♪♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Brianna Vannozzi.

>> Hello, and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gagas.

Brianna Vannozzi is off.

While the state budget awaits final passage in the legislature, questions abound about why the city of Trenton lost funding for high-impact tutoring, even though students there are in desperate need of support.

And later, as we prepare to celebrate America's 250th this week, we look at the important stories often left out of our nation's history.

And coming up, the Supreme Court ruled today to allow mail-in ballots to be counted postmarked on Election Day.

We'll look at the impact of that and other significant decisions.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

-The clock is ticking for lawmakers to approve the state's next fiscal year budget before tomorrow's deadline.

Lawmakers were finally able to see a draft of the bill on Sunday as they gathered in Trenton to vote on a flurry of bills that provide revenue to help fund the record 60.7 billion dollar budget.

They also approved an additional measure that adds nearly 359 million dollars to the current fiscal year for local projects, including a state loan to help close Jersey City's budget hole.

Now, dozens of bills moved out of committee, many that were outlined in Governor Sherrill's March budget address, including a fee on employers with at least 50 employees covered by Medicaid and a change to the cap on deductions under the corporate business tax.

One controversial bill that requires fossil fuel companies to pay a retroactive $50 billion penalty did advance out of committee, but with strong objection from some Democrats.

Both the Senate and Assembly Budget Committees approved the overall budget bill last night along party lines.

It now heads to the floor for a full chamber vote in both houses tomorrow, and Governor Sherrill has until midnight to sign it.

That update brought to you as part of our Under the Dome series.

Under the Dome is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

We're nearing the end of what's known as opinion season, where the U.S.

Supreme Court hands down decisions on cases it's heard throughout the annual term.

The last several days have brought consequential rulings in cases dealing with elections and when mail-in ballots can be counted, as well as immigration issues and the temporary protected status of immigrants here from Haiti and Syria.

I'm joined by Jonathan Hayfitz, a constitutional lawyer and professor at Seton Hall Law School to talk about it.

Jonathan, so thank you so much for being with us.

The Supreme Court today obviously handed down this very significant ruling as it relates to mail-in ballots.

The case was brought by Mississippi.

Can you explain what this ruling says and what it means?

Basically what the ruling says is that the definition of Election Day in federal statute does not preclude mail-in ballots from being counted if they're received after the Election Day.

And so it basically gives states latitude as long as the ballots are, the voting is done by the election day to count them a reasonable period after.

So this is an important decision because it allows states that operate this way, a number of states, to consider to receive those ballots.

And if it had come out the other way, it would have had a significant impact on elections.

Including here in New Jersey, right?

Because we allow our mail-in ballots to be postmarked and then counted after Election Day.

Correct, correct.

And I think it's a number of states, I mean, I think you can view this through a lens of whether it's Republican or Democrat, but I think it's just good for the voting process and the democratic, you know, lowercase d, democratic process, because often it's poor elderly people who people have, who are having more difficulty voting in person who are able to participate in the democratic process.

So I think it's an important victory or decision for a more inclusive democratic voting process.

And let me just say they have to be postmarked on election day, making sure I said that properly.

Just really quickly, federal law does set the election dates, but states can set their own laws for this process, right, when it comes to mail-in ballots?

Yes, I mean, the federal law could preempt the state law.

So it's about an interpretation of what the federal law meant.

And so the way the court interpreted the federal law was to allow states the latitude that we've been discussing to allow for the counting of votes that are, you know, cast before the election day to be counted after if they're received after.

Yes, I want to switch because there was a decision that came last week from the U.S.

Supreme Court that has to do with the type of protections or protections granted by the federal government for people here under what's called TPS, temporary protected status, that mainly applies to Haitian and Syrian immigrants under that protection right now as this case was decided.

Can you explain what the Supreme Court decided here?

Yeah, so the Supreme Court effectively gave the green light to the Trump administration to eliminate this form of status for, in this case, groups that you mentioned, but it's from Haiti and Syria, but effectively without any judicial review or really no meaningful judicial review.

And so basically this temporary status is very important.

It allows for individuals from countries that are suffering some type of particular hardship, environmental, war ravaged, a range of different things that would put the people who would be sent back to those countries at grave risk, and it allows their status to be temporarily extended.

It doesn't give them any kind of permanent status, but it allows them to stay in the United States.

And many of their, you know, there are several hundred thousand Haitians, there are a significant number of Syrians who are all of a sudden now vulnerable to immediate deportation, and many of these people here would face great risk if they go back.

There's another troubling aspect to this decision, which is that, especially in the case of the Haitians, this appears to be, I think, a very strong case.

