>> measure funding for Chat Box is provided by the members of the New Jersey Association, taking public schools great for every child.

Promotional support is provided by inset or NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players and interactive forum for ideas, discussion and insight online at insider NJ.com.

♪ >> hey, everybody, I'm David Cruise.

I don't mind telling you the place has been buzzing.

Lots of stuff in the works, including a special broadcast we will tell you about later.

Plus Olympian Lori Hernandez will be with us.

That's got a buzz going through the place but we begin with news that got buried last week.

The judges the school segregation people scratching tr heads.

And not only because it was released late on a Friday of the holiday weekend.

What did the judge rule and what is it mean for the state school systems.

Joining us now to try to figure some of this out is the chirp and of the Senate education committee, Senator, welcome back to the show.

>> good to be with you, David.

David: it seems like the judge said, this segregation is in our schools, but it's not a statewide condition, and then he said, go figure it out.

Is that kind of what happens?

>> a little bit.

We always knew New Jersey had segregated schools, but we have 600 school districts.

Right here in my backyard you have two very different communities.

But it's way more than education, it has to do with housing, transportation.

This has to be a priority for the legislator in the state.

We can't go backwards and we have to look at countywide school options.

We have to look at regionalization, services, especially in small school districts that have 200 kids in the next district over they have two different does 200 different kids and they are completely different races altogether.

David: how much has this been a part of the discussion in your committee?

>> it started, we were obviously waiting for this judgment to come back and we know New Jersey , unfortunately, has the most segregated school districts.

It's got to be a full court process.

There is a bill that the senator has right now, as a 20, that's an important bill that I cosponsored with him, which would begin the process and the Department of Education for 5 million dollars that seeing what kind of programs it can do as it relates to transportation, as it relates to shared services and mental health costs.

How we can have more regional services while still having our home rule, which New Jersey is known for.

David: is that the bill that creates a task force?

>> Correct.

David: let's hear from one of your colleagues, whose suggested that the court has left open the possibility that busing could be a solution.

This is Republican John Granik.

Let's hear from him and come back.

>> Can you imagine telling parents who spent their life trying to move into a town near a school they wanted take -- OK, now your child can no longer go to that school, we will send them 10 miles away.

That the legislator take a position, how we feel about this court ruling.

It has nothing to do, in my judgment, with the underlying issue.

The underlying issue, clearly, there are schools that are segregated.

We have to work on that.

But by taking an elementary student in moving him 10 miles away after a parent made a decision to buy in a certain school district, that's absolutely wrong.

David: is blessing a populate -- a possibility as one of the -- >> busing is a huge issue.

We have a challenge right now.

We have less busing contractors.

We've seen price gouging going on.

We see a lack of competition.

We've seen a lot of challenges as it relates to school districts finding appropriate bussing.

That plays a direct role in segregation.

There are three Paik funding issues that the legislator has to deal with.

Transportation, bussing, mental health and special education.

Those three areas not only big impacting New Jersey education, but have a big impact on how we have segregated schools.

David: he's suggesting that if I bought a house in school district asked because of its terrific school system, I don't want the state or some other entity to tell me, well, now we will send your schools to district why, which helps integrate that system or -- yeah, helps integrate that system, but I wanted to go to school here, why are you forcing me to send my kids to another school district?

>> I don't know if any of this is black or white, it's very gray.

Obviously if a child starts in the middle of high school, you make friends, you make relationships, I think that's a different situation.

I think that's one piece of this, but the other piece is, we have 600 school districts, everyone goes into their corners, we have a lot of charter schools and we have to do more to regionalized some of these services.

May be looking at sports, music, drama.

There has to be things that we can do that not only helps to segregate these schools -- desegregate, but makes sense for taxpayers at the end of the day.

David: there's also a real possibility that if you leave this to the legislator, it might not get done at all.

There's a real possibility that this case ends up having run its course.

>> I can only speak for myself as a chairman of the Senate education committee.

We focus last year on making sure New Jersey had the most mental health funding put into the state then we had in the last 20 years combined and we succeeded in that.

Next year, as to the school funding formula is ending, that will play a direct role as we look towards a new school funding formula in diskette -- desegregating our schools further.

David: no easy fixes to be found.

Let me get to some state politics while I got you here.

Less than a month away before the legislator, the entire legislator is up for reelection.

I contend that the Republicans were two steps ahead of Democrats during the summer, in terms of controlling the narrative.

