(upbeat music) - From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

- Hello and thanks for joining us on this Monday.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

Tonight, a few stories we'll get into later in the broadcast.

The CDC gives the green light to Health Secretary RFK Jr.

's vaccine recommendations.

We hear from one group watching the rise in vaccine skepticism with growing concern-- polio survivors.

Then, the latest on where the fight stands between the state and towns looking to overturn new affordable housing rules.

And finally, bringing Hispanic and Latino history to the classrooms, we'll tell you about the new lesson plans coming to schools next year.

But first, a few of today's top headlines.

It is day six of the federal government shutdown, and the impact is hitting close to home for thousands of New Jersey residents, where federal workers are facing furloughs.

And those still on the job, like TSA officers and air traffic controllers at Newark Airport are working without pay.

That's where U.S.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy held a press conference earlier today, talking about the effects of the shutdown.

According to Duffy, there's been a slight uptick in the number of air traffic controllers calling in sick since the shutdown began and warned delays could come as a result, but he didn't indicate which airports have been affected.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is warning that mass layoffs of federal workers could begin if negotiations continue to stall.

Both parties are locked in a standoff over health care subsidies and budget priorities.

But Duffy's presence at Newark Airport was significant, according to political insiders, since the Trump administration froze billions in funding for the Gateway Tunnel project and has made transportation a focal point in the battle with Democrats, a message the Transportation Secretary hammered today.

- I want to make sure that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries that arise throughout America that impact our everyday lives, and they can impact our safety when you shut the government down.

Also tonight, with one month until election day, a New Stonkton University poll reveals where candidates may want to focus their campaigns in the final days.

The survey finds growing dissatisfaction among New Jersey voters, especially when it comes to the economy.

Take a look.

67% of those polled say they're somewhat or very dissatisfied with the current state of the economy.

Only one in five report being financially better off than they were a year ago.

While most 58% say the country is heading in the wrong direction though there is a partisan divide on that one.

Taxes topped the list of voter concerns followed by affordability and the economy more broadly.

And while both gubernatorial nominees Democrat Mikey Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciatarelli are blaming different forces for rising costs, voters appear split on who's more trustworthy.

The poll also finds both candidates remain relatively unknown to about a quarter of voters.

While the mail-in voting is already underway, the question now is whether that dissatisfaction will drive turnout.

Coming up, the history of vaccine skepticism and why some who lived through past epidemics are taking the current debate personally.

That's next.

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.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and by the PSCG Foundation.

The CDC today officially signed off on new recommendations that patients must consult with their doctor to get a COVID-19 vaccine, backing the proposal from a panel of vaccine advisors chosen by U.S.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and shifting away from a broader push in recent years for most people to get the shot, though they won't necessarily need a prescription.

The CDC's decision comes as the greater vaccine debate continues to divide the country, and one group is watching it all unfold with growing concern.

Survivors of polio, a disease that once paralyzed and killed thousands before a vaccine changed everything.

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan joins us now to share what she learned about their perspective.

Hey, Bren, good to see you.

A lot to unpack here.

What can you tell us?

Well, Brianna, as the culture wars over vaccinations rage across the U.S.

and New Jersey, there's a select group of folks who take the debate very personally.

They're scarred survivors, former polio patients from the era before vaccines transformed treatment.

NJ Spotlight News spoke with Judith Shaw Beatty, who was born in West Orange.

Her family lived in the New York City metro area in the 1940s, as a polio epidemic ravaged the U.S.

and Judith got sick.

I had polio when I was six, and that was in 1949, and that was six years before the vaccine was introduced.

And I turned seven in the hospital.

I was in the hospital for five months.

I was in an iron lung.

I was paralyzed from the neck down.

And the disease moves very, very fast.

I woke up one morning, got out of bed, and could not stand.

My legs gave out from under me.

And by that night, by midnight, I was in an iron lung, and they said I wasn't going to make it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Doctors quarantined Judith in a hospital children's ward.

She was alone and afraid.

In Connecticut, where the local paper published a polio sick list for August 1949, Judith is the fifth patient listed.

The outbreak eventually killed almost 2,500 children across the nation that year alone.

Polio terrified the public.

People avoided swimming pools and sent kids off to camp.

Friends even shunned Judith's family.

And her parents couldn't visit their scared, lonely little girl.

I was in a ward with 200 children, some of them babies, babies in diapers.

Many of them died.

