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

- Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Wednesday night.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

Tonight, a few stories we're digging into later in the broadcast.

Confusion and concern over the Trump administration linking Tylenol use during pregnancy to autism.

What do state health officials, advocates and parents have to say?

Then the cost of special education is skyrocketing in the state.

We look at what schools and lawmakers are doing to fund services.

And later, will more cell phone bans be coming to the classroom?

We have the latest details on a statewide recommendation.

First, though, a few of today's top headlines.

A key political pivot in the race for New Jersey's governor.

The state fraternal order of police is endorsing Republican Jack Ciatarelli over his Democratic opponent, Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill, marking a sharp shift to the right on law enforcement issues here.

The endorsement by the state's second largest police union breaks a longstanding tradition.

The FOP backed Governor Murphy, a Democrat, in his 2017 election, along with Democratic nominees in gubernatorial races dating back decades, while staying neutral in the 2021 race for governor.

But the union also endorsed Sheryl for Congress as recently as 2024.

Cittarelli, who has the support of President Trump, has been running on a tough-on-crime law and order platform.

He called the endorsement an "honor," pledging to overhaul bail reform and give police unions a seat at the table in naming New Jersey's next attorney general, among other things.

The move could reshape the dynamics of the race in Republicans' quest to turn the state red.

Also tonight, for the first time in 50 years, the city of Camden has gone an entire summer without a single homicide.

City officials are calling it a historic milestone since Camden started tracking crime stats in the 1970s.

They're also seeing an overall drop in crime so far this year, building on recent progress and improved public safety.

Homicides are down 43 percent over the same time last year, with 8 recorded so far in 2025.

Camden is also reporting that violent crime is down for the first half of the year to some of the lowest levels in 50 years.

It's all a dramatic turnaround for a city once labeled one of the most dangerous in the country.

Officials are crediting community policing, including what they call the Village Initiative, which is community events and programs connecting people in need with social workers.

Since 2014, when Camden dissolved its city police force and handed responsibility to the county, homicides have dropped 64 percent.

And the landmark clergy sex abuse trial involving Del Barton School continues.

Jurors this week heard emotional testimony from the mother and friend of a 1977 graduate of the school, supporting his claims of abuse dating back nearly 50 years.

The former student, known in court only by the initials "TM," alleges that when he was 15, he was abused by Father Richard Lodd, a Benedictine monk and mentor at Del Barton.

During testimony, TM said the incident left permanent scars on his mental health, relationships, and career, adding the trauma follows him around like a dark cloud.

TM's mother recalled him breaking down after graduation, while a friend testified he witnessed TM write a letter about the abuse to the former head of Del Barton School.

According to TM, that school leader confirmed Lott admitted to the abuse, but kept it quiet and allowed him to remain at the school, while the defense challenged the severity of TM's trauma this week.

Now, this is the first of nearly 40 lawsuits against Del Barton to reach trial and the first of its kind to play out in a New Jersey courtroom.

Coming up, we dig into the facts and the fallout from President Trump's claim linking Tylenol and autism.

That's next.

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State health officials are pushing back against claims made this week by the White House linking Tylenol use during pregnancy to autism.

The officials say the medication, when used as directed by a doctor, remains safe and warn that misinformation could put pregnant people and their babies at risk.

But they're also reinforcing the safety of COVID and hepatitis B vaccines during pregnancy and early infancy, following the lead of major pediatric and obstetric groups.

The public health statements come after a meeting of top New Jersey clinicians who say they're aiming to cut through, quote, "confusion and uncertainty" stoked by recent federal guidance, where the Trump administration promoted unproven theories not just about Tylenol, but also vaccines and autism.

Our senior correspondent, Brenda Flanagan, joins us now with the latest.

Brenda, a lot to dig into here.

What can you tell us?

Well, Brianna, the reaction to Monday's highly anticipated news conference was immediate, intense and emotional, especially here in New Jersey, where autism rates run higher than the national average.

President Trump promoted unproven connections between Tylenol vaccines and autism, but offered no new scientific research to back that up.

Regardless, Trump announced the FDA will alert physicians to minimize the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy for routine low-grade fevers.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: There are other parts of the world where they don't have Tylenol, where they don't have autism.

That tells you a lot.

And I want to say it right now.

And you know, the way I look at it, don't take it.

Don't take it.

There's no downside in not taking it.

And I'm thinking, oh, my God, if I'm a new mom, I'm never taking Tylenol.