A, I assume you disagree with that, and, B, what your pitch to voters as a Democrat?

>> we are in a time right now where horrific things are happening in the Middle East.

We have political turmoil in Washington, D.C. What's important now is we need leaders that are going to tell the truth and be civil.

We've seen a Republican Party that has tried to scare parents, tried to say inappropriate things are happening in the schools but they cannot point to a school district where it's happening.

They are trying to lie and say parents will be in the dark on everything in their school district, which we know is an absolute lie.

We arm -- we are one month into the school district.

They don't talk about the teacher shortage, learning challenges, special education challenges.

They have been very aggressive and fiscal responsibility, taxes.

We have a plan that we can debate stay in NJ, and there's really good pieces of that, and we are talking about expanding senior freeze and veterans tax credits.

I have not heard the Republican Senate candidates at all talk about taxes, talk about how they will make New Jersey more affordable for the average family.

They are running a full sludge culture war, hoping to scare people and hoping that's going to move them to the polls.

I think they will be overwhelmingly rejected and I will make one more prediction, I think you will have surprises on election night on the Democratic side against Republican incumbents and districts we did not think would happen.

David: that kind of rhetoric you referred to is particularly in play in your district where Republicans think they have a winnable seat.

Your district is blue on one side of the street and read on the other set of the street.

You've got it tougher than most on the campaign trail, no?

>> this county is historically a Republican County.

It's the county that helped make Chris Christie governor.

This is a Republican area.

But, overwhelmingly, the Republicans here are not MAG a Republicans.

They are mostly pro-choice who believe in civility in public discourse and support for our law enforcement and these are folks that are in the middle.

That's where a lot of the Democrats are.

We are the ones talking about trying to keep seniors in the state, trying to make sure that prescription drugs are affordable.

Republicans are trying to point to saying inappropriate things are being taught to third-graders.

We are not going to document it or tell you what school district it's happening again.

Voters are smarter than that.

New Jersey residents are smarter.

That's why I think that while there was an issue in 2021I think that had a lot to do with focused frustration with Covid and vaccine mandates, I think you will see the reversal.

I think folks don't want to see New Jersey go the way some of our southern states with women's health care and other rights being stripped.

They want to see leaders talk about affordability and taxes, which the Republican party failed to do this election cycle.

It says a lot about their priorities.

David: Meanwhile, they are talking about Bob Menendez and his legal troubles.

What's your sense of what kind of impact that is going to have as an issue going forward and what do you think the senator should do?

>> I was the first state legislator in New Jersey on our tickets or call on Bob Menendez to resign.

Anybody that read a page of that indictment would know it's disgraceful and he has unfortunately disgraced New Jersey.

I don't think this is unique to any political party.

We see Santos in New York just got indicted.

You have corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle.

It's up to all of us to hold the mechanical -- accountable because they need to be held to a hired standard.

Optics is important when you are an elected official.

David: Do you think that this whole situation gives Republicans an issue that they didn't have before, and is it an issue that will resonate with voters?

>> No, it's not resonating.

This been a lot of time and money and I hope they continue to because it's turning voters off.

Voters want to know about the future, they want to know the issues at hand.

Of course they want Bob Menendez to go, we all do.

Nobody will be supporting him next year and we hope you resigns earlier than that.

But that said, this is about looking forward to the future.

For me, the future, looking out my 14-month-old daughter, and I want her to grow up in a county that believes in civility, that believes in truth and believes that we are all in this together and that is not the Republican Party message here in New Jersey.

David: The governor was asked about this earlier this week if Menendez were to resign as the governor, if the governor would point his wife to that seat, would you advise against that?

>> we had Election 26 days, seven hour session joking, I don't know.

I will defer any comments on the 2024 election until 2023 is over.

David: Senator, as he said, 27 days, 13 hours, 14 minutes and four seconds left to election day.

Good luck out there, we will talk to you soon.

Earlier we had an opportunity to talk with Olympian Lori Hernandez for Hispanic heritage special that we've been working on, here are some of the talk.

We want to welcome silver and gold medalist Lori Hernandez to the party.

It's nice to meet you.

>> Nice to meet you.

David: I was shocked to learn you are just 23 years old.

I feel like you've been a part of the American consciousness for longer than that.

>> Thank you.

David: Did that little girl from Jersey envision this life at 23 years of age?