I, you know, it's hard to describe what an incredibly horrible that experience was and they couldn't come into the room.

They had to stand outside the door.

I was quarantined.

So, all my toys were burned, incinerated.

When I left that ward, I had hot packs.

They were cut-up Army blankets that were put into boiling water and then wrapped around my arms and legs.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, polio had raged across the nation for decades.

Up to 95 percent of cases showed few or no symptoms, but the rest suffered.

New Jersey endured two major polio outbreaks in 1916, when 2,000 people reportedly died in the New York City metro area, and again in 1942.

Judith went home wearing leg braces, her left leg now three inches shorter because of polio.

And given what she's lived through, she struggles with the current debate over vaccines.

On Facebook, there are polio groups -- with thousands of polio survivors -- who are equally horrified.

And not a day goes by that I'm not living with the after-effects of that disease.

And I have made peace with it.

But I have a friend whose parents opted not to give him the vaccine when it first became available.

They were superstitious about it.

They were unsure.

So he's in a wheelchair.

He can't walk.

His arms don't move.

He can't move his arms.

He's -- but he has forgiven his parents, which is a big step for him.

But I don't know how children would feel now if their parents opted out of vaccines for them and they contracted not just one of the childhood diseases, which I have had all of them, but polio.

Now, the U.S.

hasn't seen a wild polio virus case since 1979, thanks to vaccines developed with public support.

FDR, who contracted polio as a young man, promoted the March of Dimes, raising more than $230 million between 1938 and 1955.

Dr.

Meg Fisher remembers school collections.

We would all collect our dimes, and we would put them in these little packages, and we would send them somewhere.

I don't know where we sent them, but we would send them somewhere.

And there's a great picture on the Internet of Franklin Delano Roosevelt with the dimes.

Now, she says Americans back in the 1950s were also more likely to trust the government when it unveiled a new vaccine, and patients didn't usually question their family doctors, even as more and more vaccines went on the market.

And that continued, you know, way up through the '70s and '80s.

It really wasn't until the '90s and 2000 that people became a little more skeptical.

And, you know, skepticism is a good thing.

I'm not against people being skeptical and trying to figure things out.

But, unfortunately, they became skeptical not based on the science.

So, what happened?

Experts in public health point to one event, Dr.

Andrew Wakefield's since-debunked 1998 study published in The Lancet Medical Journal, and then retracted.

It incorrectly linked a measles, mumps, rubella vaccine to autism.

New Jersey's former state epidemiologist, Dr.

Eddie Bresnit says that kick-started a nascent vaccine skepticism trend.

It slowly developed, not just in New Jersey, because New Jersey did have a lot of vaccine hesitancy and people who were skeptical about the benefits of vaccine versus the risks, but other parts of the country as well.

And then the whole thing accelerated, I believe, in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now that's when politics infused viral partisan rancor into the discussion, Bresnitz says.

The current administration's health secretary is an avowed vaccine skeptic who's clashed openly with traditional medical associations.

And the president's railed against childhood vaccination schedules as well.

They go to the doctor and they get the vaccine, they get the shot.

The kid is, you know, badly hurt.

Let's be nice.

Badly hurt.

I think a lot of people who are vaccine skeptics or vaccine hesitance people or anti-vaccines, I think they mean well.

I don't think they're bad people.

I don't want to say that.

I just think that they're, you know, they're ignorant about the fact that there's always a benefit-risk calculus.

The idea is that when these diseases are eradicated and you haven't been around, I mean, what, two or three generations now, who've never met people who've had these diseases or been affected by them.

Polio is a virus mostly.

We're all so old.

We're all dying off now.

I think that you have this sort of false sense of security, of safety.

It's as though out of sight, out of mind.

At-risk benefit calculus still applies.

Polio is not eradicated.

Afghanistan and Pakistan remain wild polio reservoirs.

And the virus still circulates in under-vaccinated and vaccine-skeptic communities, according to the World Health Organization.

Now, in 2022, samples of wastewater tested positive for polio virus in several New York counties.

That year, Rockland County reported an actual case of paralytic polio in an unvaccinated adult resident.

But there's been no polio virus detected in wastewater there lately, according to New York's Department of Health website.

Brenda Flanagan.

Bren, thanks so much.

Thanks, Brie.

A major development in the state's long-running debate over affordable housing.

A Superior Court judge has dismissed a legal challenge from dozens of towns trying to overturn the state's new process aimed at increasing low-cost housing.

