Well, we've reported on the extensive learning loss brought about by the pandemic and remote learning.

Now, a top lawmaker in Trenton wants to work with teachers to reverse its impact.

Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz this week introduced a bill package aimed at improving literacy rates and closing achievement gaps, especially at early ages.

But some educators aren't on board.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagis reports.

What we've been doing hasn't been working.

Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz introduced a package of bills this week aimed at improving education and closing the massive learning gaps that have worsened in the state since the pandemic.

It has broad support from education organizations like Jersey can.

Therefore Bills and one of these bills address universal screener.

So the universal screener says, let's make sure that we know what every you know, where every single student is starting off, you know, in those earlier grades.

Furthermore, let's make sure that there's oversight of this effort at large.

And so one of the bills addresses that.

And let's think about intervention programs in school.

So one of the bills addresses that.

The devil's always in the details.

And JerseyCAN's Paula White says this package as a whole addresses more of the nitty gritty details of education gaps than anything previously introduced.

Focusing on details like making phonics based education uniform across the state.

This bill package certainly gets to what it is that we have been concerned about in terms of literacy and frankly, you know, kind of even goes beyond what we had hoped for.

A bill within this package would create a learning loss czar, a position that Ruiz says is needed to help analyze where each district stands in terms of grade level achievement.

That individual would work closely with the commissioner of the Department of Education and would strategize new ways to meet goals things like professional development.

Elevating teacher coaches and literacy, funding their efforts, maybe creating some kind of a certificate program that promotes them and gives them a bonus in that space.

Last year, Governor Murphy announced a tutoring program for all third graders, but that's had a slow and bumpy start, proving just how difficult it can be to get close to 600 school districts all moving in the same direction.

There has to be this level of urgency from the state and the department to, one, implement the regs or the rules to sign bills if in fact there are things that need to get signed and then to work collectively to be sure that districts are meeting the expectations.

That's one thing that I've always asked the Department of Education to really be the instead of a beacon of bureaucracy, a beacon of policy.

The NJEA, the state's largest teachers union, shared some concerns about some of these initiatives, saying they believe this legislation is well-intentioned.

However, it does not seem to recognize much of what is already going on in classrooms across New Jersey.

We also have some concerns that it'll impose a one size fits all approach that does not meet the unique needs and challenges of every different classroom.

They also think the state needs to focus on addressing the teacher shortage before mandating more programs and professional development.

But as for how much money this package of bills will cost, Senator Ruiz says.

I don't have a dollar amount, but quite frankly, we don't want to look at this as an expenditure.

The more we make investments in these, the less headlines you'll have of negative outcomes plaguing a community.

I don't understand why there has been this unwillingness to recognize that those two things are in tandem.

The Senator has also formed a working group of dozens of education organizations that will meet for the first time next week in Newark.

And Joanna Gagis, NJ Spotlight News.