I'm never doing this.

I'm going to space out my shots.

I'm going to -- you're right.

He's like telling you all these different things that is probably scaring a lot of people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, that's New Jersey journalist Stacey Sherman, who has two children in their 20s with autism, and says she never took Tylenol.

In fact, the drugs manufacturer Kenview, which is based in New Jersey, stated, "We believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism."

The FDA notice calls it an ongoing area of scientific debate.

While an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established.

Autism experts say more definitive research is needed.

New Jersey has got a high percentage of people with profound autism, 64,000 people.

And the president's announcement dropped hard in that community, according to Mitchell Baum, who is with the Council on Severe Autism.

MITCHELL BAUM, Council on Severe Autism: I see online and I see in our members, you have parents who are going, oh, my gosh, I took Tylenol when I was pregnant, and I caused this.

And then you have somebody else who posts and said, I have five kids.

I took Tylenol with all of them.

One of them has autism.

What are they talking about?

And I'm part of the severe autism community.

And we're a stressed community.

This is not easy.

And when you have information that comes out that isn't clear, that there's not a consensus behind yet, it just causes stress.

And it causes stress among pregnant women, because who do you listen to?

JUDY WOODRUFF: But the administration went further.

The FDA requested GlaxoSmithKline to relabel one of its older drugs, called Lucavorin, as an autism medication to improve brain functions affecting speech.

But Lucavorin was originally marketed to reduce chemotherapy side effects.

And while small-scale studies found it led to some improvements, the drug hasn't undergone clinical trials for autism treatment.

That's one reason Autism New Jersey's Suzanne Buchanan calls the science on Lucavorin premature and thinks it needs more research.

We're always concerned about individuals with autism, especially those who have difficulty talking and communicating any potential side effects like headaches or stomach aches or I feel funny and I can't tell you how.

I think unfortunately there's a long history of fad treatments that are marketed to the autism community before the science suggests that it's safe and effective and so unfortunately we have a long history of supporting families through these decisions.

It's too big a disorder to blame on one thing and I think it's irresponsible because now maybe some people think okay all I have to do is not take Tylenol and my children won't have autism or all I have to do now is take this medicine that they talked about and my child's autism will go away or will get better and I don't see that happening.

But hope springs eternal.

Sherman says she's seen a Facebook page where thousands have signed up to promote using Lucavorin in hopes the drug might improve communication for folks with autism.

And advocate Cassidy Grom notes many families felt elated just for autism to be in the national spotlight.

But we do need to recognize there's a whole other sort of subset or group of families with autism that are taking care of children and adults with profound autism.

Now, these are individuals who, you know, they can't feed themselves a lot of times.

Sometimes they have a hard time communicating or they have to communicate through an iPad or a tablet.

And these are families that are realizing they're going to take care of their children for 24/7 around the clock for the child's whole life.

And for those families, in some ways, it felt like the federal government was finally hearing them and that they were finally getting the attention they needed.

And a lot of those families are very excited about the potential for finding the cause of autism or finding better treatment.

For Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the moment marked a political triumph celebrated by the so-called Make America Healthy Again, or Maha, movement.

Maha action leader Tony Lyons declared, "We have what we haven't had for decades, an administration that's open to real science, to dozens of possibilities.

It's a profound culture shift from a culture of corruption to a team that will turn over every last stone and give the public real science, real answers.

But some advocates said even as research continues, politics should never be the filter for truth.

Autism is complicated.

There's going to be a lot of causes and a lot of treatments and a lot of different reasons for it.

And I haven't seen anything that even begins to suggest that acetaminophen is this smoking gun that's responsible.

It's really important that it gets fair, appropriate attention, with due diligence, with science.

But when it becomes political football, it just takes a stressed-out community and makes us more stressed.

Now, the politics can get very divisive.

One advocate cancelled an interview with us because they feared backlash on social media.

New Jersey's home to 242,000 individuals with autism advocates say.

Brianna?

Bren, you know, I talked to Dr.

Walter Zahirani this week, who's advised RFK Jr.

And he's the head of New Jersey's autism studies.

And he said, look, you know, we've had a 300% increase in New Jersey since I started doing this work a couple of decades ago.

We're open to any and all research.

What is New Jersey's situation?

Because you said some of those numbers, but put that in context for us.

So look at it this way, one out of 31 kids nationwide has been diagnosed with autism.

In Jersey, it's one out of 29.