The ruling keeps the law in place for now and also reaffirms the state's authority to set housing requirements for towns.

Critics argue the guidelines put too much pressure on local governments while supporters maintain it's needed to address New Jersey's housing shortage.

Our senior writer Colleen O'Day has been covering the case and joins me now to help break down what it means.

Colleen good to see you as always.

So can you just remind us why the towns were challenging this in the first place and why this decision is so significant.

So it was about three dozen towns brought this challenge against the law.

They don't like the idea that the state is coming in and saying you have to build X number of homes which actually isn't what's happening anyway.

But they don't like the fact that the state is kind of dictating this policy.

They also were especially critical and continue to be that certain urban towns don't have what we call an obligation of future housing obligation.

And that is particularly because towns cities like a Georgia city in Newark and Orange are considered to have already have like large amounts of affordable housing.

Right.

I mean those are places where those have been built.

And traditionally the suburban and rural areas of the state have not kept up with what's known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine.

Part of this decision this ruling also said that that this is not unconstitutional.

Right.

Which was what some of these towns were arguing on what grounds.

So they were saying that essentially the legislature had opened overstepped its boundaries in putting this in place.

And the judge really kind of I think was scratching his head over that saying you know for for years for decades the Supreme Court has been saying legislature we don't want to do this.

We don't want to be the boss here.

Right.

It's best if you write the laws if you make the policy.

And that's exactly what happened in this case.

The legislature finally stepped up after a couple of decades of you know having one law in place that that kept having problems and put this new law in place where there's a system that the state calculated some numbers the towns then said yes we agree or we don't agree towns have had to file housing plans more than 400 have which is the most who've ever participated in the history of this and this is now they've complied.

Right.

This goes back about 50 years.

And now we're at the stage where groups anybody an individual the Builders Association the Fair Share Housing Center which has been a large part of this over the decades can go in and say well we challenge your housing plan because we don't think you're really trying to comply.

Fair Share did that in about 16 cases.

And so what does it mean in practice then.

Will we actually see more affordable units being built.

What does it mean in practical terms.

Well we'll see some.

So far there is no accounting of what these these plans say.

I have read through a few dozen of them and there are a lot of towns that are saying we can't build anything because we've got no water capacity, we have no sewer capacity, we have no open space.

So I think there will be a lot of instances where your obligation kind of just continues into what is the next round which would be the next 10-year period.

But there are other places like in East Brunswick for example that is looking to repurpose a mall into mixed use.

Some commercial, some housing, you know, both low income and mixed income, regular income housing and Paramus is doing the same thing with some of its malls.

What is the shortage?

I mean how many units is the state short and how many are projected to be built now with this in place, these guidelines in place?

So we have, you know, housing advocates have been saying for a long time it's roughly about 200,000 maybe even more homes that people just can't afford because it is such a high cost state.

We know that over the last period of time that the last Mount Laurel system, which was pretty much all in the courts, there have been 20,000, 30,000 homes built, which is impressive, but certainly nowhere near enough.

Theoretically, the number that was put forth by the state was about 80,000.

The towns came back with a number about 60,000.

I think we're going to see many, many fewer than that.

I don't know how many, but maybe half that.

Let me ask you about this new housing survey that came out from a coalition of really pro-housing groups.

I know you looked into it.

What did it find and where did the need for affordable housing fall in folks in New Jersey's lists of top concerns, of which they often have many?

And I think this was really, this is a significant survey in that for the first, the first one that I've seen were how affordable housing, the need was number one.

So 43% of people listed housing, the need for housing that's affordable as the top, their top priority.

That was higher than taxes.

It was higher than inflation.

So that's the first time we've seen that.

And about 75% of people specifically said there just are not enough housing units for people.

So clearly the public out there is saying, you know, give us more housing.

Sure.

I mean, given that, given that cost of living generally tends to be top of ticket when it comes to voting issues, where do the gubernatorial candidates stand on this?

Have they put forward policy ideas?

So I think that their policies could not be further apart.

This is a place where anybody looking to, you know, for a way to make a decision could make one.

Jack Cittarelli, the Republican, had an event last Thursday at a farm that the town in Cranberry is seeking to, eminent domain, to build its affordable housing.

not something they had to do and something that the housing advocates do not support.

So that's right there.

But what his plan is, is that he wants to direct new housing into cities and more urbanized areas, again, places that already have a lot and that have been kind of overburdened in some ways with that.

appropriate place.