>> Definitely not.

Since I was a little -- a little girl, my dream was to do gymnastics, to enjoy it and get to the highest possible level I could, so much as come from that.

I feel lucky.

David: I also imagine you didn't encounter a lot of Puerto Ricans doing what you did back then.

>> Latino representation in gymnastics was something that was pretty scarce and it wasn't something that I had noticed was lacking until I got older.

Now, being 23, I recognize that there isn't a lot of representation for us.

Growing up, it was something that my parents really wanted to make sure.

Not necessarily that I didn't notice, but if I wanted to go somewhere or do something big, I could do it.

Nothing could stop me including lack of representation.

They hadn't talked to me about that.

If that were an issue they would wait for me to do that.

David: it's interesting you mention that because that's my mom.

My mom was the same way.

We never discussed being the first anything, but never thought there would be limitations on what we were able to do.

>> my parents were like, if you wanted, go do it.

David: you are the first Latina to make an Olympic team in decades, so the pipeline isn't flowing, right?

>> yeah, it was shocking because I didn't realize the statistics up until Olympic trials.

We had figured out who was going to be on the Olympic team and I sat in the press room and a bunch of interviewers and writers and people were coming over to me and saying, it's been a little bit over 30 years since there was a U.S.-born Latina on the women's gymnastics team.

How does it feel, me freshly turning 16 didn't realize the weight and the gravity.

I have a lot of gratitude, respect and love for my community.

David: At that time, at 16 you're like, I just made the Olympic team.

>> yeah, I had no idea what to expect.

I think it was important for me to block out any outside pressures coming into the games and just make sure I've trained for this, nothing changes.

Doesn't matter what I look like, I'm here for a reason and that's all that matters and then once a games were over, that's when it hit me.

Family saying, it's because you have curls like my daughter, she saw someone that looks like her and she wants to do gymnastics like you.

That was how I started gymnastics.

I didn't know my life would come full circle like that of me watching another athlete and saying, I want to be just like that girl, and it was happening to me because of how I look, my culture and who I am.

So that's pretty exciting.

David: you cite Rita Moreno as an influence, how so?

>> I feel like Rita Moreno is just notorious, especially in the acting and entertainment industry.

She is someone who has been outspoken in Puerto Rico and culture over the last couple of years.

A few years ago I had gotten to do the Rose Bowl parade and I was a grand marshal, she was a grand Marshall and we had Gina Torres, who was a grand marshal.

Different generations of Latinos and we got to show up and connect with each other.

She is just a firecracker.

I love her.

David: She's like everybody's feisty his grandma.

>> She is, she will put her foot down, and I love that.

I hope that's me when I get older.

David: She looks like in her day she would throw a sandal.

>> I think she still has good aim, we have to find out about that.

David: I have to imagine your Latina background was your superpower for your performance on Dancing with the Stars, no?

>> I think so, I don't see why not.

I didn't have any prior dance training.

I did ballet when I was three years old but I don't think that counts.

Going into Dancing with the Stars and do things like Argentine tango, salsa, the music was something I was familiar with growing up.

So there was a part of that that felt like I was coming home, which is nice.

David: Are you telling me you are a Puerto Rican woman who couldn't Dansk?

>> No, I just didn't have dance training.

I like to think I could dance, but I didn't have any dance training, especially in terms of gymnastics.

We would do little ballet basics if we were doing training camps but outside of the sport I didn't do that.

Dancing with the Stars was the first chance I got to solely do dance work and try that out.

Let me tell you, it is a sport, that was hard.

David: Your mom always told you that you were more than a gymnast, right?

Did you always feel that way?

>> I think because she told me that since I was a little girl, it's something that has stuck with me.

It didn't register to me what that meant when I was a little kid, when you are a kid your parents tell you one thing and it goes in one ear and out the other.

I transitioned into other things outside of the sport.

That's when that quote really came to me and was kind of sitting on my shoulder because it's hard when you are doing one thing for so long and you are getting ready to transition into something else, there's a part of you that's like, is this all I'm supposed to do, I know I'm good at this one thing, can I be good at other things and I often hear my mother's voice, who just so happens to be a gymnast, you are not just Lori the gymnast.

I think that something everybody needs to hear.

David: You are an analyst with NBC Sports for their Olympic coverage and gymnastic coverage, did you train for that or did that come naturally for you?

I would imagine, you know the sport and you are not much of an introvert, so it would be a natural for you.

