Teach NJ, the leading advocacy organization for New Jersey’s nonpublic school children, applauds Governor Phil Murphy for allocating an additional $5.79 million from federal Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools (CRRSA EANS) funds and American Rescue Plan (ARP) EANS funds to cover critical incident mapping for New Jersey’s nonpublic schools.
Teach NJ worked with the Governor’s office to ensure nonpublic schools across the state need not bear the costs of this initiative to keep students safe.
As part of an initiative to protect students and teachers, Governor Murphy signed bill S2426 into law on November 30, 2022, requiring all schools to submit critical incident mapping data to local law enforcement. This crucial data will be made available to first responders in cases of emergency, allowing them to act swiftly and with precision to protect students and staff.
“Critical incident mapping can help save time and lives during a school shooting or another school emergency. We applaud Governor Murphy for offering every school community, including our Jewish day schools and other nonpublic schools, the tools and funding to keep our children safe,” Katie Katz, Executive Director of Teach NJ
The $5.79 million in funding is in addition to $6.5 million Governor Murphy allocated in August 2022 to cover mapping of New Jersey’s public schools. The governor continued to demonstrate his ongoing commitment to security for all of New Jersey’s students.
“Our relationship with local law enforcement is something we value deeply. With communicate frequently and rely on them on a daily basis. It’s really wonderful that the state is recognizing the importance of this relationship and is allocating funds to ensure they can do their jobs and keep our schools and communities safe.” Rabbi Efrayim Clair, Executive Director, RYNJ
“This funding is vital to our schools as it is helping to alleviate the expense of critical incident mapping on our annual budget. We remain committed to keeping our budgets as tight as possible in order to lessen the tuition burden on our parents,” Erik Kessler, Executive Director, The Moriah School
Teach NJ, a division of the Teach Coalition, was founded in 2015 to advocate for equitable government funding for New Jersey’s nonpublic schools. It has secured an additional $150 million in funding for nonpublic schools, which is used to increase security, enhance education and defray higher tuition costs. Approximately 1,000 nonpublic schools including yeshivas receive support through Teach NJ’s efforts. For more information, visit https://teachcoalition.org/nj/.