He also said that he would like to overturn the law that was passed that set this process in place in 2024.

If he can't do that, he said he's going to go to the supreme court and kind of almost beg them to say, "Look, this process isn't working."

>> And what about democrat Mikie Sherrill?

>> So what she is saying is that she recognizes that there is the need for more housing.

She's not being very specific about where it is, but she certainly isn't discounting putting housing in more suburban areas.

And she would like to see predominantly redevelopment.

So these things that are happening with, you know, vacant malls, with vacant commercial buildings, and using those as a way to, so you're not, you know, touching virgin land, the little bit of open space that we have.

- Colleen, thanks as always.

You can read all of Colleen's reporting on affordable housing, including this story with the updates on our website, njspotlightnews.org.

Thanks for coming in, Kyle.

- Thanks very much, Brie.

- Well, Governor Murphy is marking Hispanic Heritage Month with a new requirement for all K through 12 public school students in the state.

Starting next year, they'll learn about Latino and Hispanic history as part of their social studies curriculum.

The Murphy administration says the new law aims to fill gaps in textbooks that have overlooked Latino history.

The move, though, isn't without controversy, arriving amid debates over growing curriculum mandates and lessons some parents say are politically charged.

Raven Santana has more on what the new law means for students, schools, and the community.

Pride and Purpose filled the Governor's Mansion during a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration, where Governor Phil Murphy signed a new legislation ensuring Latino and Hispanic history will finally be taught in New Jersey classrooms from kindergarten through 12th grade.

For families and educators, it's more than a policy change.

It's long-awaited recognition.

Just even whirlwind right now, currently, with the discussion that's happening of people not even recognizing that Puerto Ricanos are Americans.

So just on that basic principle, there is need for education.

Most importantly, there is need for knowledge to make sure that that little girl and that little boy understands that their power and that their ancestry is not one to be forgotten or erased, but one that contributed to the making of our country.

- Under the new law starting in 2026-2027 school year, every school district must include instruction on the history and contributions of Latinos and Hispanics from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Senator Teresa Ruiz, a prime sponsor of the bill, says Latino history isn't just cultural, it's economic.

$97 billion is contributed to the GDP from Latinos in the state.

That's more than the economy in Hawaii.

Education researchers like Alexandra Figueres Daniels say the impact could start even earlier, shaping the way children see themselves from their very first days in school.

It really does outline for school districts that are implementing public preschool that there are opportunities to read diverse literature and to really have classrooms that look and feel representative of the children who are there.

A John Hopkins University study found 87% of key topics in Latino history were either not covered or mentioned in just a few sentences in the books they evaluated and often limited to a single milestone in the last 200 years.

That being Justice Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the Supreme Court, advocates say the law is long overdue.

And a lot of our educational equity outreach work that we've done with young people, this came up time and time again, that they did not see themselves in the curriculum and that that contributed to not feeling understood among their peers and teachers, you know, along during their educational journey.

That connection between representation and learning is already in motion in Newark, inside Bard High School Early College, where they say history comes alive through identity and pride.

Latinos have formed the background of the city of Newark for a very, very long time.

Matter of fact, we're working on posters that look at and highlight Afro-Latinos here in Newark and in New Jersey, because it's really important for students to know who they are, know who their neighbors are, so they can understand themselves better.

Colombian and Peruvian and the proud daughter of immigrants, Dr.

Pui Khan turned her own family story into her doctoral dissertation.

Now she's helping students trace their roots while reshaping how Latino stories are taught.

For the past five years we've been teaching an elective for it's available to all seniors in all of the schools throughout the city of Newark and so it's a Latino and Caribbean studies course.

It's one that I created and I'm so proud to know that now all students in the state of New Jersey will have access to such great curriculum.

Her classroom feels more like a celebration than a lecture hall filled with art, music and meaning.

The current theme, Bad Bunny.

So we know that Puerto Rico, for example, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, has been since 1898.

They see online, they see celebrated in social media, but it's something that we're also including in the classroom in an educative way.

A lot of students actually feel seen now and heard to be able to see different faces, but that are still unique to us.

In the end, teachers feel these lessons ensure that the next generation doesn't just learn history, they see themselves in it.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.

- That's gonna do it for us tonight, but a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

And with election day just around the corner, check out our voter guide to get up to speed on the candidates and races on the ballot this year.

head to the NJ Decides 2025 tab on our homepage.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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