This was motivated by racial discrimination.

President Trump, certainly when he was a candidate for his second, you know, for a second term in office, made a number of racially, I think, statements that can be read as racially disparaging towards Haitians.

So I think this was motivated, at least in significant part, by race, which means it's a clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Well, let me ask you this, because the argument was made that ending their TPS, their temporary protected status was unconstitutional.

The U.S.

Supreme Court does not see it that way.

How does their ruling indicate that it is not unconstitutional?

Well, I think their ruling gives, I mean, they rejected the constitutional, they rejected two arguments.

They rejected the constitutional argument, but I think that was a very poorly, in my view, poorly reasoned decision.

And that gives short shrift to the way under the Equal Protection Clause, which prohibits racial discrimination, the way that evidence should be considered under that clause, where race just, you know, just if it's a motivating factor, that should be sufficient to allow for a claim to be sustained or to go forward.

There was also the app, there was no, they upheld the revocation of TPS without, without any review of whether it was arbitrary.

There was clear evidence that the conditions were not, would return these people to hardship.

And yet they still allowed for this to be revoked with no judicial review.

So it gives, basically this gives the president tremendous power to revoke status of people within the country without any real meaningful judicial review effectively insulated from the type of racially motivated comments we saw it and it puts literally hundreds of thousands of people who have been living here at immediate risk.

All right, we have to leave it there but Jonathan Hayfitz, constitutional lawyer and professor at Seton Hall Law School.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate you coming on today.

Good to be with you.

High-impact tutoring has become a major focus of education under the Sherrill administration.

It actually started under former Governor Murphy, bolstered by pandemic relief aid in 2023.

And it's had great success, both here in New Jersey and in other states across the nation that have implemented it, and districts where students are struggling to reach grade-level achievement.

I recently spoke with our urban education writer, Julie O'Connor, about the district of Trenton that's actually had to return funding to the state for high impact tutoring.

It's a complicated story that she breaks down for us.

Julie, so great to see you.

This is a really important topic.

We know that the state has made high impact tutoring a priority, and you took a look at the district of Trenton, one of the state's largest cities that did not receive any funding for high-impact tutoring in the latest round.

What's happening there?

The state has been hiring tutors to help boost students math and reading scores, but in the latest round of grant funding, it went out to about 47 traditional school districts, eight charter schools, and Trenton was not on that list, which was really surprising to advocates.

I mean, this is the state's capital.

It is the neediest district in the state in terms of low test scores.

Trenton has replaced Camden at the bottom of, you know, ranking of the state's 31 poorest districts.

And so it was a mystery to a lot of people, you know, why Trenton was not on this list of awardees.

Okay, but to make the problem even more confusing, you also uncovered the fact that Trenton had to return about 80% of its last grant.

Paint that picture.

What's happening there?

You know, folks were alarmed.

Senator Shirley Turner, who is a state lawmaker who's represented Trenton for decades, was really concerned to see that Trenton was not on this list of the latest awardees.

And so she called up the State Department of Education to find out more.

And what they told her was that Trenton did receive, you know, state grants of more than $700,000 in 2024, yet had to forfeit 80% of that grant money, which never made it to Trenton Kids for Tutoring.

It's not clear why, and she and others now wonder, you know, did that factor into the state's decision in this latest round not to award any tutoring grant money to Trenton?

To put a fine point on that, that's $550,000, right?

That was allocated to Trenton that did not get used.

When we look at the standards, achievement standards in Trenton, when we look at poverty levels in Trenton, does it make sense that they wouldn't be using $550,000?

Where do the students stand in terms of achievement there?

It seems baffling.

You know, Trenton spends about $24,000 per pupil, and yet of the third graders, only about 8% read on grade level and roughly 12% are proficient at math.

And these are scores that are barely budged in recent years.

It's something that advocates say is really disturbing and really demonstrates why Trenton needs this money so desperately for tutoring.

So 8% are meeting proficiency in third grade?

For reading, that's right.

How does the district explain, one, that the funding wasn't used, and two, that, well, let's start with the funding not being used.

How does the district explain that?

I don't have answers yet.

I mean, the district superintendent and the school board president are not commenting.

The State Department of Education is not speaking to Trenton's specific case.

So it's unclear why that grant money, you know, all of it was not used in the last round.

And it's also still unclear why Trenton got nothing in this round.

The State Department of Education just said that this is a competitive grant process and districts were evaluated based on things like, you know, the design of their program and the readiness to implement it.

And if you didn't meet all of those factors that you would score too low to qualify.

And so there to be clear their application was rejected by the state, right?

