- Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with once again, Senator Vin Gopal, a Democrat from the Monmouth County New Jersey area.

He's the Democratic Conference Chair and also the Chair of the Senate Education Committee.

Senator, good to see you.

- Steve, great to be with you.

- You got it.

Hey, just listen, I don't wanna give up too much, but you just told me before we got on the air that you are not only a senator doing important things, particularly in the area of education.

But as a dad, you're also dealing with childcare, are you not?

- Yeah, and illnesses every week when they're in daycare.

- How old?

- Two years old.

- Wow.

Well, Senator, thank you for being with us with everything you're juggling.

Hey, let's do this.

A lot of issues I wanna talk about, but the first one I wanna talk about is, as we do this program, former President Trump's about to become President Trump again.

A lot of talk about either dismantling or limiting the Department of Education on the federal level.

A, what do you think is really gonna happen?

- The one thing I think we've seen about President Trump and former President Trump is that he is unpredictable.

And he goes all over the place.

I hope he doesn't dismantle the Department of Education.

If you wanna make reforms I understand that, but it plays obviously a very important role.

Department of Education during COVID was a lifeline for the state as far as mental health funding and special education funding.

- Also funding, explain Title IX and Title X federal money to folks and why that matters.

Each one, go Title X first.

- Yeah, so that's funding that we directly get here as it relates to each pupil.

And that's something that comes from the federal DOE.

It's tied to, across our 600 school districts.

I mean, these are two very specific funding buckets that our districts rely heavily on.

And if that gets, I understand there's been some talks about reforming both of the titles, but to eliminate them altogether could have a devastating impact, especially on some of our highest poverty districts.

- Okay, closer to home, even though that is impacting home, what happens in DC.

So NJ.com does this comprehensive story about a select group of charter schools that have some financial problems.

And that the leaders of those organizations, some were not even living in New Jersey, while administrators and teachers in public schools, and charter schools are public schools, by law have to live in New Jersey.

You are holding hearings to look at charter schools.

What are you looking at and are those schools the aberration of charter schools?

- Yeah, well look, Steve, I don't know if there's any other type of public automatic funding.

If you think of any other funding that we hand out, whether it's fire districts, towns, police departments, there's a per resident cost.

Charter schools are anywhere from 80 to 90% per pupil.

And there is no public transparency on how those board of trustees are selected that govern those public schools.

The NJ.com reports that have come out and have shown some alarming issues in a handful of charters.

And unfortunately, what I've told the Charter Association is those stories really diminish some of the real good work that charters are doing in some tough areas.

So, partnering with Senate Majority Leader Ruiz and Senate Chairman Sarlo.

We're looking at doing a hearing in December to really look and see are there changes that need to be made?

Is it a lack of DOE enforcement?

Really try to bring everyone to the table.

We have not looked at charter schools legislatively in a long time.

Then Assemblyman Speaker Doria was the last one who really looked at it.

- Joe Doria, yeah.

- That was quite a long time ago.

So I think just having a healthy look is important.

And you know, when you got charter schools that are underperforming their public schools.

That wasn't the purpose of why charter schools were coming to certain areas.

When you have public schools that are outperforming them academically, sports, art, music, I mean that's a pretty big issue on whether that charter school in that specific place should exist.

- But at the same time, to be clear, there are certain charter schools that are outperforming traditional public schools in certain communities.

Fair to say.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn't say certain.

I'd say overwhelming charter schools are, but look, charter schools also have select choice often on who they're picking, whereas the public school has to take everybody.

So I think a lot of these factors do matter.

And I've told the folks in the charter community that let's use this as an opportunity to show some of the good work you're doing in some of the charters and at the same time hold those actors that shouldn't be in the business accountable.

- We're gonna actually have an in-depth interview with the Chair of the Charter School Association on the same topic.

As we do this program, the senator has not held those hearings, we're earlier in December.

These are coming up later, we'll follow up after that.

Can we talk school consolidation?

Is it time with over 600 individual school districts, Senator?

Some so incredibly small, very expensive.

Is it time to mandate on the state level that certain really small school districts consolidate/merge, share services?

And if they do not, they risk losing state funding.

Is it time to do that?

- Yes, and legislation that we are putting out is gonna mandate that.

Any district that's under 500 students to start looking at that mandatory consolidation process.

But Steve, it's what you just mentioned.

It's beyond that.

600 school districts.

We need to, it's healthcare brokers, snow removal, IT, waste management.

We should be taking eight to 10 districts together, consolidating all their administrative costs, all their local costs.

Obviously since we've announced trying to push mandating this, and we are gonna hear the bill in January and push forward with it.

There's been concern from school districts about the importance of home rule.