>> actually, I am a really big into rivers.

I'm not shy or socially awkward, but I'm a gnarly introvert.

Think fully I don't mind being on camera.

I think when it comes to commentary, having a gymnastics background is really, really helpful because, not only was I able to compete recently within the sport, but now I get to go back and translate the world of gymnastics into an audience that either is familiar with it or may people at home aren't familiar.

I love being the bridge so more and more people can enjoy the sport.

David: you use your platform to encourage other black and brown kids to consider life and gymnastics as well.

>> live in gymnastics but also all sports.

The big encouragement for me as to my kids of color, go try new things.

I know there is a curious part of us that will always want to move.

Go try those new things, try different sports, try different hobbies.

We were made to move.

I think all of us will need good encouragement for that.

David: I heard you also talk about stopping to appreciate all these things that are happening to you while they are happening to you, but I also know life and the public eye can make that hard to do.

How do you do that?

>> live in the public eye is hard and it's definitely something that I'm still learning how to deal with and go about, but at the end of the day it's just as important to do the best that we can to be present in the moment.

Respect and be grateful for where we are and know that life is full of Sony different opportunities.

And there's no good or bad, there's no consequences.

You make a choice, you go down this road and that's what comes with it.

I think that's a wonderful thing.

David: I see how gymnast strain, it is no joke, how much has that physical regimen changed now that you are an old lady at 23.

>> An old lady at 23 with arthritis.

I don't train much anymore.

I move around a little bit because it's fun for me.

Sometimes if I find a gym I do a couple flips.

Other than that, a little jog here and there.

David: I imagine that you can't ever stop being an athlete when you are an athlete, particularly at 23.

But you look at someone like Simone Biles, for instance.

She still competing.

, that's a phenomenon.

>> Yeah.

The age range for gymnastics, for the longest time has been pretty short.

I'd say once we hit old teens, young 20's is when we start dropping out and retiring because it's hard on your bodies.

But athletes like Simone, and there are so many athletes competing at older ages.

Oksana is over 40 years old and still competing in world and Olympic championships.

I think athletes like Simone are paving the way for young gymnast to realize that if they don't want to stop, they don't have to, age is not the issue.

David: What is the plan for Lori Hernandez at 23 years of age?

What does the next 10 years look like for you?

>> 10 years, that's a long time, I'm not sure.

I am a college student at NYU Tish, I'm sitting acting, drama and creative writing.

I have a lot of joys in there and I felt a lot of places that that feeling in gymnastics that sparked a lot of joy in me, I found that in this area in school.

We will see where that takes me.

David: How are your classmates looking at you?

To a lot of them know who you are and what you've done?

>> They do, but they are cool about it.

Nobody really cares, which is great.

They care, they are nice but school is school.

If we are seeing partners, none of that matters.

That's why I'm there.

David: Plus it's New York and everybody's like, whatever, right?

>> Dreery, nobody cares.

It's great for me.

David: What you say to the kid -- when did you start?

At five?

>> I started gymnastics when I was five years old in 2005 and I just stuck with the sport.

David: What does the 23-year-old Lori Hernandez say to that kid now?

Look what you did, kid.

>> Yeah, great job persevering, sticking with it.

I know the journey was hard, but to get something really good it's going to be hard.

The harder it is, the more wholesome it is in the end.

At the same time, I would say, this is a good reminder that you don't have to beat yourself up for the things that you want.

You are allowed to find easier ways to do things and still get there.

>> Lori Hernandez, great to meet you, thanks for coming on with us.

You can see much of our chat with Lori Hernandez, as well as other guests, including Senator Louise.

Generalist and many others, plus food, live singing and flamenco.

It's all part of our salute to Hispanic heritage month.

It airs Wednesday 8:00 p.m. Next Saturday and Sunday during our regular Chat Box and Reporters Roundtable slots.

That's Chat Box for this week, thank you also to the Senator.

You can follow me on sat David Cruz and Jay and get more exclusive contact -- content including full episodes when you scan the QR code on your screen.

I'm David Cruz, from the entire crew I Gateway Center in downtown New York, thanks for watching, we will see you next week.

>> major funding for Chat Box with David Cruz is provided by the members for New Jersey Association, making public schools great for every child.

Promotional support is provided by insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players and interactive forum for ideas, discussion and insight.

Online at insider NJ.com.

♪ ♪