatives will have on medical and scientific research. Rodgers, a biomedical professor, has been investigating the impacts of sex on kidney disease, research that's now at risk under proposed cuts, Rodgers said. Wardlaw and her colleagues want Rutgers and other universities in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Conference to band together to share legal resources and funds to combat federal funding threats to higher education. Last month, the Rutgers University Senate passed a resolution calling on those universities to form a 'Mutual Defense Compact' to protect and defend 'academic freedom, institutional integrity and the research enterprise,' according to The Daily Targum, Rutgers student-run newspaper. 'Universities are bastions of knowledge and resistance that would oppose an authoritarian overreach, and they're going to come after us first,' Wardlaw told Chalkbeat on Tuesday. 'They're trying to break us as a potential site of resistance.' Protesters at the Newark rally also heard from union leaders, civil rights activist Larry Hamm, and gubernatorial candidates Sean Spiller and Mayor Ras Baraka, who urged educators, laborers, and immigrant rights activists to band together to fight federal threats. 'We must resist,' all three speakers urged the crowd on Tuesday. 'The same people that were trying to stop [workers] from having fair working conditions and a rise in their wages were the same people who were opposed to ending Jim Crow Laws, opposed to civil rights, and opposed to democracy and justice,' Baraka told protesters. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also spoke on Tuesday and called the Trump administration's move to cancel funding for Johns Hopkins University and $400 million in grants to Columbia University an assault on education. The AFT is a party to eight lawsuits against the Trump administration's attacks on education, access to records, and public health, according to the group. 'We have young people engage in critical thinking and problem solving so they can discern fact from fiction, so they can stand up for themselves, so they know how to think,' Weingarten said. 'That is what we do and what this administration is so fearful about.' This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at
