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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi.

I'm Steve Adubato.

Welcome to another compelling program.

We kick off with the former governor.

By the way, what governor are you?

What number, Jim?

- Um, 52.

- What did you have to think about that?

That's Jim McGreevey.

He's the 52nd governor.

Former governor and chairman of the New Jersey Reentry Corporation.

Over his right shoulder is a picture of the late great Robert Kennedy.

I have Jack Kennedy over my shoulder downstairs.

Not in this studio, a different one.

But we will not talk about the Kennedys, but we are going to, first of all, welcome Jim.

- Welcome Steve and thank you, thank you for the opportunity.

- You bet.

Hey listen, early on in the pandemic, we're taping this the end of June.

You remember budget season, right?

- Of course.

- I know you try to forget about it, but right now, as we look back early on in the pandemic, if I'm not mistaken, approximately 3000 prisoners were released because of safety reasons.

Governor Murphy made that decision.

Those 3000 prisoners and others who are released, because that is the work of the New Jersey Reentry Corporation.

What do they need?

And what aren't they getting?

- Well, the first thing that I'll say Steve is that the public health emergency, the release, went far better than any of us could have expected.

And that's the good news.

I think by virtue of the fact that so many people were being released at a specific moment in time, that people put their shoulders to the wheel.

That people understood the importance of collaboration, whether it's Rutgers Medical School, healthcare providers, housing vendors.

And so it went very, very well.

I think if you could, one of the great lessons, was that whatever is not done behind the wall.

I mean by that, in prison, whether it's registering people for Medicaid, your motor vehicle commission ID or driver's license, getting people registered for SNAP, food stamps, excuse me, or general assistance.

Doing it during the pandemic out in the community is so much harder.

And yesterday a great piece of legislation, passed by Senate President, Steve Sweeney and Senator Sandra Boldon Cunningham, that's frankly, going to require the Department of Corrections to do so much more behind the wall.

So if I can, the public health emergency it went far better than expected.

We were very much concerned during the height of COVID that people weren't gonna be able to go home.

Obviously, people returning home to elderly parents and family members.

We worked closely with shelters, particularly Catholic charities.

People were concerned that if they came in with a fever, they were going to be turned away.

We were able to open sanctuaries, working with churches and mosques and temples, that literally allowed people to stay in those facilities until they brought their temperature down, until they were able to ascertain their temperature.

And then we worked cooperatively with social service agencies.

So overall it went well.

What we learned is, what's ever not done behind the wall, has to be done in the street in real time, much more difficult.

The big challenge now is employment.

- Employment, housing.

Let's talk employment.

We've had so many people, by the way, when I refer to the governor as Jim it's because we go back a very long way.

- Long time.

- Yeah.

That just means I'm old.

You're not old.

- (laughing) You look a lot better.

- No, that's not true.

'Cause I didn't have the pressures you had as governor.

But are you ready for this.

I keep thinking, we've had so many guests on, Jim, talking about the labor pool.

That there aren't enough people to fill the jobs and then I'm thinking, okay, but there are issues connected to ex-prisoners, ex-offenders who are out now, shouldn't there be jobs for them?

- Yep.

So part of the challenge Steve is, and if I can give it a shout out to Michele Siekerka of New Jersey Business and Industry Association, Commissioner, Rob Asaro-Angelo, who's doing a great job.

- Commissioner of Labor?

- The Commissioner of Labor, I'm sorry.

And so what happens is that there are those transitional jobs.

You can get a job for six months.

You can get a job that may not have a health benefits.

And so those transitional jobs are out there.

What we're trying to do is to get people careers.

And so working with the Department of Labor, working with the NJBIA, we're getting people, their commercial driver's license.

We're getting people their HVAC.

We're getting people licensed for Cisco certification for networking and routing.

We're having people certified to become a solar panel technician, for general construction, lining them up for a pre-apprenticeship to get into the building trades.

Whether it's the laborers or whether it's the iron workers.

And so what our whole focus is, I mean there are times when we look at transitional jobs and we're working closely with mayors like Mayor Baraka or County exec.

Joe Devincenzo, Mayor Cahill in New Brunswick, Mayor Bollwage in Elizabeth, Mayor Davis in Bayonne, that are giving guys and gals temporary jobs in public works that is just simply a paycheck, no health benefits.

But during that course of stabilization, we're sending them to our Reentry Training Center to give them a certification.

A guy like say, for example, I was just with Rich Leibler from Sansone Auto, does a lot of work with our vets.

If a guy has a diesel mechanic certification from the Ford Motor Company or BMW, I don't care what his background, that guy or gal will get a job.

And so that's what we're all about.

We have a new training center in Kearny, New Jersey, 25,000 square feet, nine classrooms, 15 offices.

And it's driving the pipeline, through credentials.