That's 3.5% of eight-year-old children.

And this is -- it's a lot of kids.

They range from being able to function to, as we pointed out, children who are dramatically impacted and are going to need around-the-clock care for the rest of their lives.

Yeah.

And we've heard from a lot of parents of children with profound autism who say, we need the help, we need a spotlight on this, as some of the advocates said to you, because their lives are truly devoted to taking care of their kids.

Especially when they've grown up.

They need group homes for disabled individuals with supervision.

They need activities, they need job training.

Stacey Sherman's daughter is getting to move into a new group home next week, and she is thrilled.

Brenda Flanagan for us.

Bren, thanks as always.

Thank you.

Special education costs are climbing rapidly in New Jersey and for local public school districts, the strain is real.

Many are paying out of pocket for out-of-district placements.

Advocates say the state is only given patchwork fixes with no long-term plan.

But as senior correspondent Joanna Gagas reports, there's a renewed push in Trenton to change just how that special education is funded.

It's not just the classification, it's the types of classification that we see in students, that these students are coming with a lot more needs.

School districts across the state have seen the costs for special education grow significantly in the last several years.

Currently, about 17% of kids are enrolled in special ed, according to the New Jersey Department of Education.

Many districts, like Tom's River, have struggled to absorb those costs.

years, Superintendent Micha growth has been staggerin It's gone up 55% when you services has gone up 70%.

of these line items for t and it's become unafford back for that.

The state budget that allocates sta The second is an allocati education, extraordinary special education is essentially any any student or case that's over $40,000 that the district needs to spend.

So if you're a small to midsize district and you have a student that really needs specialized attention, maybe needs an IEP, maybe needs to two three people to help, you could be looking at over $100,000 that the district needs to pay for out of placement.

That out of district placement happens when the needs of the student are greater than what the school can provide.

The school funding formula requires that the school requires that districts get reimbursed 90% of what they spend on extraordinary aid, which can include transportation, a huge cost driver in recent years.

But right now, districts are only getting back about 60%.

I think that New Jersey needs to really pick up the cost for extraordinary special education costs.

Former Senate President Sweeney actually started the process of moving extraordinary special education costs completely to the state.

We when he left, we were covering about 80% of those costs.

Now we're closer to 55% simply because we have not put more money into the pool every year.

It's been the same, but the volume of cases have been pretty high.

Senate Education Committee Chair Vin Gopal drafted a bill, S3917, that among other things would establish a task force to review the state's special education funding model.

Senate at the end of June.

It hasn't moved through the Assembly yet.

Part of that review should include how the state allocates funding for special education through the general budgeting process, says Education Law Center's Danielle Ferry.

Every district is funded as if they have the average classification rate.

So that means some districts are getting a little bit more funding than the special ed students that they actually have enrolled.

And some districts are getting less funding if they have classification rates that are higher than the state average.

It's called the census model, which many education experts have fought against.

attorney Arthur Lang, who the state over the fundin the SFRA in 2018, the Sch It was based on the actual the state should go back The reason why they wante method was because they f classifying.

Ferry says t in this latest budget.

We districts in the FY 26 bu method, but they're still only getting the statewide average per pupil.

A lot of people have suggested moving back to a tiered model, which is what a lot of other states use, where depending on the level of services that the student needs, they get a different per pupil amount.

We know what it costs for a student with a certain degree of autism.

We know what it costs to educate a student who's medically fragile and has a feeding tube.

We know what it costs to educate a student with speech.

What we don't do is fund those appropriately.

It's an issue that Senator Gopal says he'll be taking up with the Assembly in this lame-duck session of the legislature.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Joanna Gagas.

Well, New Jersey could soon be on the verge of a major shift in school policy following a new report from a state commission urging districts to adopt bans on student cell phone use during the entire school day, citing serious concerns that access to social media is hurting academic performance and harming students' mental health.

The recommendations come after months of research by a panel of educators, health professionals, and others, and it's quickly sparked both praise and pushback.

Our education and child welfare writer, Hannah Gross, has been covering the issue and spoke with members of that panel.

She joins us now to discuss.

Hannah, good to see you.

So you dove into this whole thing.

What is driving the push to put these cell phones away, not just during classroom instructional time, but bell to bell, as they call it, the whole day?

- The commission found that social media and phone use can have pretty devastating effects on mental and physical health for students, which is why they want them out of the classroom, in addition to the impacts on learning, which can make it more difficult to focus and concentrate in class.