I understand home rule, but New Jersey is a-- - Define home rule for folks so they understand what you mean.

New Jersey's unique in that way.

- Yeah, New Jersey has 565 municipalities, 600 school districts, hundreds of housing authorities, sewer authorities, fire districts, and everybody wants what they want in their own backyard.

I mean, we had this battle, at the Senate Education Committee meeting last week, where we were looking at a cell phone policy statewide, where school districts and the NJEA and the school boards were saying, well, it should really be district by district.

Well, I don't agree with a lot of one size fits all policies, but this one would make sense to have a cell phone policy that is across the state, not going district by district.

- Are you saying, as I think, is it Australia that across the state, if you had your way and you believe this was the best policy, we would ban cell phones?

- Not necessarily ban, but I'd like to take it a uniform policy statewide.

And I'd like to empower the leadership that we have to do exactly that.

- But right now you are saying there's no way to keep our property, our property taxes are high for a lot of reasons.

- Right.

- But one of the biggest is our schools and the cost of local government.

- Right.

- Are you saying if we continue to complain about New Jersey having the highest property taxes in the nation, we can no longer have everything we want in our community?

Is that a fair assessment?

- Look, I think we can keep the extraordinary quality of education, but when we have school districts that continue to go down in enrollment, aren't offering music, sports, art programs, it's a really big issue.

And I think the only way to address that, if you're a district and you're, for example, I got one district that's gone down 1,000 students in the last 10 years.

Their administrative costs have gone up 40%.

Their per pupil cost has doubled.

They need to look, they're not getting rid of buildings.

I mean, home rule has some real negative effects as it relates to making sure that we can keep New Jersey affordable, at the same time, provide a quality education.

- Go back to how we started this conversation, Senator, your 2-year-old, childcare.

We're involved in a series, the graphic will come up.

First 1,000 days, it has to do with childcare.

That is from pregnancy to two years old.

This policy coalition is very focused on affordable, accessible, quality childcare.

You understand childcare, not just from a policy point of view, but from a personal point of view.

So here's the question.

What more, and we had Senator Ruiz talking about some of these same issues.

What does the state of New Jersey need to do to help parents when it comes to affordable, accessible, quality childcare, Senator?

- Look, I think options are important.

I think COVID has changed a lot of that.

I mean, partnering with school districts, private organizations, making sure that parents truly have options.

Childcare could absolutely bankrupt a family.

And I think that a lot of what the Senate Majority Leader has worked on, she's worked on a package and she's championed on this, is really gonna help in a big way, and starting to make that impact.

But it is an investment and it is expensive.

- Yeah, and PS, it’s the First 1000 Days policy coalition, I apologize if I didn’t say that correctly.

Let me try this.

We talked about the Trump administration, but the election of President Trump and Republican Congress, both houses, is in part, Senator, by any reasonable analysis, connected to local education.

What I mean by that is when you see school board meetings with people going to those meetings and angrily, sometimes violently protesting local education policy that they argue is too woke.

You think what?

What's this whole woke education thing mean to you?

- Look, it's so sad to see that politics and school boards, that we have candidates running as political parties, and running with the endorsements of gubernatorial candidates, and running in a very partisan nature.

I mean, these folks are not, I'm looking at some of these school, I looked at a school board member's social media feed the other day in one of the towns.

And the entire social media feed is filled with politics.

It has nothing to do with making sure that we're supporting our teachers, making sure that we're improving math scores and reading scores and writing scores.

It's not focused on anything except politics.

And it's really sad and it's really getting to a really unhealthy, dangerous point.

I'll admit, I was one of the people that thought it was a good idea to move the school board elections to November.

In retrospect, it was horrible.

And I remember the opponent saying that, oh, you're gonna politicize this.

I said, there are already elections, they're gonna be political.

Boy was I wrong.

I mean those that still kept their elections in April did the right thing.

And it's sad to see how political that these school board elections have really gotten, and the horrors that are going on with our teachers where they're getting accused of doing inappropriate things in the classroom.

- Hold on, before I let you go.

Did you just say you were wrong?

- Yeah.

- I'm sorry, I've been doing this for over 30 years.

It doesn't happen too often.

- I'm pretty wrong pretty regularly, but it's to admit the mistake.

- I'm in the pretty wrong pretty regularly club too, Senator, except elected officials don't often say it publicly.

For that, thank you, Senator Vin Gopal, Democratic Conference Chair and also the Chair of the powerful and important Senate Education Committee.

You're dealing with childcare today, aren't you?

- Yes, I am, my wife's working.

(both laughing) - Yeah, I think you're juggling a lot of stuff over there.

Thank you, Senator, all the best.

- Thank you so much, have a great holiday.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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