- By the way, Jim, give me 30 seconds on the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, because I just introduced you as if everybody knows what it is.

- Well, no, thank you.

I mean, Steve, what we're about is we have eleven thousand people throughout Central and Northern Jersey come out of state prison, come out of county jail, come out of addiction treatment services.

So these are people that have been locked up or in treatment and now they're coming home.

I mean, they need frankly, an ID.

None of us think about the importance.

If Steve Adubato didn't have his driver's license.

I didn't have my credit card.

How would I survive?

It's linking people to housing, addiction treatment.

A lot of times mental health when they're coming home.

And most importantly training and employing.

- Go back to housing.

New Jersey, one of the most expensive states in the nation, when it comes to housing.

How challenging has that been for ex-offenders?

- It's brutal.

I mean, I shouldn't say this on the air but we put more people, - Say it on the air.

- We put more people into illegal housing.

I mean, what we love is that the mom and pop or the mother, daughter routine where somebody can live into a house and maybe help do the chores to have their rent reduced.

But it's difficult.

To think about coming out of prison, you're not gonna get a job that's gonna pay you 24,000 plus the cost of renting an apartment.

Whether you're talking about Jersey City, Elizabeth or New Brunswick.

And so we've got to look to a lot of mother, daughters and opportunities for people frankly, to give a break to people.

And that's why I appreciate the legislation, Senator Singleton's legislation that governor Murphy signed.

- Is that the Fair Chance in Housing Act?

- Yep.

- Which does what?

I got 30 seconds, Jim.

- 30 seconds.

What it does is it says, look, it gives people a break.

It's understanding that when you're coming out, you're trying to rebuild your credit.

You're trying to rebuild your life.

You don't want to be knocked out because of that criminal background.

You can explore that after the conditional offer has been made, but it's allowing people to live healthy lives.

To have a job, to have a house and be part of, God-willing, the second chance of the American dream.

- Hey Jim.

Before I let you go, how many interviews you think we've done together.

Conservative.

I know you're not a Conservative, conservative.

Conservative estimate of number of interviews.

- I'm pretty center of the road.

Um, overall I think we're like looking at 30.

- I just checked it.

It's 27.

- Hey.

- Feels like more, it feels longer than that, right?

- It feels a little longer than that.

- That's Jim McGreevey.

I'm Steve Adubato.

More importantly, we'll be back after this.

Thank you, Governor.

- Thanks, my friend.

Godspeed.

- Same to you.

We'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by David Sciarra, who is Executive Director of the Education Law Center.

Good to see you David.

- Good to see you, Steve.

- We have been talking about public policy and education for more than a couple of years, and I wanna jump right into this New Jersey Supreme Court case.

Your organization has brought a challenge if you will, on the expansion regarding the expansion of charter schools, charter school enrollment in the city of Newark, A, why?

B, I thought most charter schools were doing well.

- Actually you asking me on a great day, the Supreme Court just issued their opinion in this case.

- Wait, we're taping on the 22nd of June at 2:07.

What are you telling us?

- That about three or four hours ago, we all received the Supreme court's decision in the case.

And so, I can hot off the presses, tell you that what the court did was affirm the commissioner's responsibility in looking at charter school application- - Commissioner of Education.

- Commissioner of Education.

So in New Jersey, under our law, the Commissioner of Education is the sole entity or state official that's charged with overseeing the program, approving applications to open new schools, to renew schools, to expand schools.

- Charter schools.

- That's right charter schools.

So this case goes back to 2016.

When the commissioner, then Commissioner of Education, David Hesby approved a sizeable expansion of charter enrollments in Newark Charter Schools.

We had ELC on behalf of the students in the district submitted information to the commissioner.

Essentially at that time, showing that this expansion was going to continue to deplete resources in the district schools we presented a lot of information about that.

So it was gonna have negative and fiscal impact on the district schools.

And also that it would intensify patterns of student segregation, particularly among students with disabilities and English language learners.

The bottom line today on the Supreme Court's ruling is they've affirmed those responsibilities, A, B, they said the commissioner did not evaluate student segregation as he's required to do, but they were going to allow the expansion to stand because of the passage of time.

So they weren't gonna wind the clock back.

So that expansion essentially was allowed to go forward even though the commissioner five years ago, didn't do what he was supposed to do.

- But going forward, what does it mean David?

- Going forward, this ruling is very important.

It really reaffirms the commissioner's responsibility to very carefully look at charter school, expansions and growth, and the impact that it has on the serving students across the district, particularly students who are vulnerable and are higher to cost to educate.

So kids with disabilities and English language learners, and also they wanted to make sure that it doesn't cause racial segregation as well.

- David, take a step back.

I have no direct involvement in charter schools, but my father, my late father, Steve Adubato Senior founded the Robert Treat Academy Charter School in Newark.

My sister Theresa has been very involved there for a long time.

So I know it.

