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Governor Murphy announces new school vaccine mandates

Governor Murphy announces new school vaccine mandates

Paul Wood Jr, NorthJersey.com

When Sean Spiller won the presidency of the New Jersey Education Association this past April, it was his second leadership election in less than a year.

In June 2020 he picked up another powerful post: mayor of Montclair.

In the dual role, the 46-year-old veteran teacher will have plenty on his plate after taking the NJEA position on Sept. 1. The union has a membership of more than 200,000.

His Montclair mayorship recently drew national attention after the impact of Tropical Storm Ida. When the city was hit with flooding along with dozens of other communities, CNN reached out to Spiller for information during its coverage.

He also faced protests during an August mayoral fundraiser he hosted at a non-unionized Montclair hotel, where he charged up to $2,600 per person.

“It’s an outrage that he’s trolling out-of-town influencers for cash just a year into his term,” Erik D’Amato, one of the protest organizers of the event, said in a Facebook post at the time.

Spiller reportedly put his name up for secretary of education in the Biden administration and is rumored as a potential gubernatorial candidate in 2025.

Still, he says his educational focus is a priority, noting issues ranging from COVID-19 challenges to an ongoing teacher shortage to continued state aid disputes. Those will be the focus of NJEA attention.  

“Everyone is going to be watching closely to make sure things work to keep everyone safe,” said Spiller, who is the first person of color to lead the union in more than 40 years and the first Black man at the helm. “That is our primary focus.”

About Spiller

Spiller was elected unopposed to the two-year NJEA term in April, replacing four-year President Marie Blistan, who is barred form serving more than two consecutive terms. He had previously been elected secretary-treasurer in 2013. 

He won the non-partisan mayoral post in June 2020 and faces re-election to that position in 2024.

A Jamaican native who grew up in Montville and has taught in Garden State schools for 23 years, Spiller says the way forward for his 200,000 NJEA members is to focus on student and teacher safety, get communities more involved with schooling, and reduce state bureaucracy for getting teachers credentialed.

Oh, yeah, and get Gov. Phil Murphy re-elected.

“We are significantly involved in the election,” Spiller said just days after taking over the union leadership. “We ask our members to get out there and have the conversation with others, with neighbors, with friends, to really volunteer for the campaign and work to support this candidate, we are doing that now.”

But Spiller, a married father of two toddlers, said the safety factor as COVID-19 remains a threat is key, along with keeping students in classrooms as long as possible.

“It is bringing us back to the real value that so many kids benefit from, of in-person instruction,” he said. “We want to make sure we can stay in the space. We do support the masking of everyone in our schools, we do support the vaccinate or test regiment the governor has put forward.”

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Safety concerns

Murphy issued his executive order in August requiring masks to be worn by students and staff in all schools, except for some health-related exemptions. It also forced teachers and staff to either vaccinate or be tested weekly if they decline beginning in October.

But along with safety concerns, Spiller points out that a trend in teacher shortages needs to be addressed, blaming it in part on anti-teacher views that date back to the Christie Administration.

“We are seeing in many districts the shortage of educators in terms of filling positions to start the year, that is a challenge,” he said. “In at least the last decade we have seen a drop in people going into education, that is probably related to a number of things. Part of that is having a profession that was attacked by the preceding governor. There is a serious dearth of individuals coming in and this is a major focus.”

He also noted New Jersey’s high cost of living and the pay gap that many teachers face, according to public records

“New Jersey is an expensive place to live,” Spiller said.

A 2019 USA Today study found the average combined property tax and mortgage in New Jersey was $25,027. For a teacher making an average of $74,000 per year, that would equate to almost 34% of their salary spent on housing, pushing them over the unaffordable benchmark set by industry experts.  

Spiller cites data that indicates fewer young teachers are in the profession in New Jersey, noting state college education enrollment programs in the past 10 years are down by 40%.

Need for changes

He also pointed to what he contends is a growing bureaucracy for new educators who want to be approved for teaching. Among the factors he said is a recent change requiring a full year of student teaching rather than just a half year as in the past.

“We may need some changes there to make it a process that is not so hard to navigate,” the new president said. “Right now to become an educator takes longer. We’ve got to maybe look at those again and look at how it can be an easier process for people who want to come into the profession. That is going to require legislation for sure.”

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He added that boosting the number of incoming teachers must also include keeping diversity balanced, vowing to build a “justice-centered union.”

“Another one of our major pieces is ensuring that the workforce we have coming in his diverse and reflective of the student population that we serve,” Spiller said. “We want to make sure that when we are talking about issues that affect our students and their communities, our communities, we are addressing all of the challenges. And part of that goes back to conversations around racial justice, educational justice, social justice, equal justice.”

He said the COVID-19 demands showed many outsiders how hard teachers work, but also added stress that for many has been difficult to reduce.

“Going into the virtual environment has been way more stressful for our members, we’ve done focus groups and surveys, and by and large it’s way more stressful for everybody and certainly for our members,” he said. “Everybody started to recognize how hard it is to do this work because we had so many parents who had to become more involved in their child’s education, you see this is a lot harder than you thought. I think people started understanding the challenges and the work educators do.”

Spiller said that recognition needs to prompt more of a connection between schools and the local community so that the whole child is helped, not just the academic portion of their lives.

“We need to be involved and engaged in what housing looks like for our students and what employment looks like for parents who may not be able to be engaged,” he said. “What opportunities exist for students to go to college or go into the workforce themselves. These pieces are all at the core of why a school or a community is successful or not. Either we have a community that is set up to support that school or we don’t.”

Joe Strupp is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience who covers education and several local communities for APP.com and the Asbury Park Press. He is also the author of two books, including Killing Journalism on the state of the news media, and an adjunct media professor at Rutgers University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Reach him at [email protected] and at 732-413-3840. Follow him on Twitter at @joestrupp

Source: Asbury Park

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