This is not a failure to apply.

This was a rejection.

The Senator Turner spoke with a district official who, you know, filled out the district's grant proposal.

They definitely applied.

And she said that she heard nothing from the state in terms of deficiencies.

So it's unclear why Trenton was not among the districts and charter schools that was awarded one of these grants in the latest round.

You raised the issue of oversight in your reporting of this.

I know it's something you spoke to Senator Turner about.

What oversight is there over the application process, the approval process, and who does that overseeing?

I believe the state largely leaves it to districts to meet the parameters of the competitive grant process.

They're laid out and districts apply.

And in this latest round, the state said that the grants were targeted more particularly to districts with low test scores, which is why it was striking that Trenton, the neediest district in the state in terms of test scores, was not one of the awardees.

Can you compare Trenton to any of the other 31 what we call SDA districts, Schools Development Authority districts, formerly called Abbott districts?

Do any of them compare in terms of getting this type of funding or not getting it?

Others got this funding.

In the latest round, Newark was awarded about $400,000 in a state grant for tutoring.

Trenton ranks at the bottom of the state's 31 poorest districts.

Currently in Trenton, there are a few community programs providing some tutoring, but it's very limited in scope.

They're relying on raising private funds.

They're serving a few hundred students.

When there are more than a thousand Trenton second graders that are, you know, pretty desperate for early reading intervention.

If this, and we don't know, but if this application was rejected because Trenton, the school district, simply didn't have the readiness to implement a high tutoring impact high impact tutoring program, what questions does this raise then about district operations, about oversight of these types of programs that should be rolled out if you have 8% proficiency?

Well, it's disturbing.

I mean, going forward, nearly 100 more school districts, that's thousands more students, may get access to this high-quality tutoring.

This is under Governor Mikey Sherrill's proposal to double the budget for this tutoring.

And this has shown great success in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, where poor students have been propelled from the bottom of national rankings to the top with a combination of this tutoring and also phonics-based curriculum, and they're now at the top in terms of fourth-grade reading scores.

So I think it's an important question to figure out, you know, why did Trenton not get this money in the latest round?

How can it fix whatever problems exist so that these students, these who are desperate for early reading intervention and other supports, don't get left out again in future rounds if there is more funding for high-impact tutoring in New Jersey?

Yeah, and we know that that third grade age is so critical because before third grade you are learning to read and after third grade you are reading to learn so it impacts the life cycle of a student.

Julie O'Connor, our urban education writer, great job on this.

Keep an eye out and keep us informed on what's happening in Trenton.

Thank you.

Thanks, Joanna.

Each day this week we'll bring you stories and voices related to America's 250th anniversary.

Today we look at a group of historians trying to spark a broader conversation about democracy, government, and the importance of civics.

They've launched a nationwide civics exchange to bring these lessons to community groups who want to better understand the founding principles of our nation.

The program called SHEER is led by Andrew Shankman, professor and chair of the history department at Rutgers Camden and president-elect of SHEER.

Here's my recent conversation with Professor, it's great to have you on the show.

Really important topic looking at the history of our nation as we are celebrating our 250th anniversary.

Can you tell me about the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic?

What is the organization?

What do you do?

Sure, it's a scholarly organization, which as its name suggests is for all of the historians both in at the university and college level at the high, you know, high school teachers public historians who are focused on what we define as the early American Republic, which is the period from 1776 to 1861.

It's been around for almost 50 years and very, it's for the longest period of time, it typically did what scholarly organizations do.

We have an annual conference in which all people interested in the early American Republic can come.

Papers are given.

Networking isn't done.

People talk about that period of time.

And we produce a scholarly journal called the Journal of the Early Republic, which is the kind of the premier journal in the nation for scholarship of that period.

And until about four months ago, that was pretty much what we did.

We were a scholarly organization for people focused on this period of American history.

So how has that changed now?

What changed four months ago?

That changed what you were able to do?

Yeah, well, so we, like a lot of fellow citizens who may or may not be all that interested in the early American Republic, we kind of concluded, though many of us in the membership of the organization, that we were living in a kind of an extraordinary time.

I mean, it's not the most polarized time in American history by any means, but when often people have to explain that it is not so good either.

So we were kind of living in a sort of extraordinary time, and we thought perhaps people would have a better sense of how to think about some of the big questions that are being argued about and talked about and being faced right now, if they had a better understanding of the period of time that we happen to be experts in, which is the founding of the nation and the founding of many of its primary institutions, which still, to a great extent, shape our lives today.