I have no official position, nothing to disclose in that way, But I've got to tell you, I know there's a lottery to get into the school.

It is a largely black and Hispanic community.

I don't even know if there are any kids who happen to be white there.

So where is the quote unquote racial segregation?

I don't mean just Robert Treat.

I mean, in charter schools or in urban areas, largely if not exclusively.

So where's the racial segregation.

- So the point of this case was that the commissioner never dug into these issues.

He never examined them.

He never looked at the data, they didn't do anything.

And there are sort of three issues here.

One is charter schools in Newark serve substantially less students with disabilities.

Most of those kids, the majority of those kids remain in the district schools.

And if they do serve kids with disabilities, they're more mild disabilities that are less costly to educate.

- Move to the racial part, David, I'm trying to manage time, move to the racial part.

I get the part that you're saying about children with disabilities.

I actually do wanna understand this black and Hispanic segregation issue.

- So a lot of the charter school networks have established schools Team and North Star that were involved in this case have established a number of schools.

It's not one charter school.

There are many charter schools serving Newark, and the way they set them up was that they're serving largely, you have charter schools that serve largely black students and charter schools that serve mostly Hispanic students.

That was one of the issues.

We also raised the issue that charter schools have the ability Steve, to recruit students from outside the district.

And so one of the things that we were asking the court to send us back to the commissioner to look at, is what can be done to make sure that we don't wind up with a set of charter schools that are all black or largely black, or largely Latino in Newark that that gets addressed.

But also the charter schools are using the powers that they have under the charter, the commissioners using the powers that he has under the charter school law to direct these schools, to reach outside of Newark and hopefully begin to recruit a more diverse- - But David, in theory, that's legitimate, but in fact, that's not what's happening.

Urban charter schools are not recruiting outside of those urban areas, that's just not true.

- They're not, but they can, is my point.

And they have the expressively are authorized to do that.

So we were just simply saying, this should all go back to the commissioner.

Let me make it clear Steve, our position wasn't against charter schools.

- It's the expansion, it's the expansion.

- It was to make sure that they serve the district of Newark in a constructive way that we don't wind up with sort of two sets of systems in the city, charter schools and district schools, less money, different kids, so forth and so on.

Our point is it's not about the charter schools themselves, Steve, it's really about the commissioner's responsibilities to make sure that he's doing, he or she is doing everything possible to make sure that that doesn't happen.

- David, before I let you go real quick shift from charter schools, I'm just obsessed by this question because it has so many important educational, racial, social, cultural community implications.

Quick question on school funding.

Even I've talked about it for many, many years, there is an embarrassment of riches, even though no one's embarrassed in state government with the surplus.

Is enough of that money going to the school districts interview that need it most from the state.

- The good news is that this budget.

- The governor's budget.

- The governor's budget.

And it looks like the legislature is gonna adopt it- - We're literally a couple of days before the last day of the month, which is the legally lined up deadline That's the deadline.

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

- So, the answer is yes, because there is a significant increase in state aid in this budget, that will move the districts closer to the promise that the governor and Senate President Sweeney made when the governor came in a couple of years ago, which is by 2025 to get all of the districts to full funding under the formula.

So we lost a year last year, this year picks it up.

Good news makes up the ground.

We're moving in the right direction.

- Thank you.

Give me 30 seconds on New Jersey's universal pre-K, the universal pre-K model in New Jersey.

Is it a national model?

- A homerun.

We should be standing up and cheering for what we've been able to do in New Jersey.

It is the strongest, most effective and research proven delivery program, delivering high quality preschool in urban and poor communities in the United States.

- That's David Sciarra, a great guest.

We've been at this for 20 years together, going back and forth in these issues, he's smarter than ever.

I'm not supposed to offer commentary, I apologize, but he is.

Executive Director, Education Law Center.

Thank you, David.

- Invite me back, Steve we'll talk more.

- Anytime you got it, stay with us.

We'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're joined now by Dr. Lori Leslie.

Lymphoma attending at the John Theurer Cancer Center, Hackensack Meridian health.

Good to see a Dr. Leslie, - Nice to see you too.

- Explain to us exactly what CAR T-cell Therapy is and why it's so important in terms of cancer treatment.

- CAR T-cell Therapy stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy.

And basically what it is, is retraining someone's immune system to recognize and attack their cancer cells.

We all probably have a few cancers growing in our bodies at all times.

And your immune system's job is to make sure that it recognizes and gets rid of those cancer cells before they turn into what we think of as a clinically apparent cancer or a tumor.

That system can fail.

So that immune surveillance can be dysfunctional cause it can't recognize the abnormal cells, or the immune system, particularly your T-cells might be a little bit lazy, or hard to activate for whatever reason.

And trying to retrain the immune system to go ahead and recognize those cancer cells is exactly what CAR T-cell therapy is doing.