What type of evidence did they cite?

Were there medical studies, cohorts that they looked at?

I mean, what did they really point to to back this up?

So the commission worked with the team of researchers from Rutgers who were conducting a survey of students and parents in New Jersey looking at social media habits and behaviors.

And then the Rutgers team also performed a literature analysis where they were able to take a look at all of the available research on this topics and present it to the committee.

So I mean we know that there's been a rise in issues with youth mental health.

How much did that play into it?

And concern that's come out from school boards, parents, I mean even students who have said you know they're fearing cyberbullying, they can't escape it even when they're in class.

How much did that play into it?

It's a big concern.

There's an association between social media use and cyberbullying, body shaming, and anxiety and depression in young people.

Yeah, it used to be you could go to school and get away from that.

You can't anymore.

Okay, I'm curious what parents and teachers and students have to say about it because they're the ones who would be affected.

Who did you talk to from the panel and what was their reaction and sort of feedback about this?

I spoke to Charles Gelinas, who was one of the co-chairs of the commission, and he was incredibly supportive of a bell to bell ban, which means you wouldn't have the school throughout the school day.

And this is what he had to say.

Some schools might say you can't use it in class, obviously, but you can use it at recess time, say, or lunchtime or study hall.

There's a lot of different ways you can enforce this.

You've seen in New York and in New Jersey, some people use pouches.

Other people have cubbies or little signposts.

They have little pouches you can put your phone in.

I think all those personally are mistakes.

I think the phone shouldn't cross the threshold of the door into the school at all.

So, okay, very clearly he sees the benefits of this, but what type of background does Charles have that would lend him as a expert or someone who's highly educated in this area?

So he was a parent representative on the commission.

He has two daughters, one in elementary school and middle school, so he has seen them grappling with phone use and social media use, and he's also a member of the board of education in Westfield, where he helped the district adopt a cell phone policy that's dependent on schools but encourages phones to be away during the school day.

Yeah, because we should note, there are several districts that have already implemented these type of policies.

What about students?

Because we're all attached to our phones, and students for sure, because they are addicting, what do they have to say?

So I spoke to one of the student representatives on the commission who said serving on the commission over the last year really opened her eyes to the negative sides of social media when she previously had been focusing a lot on the positives, the ability to connect with friends.

And after being on the commission, she has drastically changed her habits on social media and phone use.

Here's what she had to say.

I think a healthy relationship with your phone can be achieved.

It takes a lot of work, as I know.

I've been very addicted for a long time.

But if you focus on using social media to connect with your community and communities globally, and use it as a resource for researching different perspectives, also limiting the hours you spend on it every day, I think it can be really beneficial.

It's just a matter of pulling back, knowing when's the right time to pull out your phone, and when's the right time to put it away and focus on what's around you instead of what's on a screen.

Wow, she was really candid there, saying that she knows she's been addicted.

I mean, and a lot of folks, Hannah, have talked about, well, maybe we should just encourage more healthy behavior, teaching kids not just, you can't have this phone, but here's a healthier way to do it.

So is that in this report as far as who will set the guidelines and who will enforce them?

The report does address that.

There's different recommendations for different groups.

So policymakers, both at the state and federal level, educators, teachers, and then also for parents.

And some of the recommendations for parents include modeling healthy behaviors and having a good relationship with your phone, and also limiting social media use until kids turn 16, and even then, setting boundaries.

I can imagine that that got some pushback.

Did you hear from any groups, any individuals, who are not too happy about this?

I'm sure they're out there.

So far I've been speaking with people on the Commission who are broadly supportive of the recommendations.

So is the state looking to make a mandate here?

The Governor has said he would sign it if it comes to his desk.

It moved through the Senate.

It stalled in the Assembly.

How likely is it that we would have some type of one-size-fits-all policy?

Members of the commission are optimistic that this will give lawmakers the push that they might need to get the bill over the finish line.

But even that bill kind of leaves a lot of flexibility up to school districts.

We're in a state where there's almost 600 school districts, and they have broad authority to set their own policies.

So some districts already have policies, and others might add them after this report.

- Alright, you can read Hannah's full story on this and all of her education reporting on our website, njspotlightnews.org.

Just go to the education tab.

Hannah Gross, always good to talk to you.

Thanks so much.

- Thank you, Brie.

- 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, you can always 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 NJDecides 2025 tab on our homepage.

I'm Brianna 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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