So what we decided to do was be more than just a scholarly organization and try to reach out to the broader public and have conversations with them, both where we would speak and also where we would listen.

And so what we did was we, which is sort of new and unusual for a scholarly organization such as ours, is we created a new initiative called SHERE Civics Exchange.

SHERE is our acronym, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, where our members who are expert in the founding of the nation and the founding fathers and the origins of the constitution and the ideas and principles and precepts that shaped those founding institutions are making ourselves available through a web page to talk to any organization or group throughout the country who would like to have a conversation with people who specialize in this period about how our government came to be what it is, what the founding principles were, why our institutions and organizations function as they do, what things like a separation of powers is, or what we mean by the rule of law, or even what a constitution is supposed to be.

And we are trying to become more than a scholarly organization in that way.

>> Let me ask you this.

When you talk about those things, I want to ask, what are the ideals that this country was founded on?

>> Sure.

Well, there are many, and they're varied and complex.

But if you wanted to boil it down, a phrase that a lot of founders often use, Thomas Paine uses this in Common Sense, Thomas Jefferson uses this, Alexander Hamilton uses this, virtually all of them do, is they say, and again, pardon the 18th century limiting language, but they say, "We are a government of laws and not of men."

I think today we might say a government of laws and not of people, which is kind of a nice catchy phrase, but what exactly does that mean?

And fundamentally, what they were saying is that a government of men or a government of people is one that is ruled by the values or visions or desires or interests of particular people, whereas a government of laws is ruled by a set of universal precepts that everybody are bound to and that has authority over the behavior and governs the directions of all actions.

And so it's not something that -- not a government that exists for a particular group of people or a particular set of interests, but for a universal set of values.

And then they tried to build a set of governing institutions that would live up to and embody that ideal.

And most fundamentally, they felt that that couldn't be done.

>> Let me ask you this.

>> Oh, sure.

Yeah, let me ask you this, because on paper, this all sounds great.

We've lived this reality for 250 years, and where Americans are today and where government is today doesn't exactly mirror where it started.

There's a sense of cynicism right now about today's government.

How do you address that when you're presenting these ideals and you're talking about the reality we exist in right now?

>> Yeah, and I think that this awareness of this growing sense of cynicism is one of the things that sparked us to try to create this initiative.

Because, yeah, you hear a lot from friends and colleagues, and even from just people you get into conversations with, you know, at various sort of community gatherings.

That not only is it sort of hopeless, but it was always hopeless.

It was always this way.

So we thought, well, first of all, we think as historians that you can talk about change over time, and you can talk about sort of why things are different now from the way they were in the 18th century.

In some ways, in many good ways.

In some ways, in perhaps not so good ways, or in different ways.

But we want to talk about, explain sort of where the values came from that insisted that all people who were going to be entrusted with power needed to be accountable to the authority of those they were governing, whose name they were governing in, which is the people, the popular sovereign.

Where those ideas came from, what sparked them, what animated them.

And while it may not be the case that you can have precisely the same methods for preserving that sense of values in the early 21st century as you did in the late 18th century, that those values themselves are very much worth knowing about and preserving.

And I think it's the more that we can -- >> But Professor, to -- but to hold the government accountable, you need to have an informed electorate.

And we live in a time where the media, social media, has created silos around what kind of information people get.

How do you break through those silos right now?

How do you break through people living in these echo chambers?

- Yeah, it's not easy.

But the way that I know you don't manage to break through is by not trying anything at all.

So one of the things that we're trying to do is suggest that there are ways to in fact become more engaged and thoughtfully informed about the big questions that people are arguing about right now.

And if people choose to become more thoughtfully engaged, and I think a lot of people want to be and maybe don't know where to go or how to go about it, and our effort isn't meant to try to help and address that.

If people take the opportunity to become more informed, then they can evaluate more critically and thoughtfully many of these things they're hearing, even from within their echo chambers or from other echo chambers that are bombarding them.

So our sense is that if there's a sort of a common set of understandable knowledge, that that's the very, that's not the end result, but that's the first step in being able to then begin to have more productive and common conversations.

So for you, you're inviting the public to reach out and get any of your speakers right to come and share these thoughts with them?

Yes, or it could be virtual.

You know, I mean, again, there are some if you're living, if you have a small group of earnest thinkers in a public library somewhere in a very distant space where there's not any speaker near us, you can always contact somebody from the webpage who you find interesting and probably set up a virtual conversation like the one we're having.

All right, Andrew Schenkman, Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Rutgers Camden.

You're also President-elect of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

Thank you for this.

Appreciate the conversation.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gaggis for the entire team here at NJ Spotlight News.

Thanks for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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