- Which cancers is CAR T-cell therapy most effective in treating and not?

- Yeah, so most of the approvals right now in CAR T-cell are for blood disorders.

That includes several different types of lymphoma and a certain type of acute leukemia, as well as multiple myeloma.

There are clinical studies ongoing across various different cancer types, including other, what we call liquid tumors or tumors of the blood, but also across solid tumors.

So breast cancer, lung cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, cancers that originate from, you know, an organ.

There's a lot of research going on in CAR T there as well.

And we're expecting in the near future, further research to reach approvals in those types of cancers as well.

- You know, Dr. Leslie, as, as you probably know, I teach in, what's called The Physician Leadership Academy at HMH, and they also have been underwriters of our health and medical programming.

So I've talked to a lot of clinicians about medical issues and, what I find is, as I'm listening to you right now, there's a lot of acronym.

There's a lot of acronyms, a lot of jargon.

How complicated and difficult is it for you and your colleagues to explain CAR T-cell therapy to non-clinicians?

- So we try to break it down in a way that hopefully is relevant to you.

CAR T-cell therapy is a complex thing.

You know, the patient's cells are extracted from their blood.

Then they're mailed to a lab and engineered to recognize the cancer.

And then given back to the patient.

- So say, simplify this.

It's not simple.

- It's not simple.

And it can only be done at certain centers.

So for example, in Hackensack Meridian Health, that, you know, we've got one center, which is a Hackensack where we do the CAR T-cell center.

So we'll redo the CAR T-cell treatment.

So it's part of like a cellular therapy center.

It's part of a, a stem cell transplant center.

So it's a complex treatment, very effective, but it's hard to explain.

And usually what happens is patients meet their cancer doctor, whether it's their general oncologist in the community that thinks it's a good treatment for them.

A subspecialist, you know, like myself, who only does lymphoma, who explains it further.

And then they meet with one of the cellular therapy doctors who kind of lays out the calendar.

And it's not something that's easy to grasp usually in one visit.

It takes meeting with several different people and kind of processing as you go along to understand what this therapy actually means for a patient.

- You know?

Breakthroughs in cancer research and treatment are hard to come by.

And I'm sure there are a lot of people watching who wonder, Hey, why haven't we made more "progress"?

And I don't want to get into how complicated and difficult it is to make that kind of progress.

But, What would you say to people who do ask the question, quote, "Why isn't there a cure?

", But the fact is there's so many different kinds of cancers, A.

What's a cure?

B.

What is a level of success, below a cure, that you would say, give us reason to be helpful?.

It's a loaded question.

I know, - Cancer is complex.

And it's a really common question.

Again, I just see lymphoma.

And even within lymphoma, there's over a hundred different subtypes.

So the more we learn about cancer.

The more we learn what's driving the cancer.

What on a molecular level, on a cellular level, why did this happen?

Why did your immune system make a mistake?

Why can it not recognize these cancers and eradicate them?

And the fields of oncology is explosively changing right now.

It's hard to be a general oncologist and keep up to date with breast and colon and lung and lymphoma and everything you need to know.

So that's why the field is shifting to sub-specialized care.

In people who just see one type of cancer to help keep up to date with all the advancements, you know?

Even in the past year or so, in lymphoma, there's been four new FDA approved therapies during a global pandemic.

So the care is changing really rapidly.

And the more we understand about cancer, the more we understand the complexities.

- Real quick on this one.

COVID and cancer treatment.

- Yeah.

So.

We're learning a lot about COVID because of our infrastructure for cancer research.

So as soon as the COVID pandemic hit, We were able to start some of the clinical trials looking at how to treat COVID, because we have the infrastructure of how we've been doing this with cancer for decades.

And we know immune systems are weak.

We know we have to think about COVID differently in patients that have cancers.

So for example, you are CDC guidelines that, you know?

you can take off the mask if vaccinated, for example, may or may not apply to a weakened immune system.

We're learning a lot about vaccination in cancer patients and how to kind of adjust that differently.

So it's really helped us learn more about COVID, learn more about our patient's immune system and come together as a scientific community to figure out how to tackle both of these major issues together.

- And early detection continues to be incredibly important.

Dr. Lori Leslie, I want to thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

I'm Steve Adubato.

Thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato Is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

Wells Fargo.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

NJM Insurance Group.

Choose New Jersey.

Summit Health Rowan University.

And by The Adler Aphasia Center.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey Monthly.

And by The New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

- Hi.

I'm Governor Tom Kean.

A dear friend of mine had aphasia, which is a language disorder that occurs from a brain injury or a stroke.

It robs a person's ability to communicate, but it doesn't affect their intellect.

Programs and services offered at the Adler Aphasia Center help to improve my friend's communication skills, as well as her self confidence and quality of life.

Most importantly, she was among people who understood her.

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with aphasia, there is hope.