It was a constant fight for the computer, says fifth grade student Maiholy Peña, who suddenly switched to homeschooling this spring without the technology at home to do her work. It left her scrambling to finish on time. She and her sister are among the thousands of kids in New Jersey at risk of falling into a learning gap called the digital divide.
“Sometimes I wanted to study, my sister wanted to read books and my mother wanted to study English. So it was really stressful,” Peña said.
Newark’s West Side High School Principal Akbar Cook told Senior Correspondent David Cruz on ChatBox that it’s an all too familiar scene for his students.
“I have kids that have multiple siblings in one home and have one device and have no wifi. So then Altice, which is Optimum Online, they said they would give the kids the wifi, but it was just a band-aid because it only was for a certain amount of days. So here you have kids with no means of communicating with their teachers. Even the cell phones, they didn’t even have cell phones. It was just so bad,” he said.
And as districts prepare fall plans, Gov. Phil Murphy’s now giving parents the option to keep kids home for remote learning only. But parents who may want to do this for health reasons, may also not be able due to lack of technology. Recently, the Legislature and governor agreed to fund an effort to close the divide for the roughly 230,000 students in need, many of them in urban districts.
Israel-based Elcon Recycling Services has withdrawn its application to build a large facility in Falls Township that would have processed up to 210,000 tons of liquid chemical waste annually for recycling, according to a notice the company filed Thursday.
“The current business climate, including the impacts of COVID-19, has forced Elcon to reevaluate its plans for expanding its hazardous waste treatment business into the United States,” Zvi Elgat, the company’s CEO, said in a withdrawal letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Elcon’s plan to build a U.S. plant had been met with years of stiff resistance from officials and residents in the Bucks County township.
“The withdrawal of Elcon’s applications for a proposed project in Falls Township is a win for both local residents and the environment,” State Sen. Steve Santarsiero (D., Bucks) said in the statement. “I have been opposed to Elcon’s proposal from the beginning. … Today’s announcement is a victory in a hard-fought battle, led by concerned residents, to protect the health and safety of our entire community.”
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New Jersey’s death toll from the coronavirus rose to 15,730 on Thursday, with 177,887 total cases in a little less than five months — though the outbreak here continues to slow, with the Garden State standing alone as the only state in the U.S. that has seen its number of new cases drop the last two full weeks.
Officials reported 23 new confirmed deaths and 344 new cases in the state. Of the total deaths, 13,810 are lab-confirmed and 1,920 are considered probable.
Only four of the newly reported deaths happened in the last five days, Gov. Phil Murphy said. The rest happened earlier and have only recently been confirmed.
New Jersey’s case numbers in recent days have been skewed not only by a nationwide delay in getting test results thanks to a surge in cases across the country but also by a reporting issue with Quest private lab test results. Health officials said they have been working through that backlog, which was initially estimated at 15,000 tests.
The state’s daily positivity rate — the percentage of residents who test positive in one day — was 2.88% on Sunday, the date with the most recent available data.
“The good news is: Over 97% of people tested on Sunday tested negative,” Murphy said. “And we hope that continues to be the case, if not even better.”
The state’s rate of transmission — a key figure officials are using to determine how to further lift restrictions — remained steady at 0.9, below the key benchmark of 1.
When the transmission rate is below 1, that means that each new case is spreading to fewer than one other person and the outbreak is declining. Still, Murphy cautioned Wednesday that the testing result lag could affect the current transmission rate.
Thursday marks the 15th straight day New Jersey has reported fewer than 50 new deaths in one day.
There were 869 people being treated for confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases across 70 of New Jersey’s 71 hospitals Wednesday night, according to the state’s coronavirus dashboard. One hospital did not report data.
That’s down from 873 on Tuesday and down significantly down from the state’s peak in mid-April, when there were more than 8,000 patients.
Of those hospitalized Wednesday, 152 were in critical or intensive care and 73 were on ventilators. There were 75 coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals Wednesday.
New Jersey, a densely populated state of 9 million residents, ranks second among U.S. states in total COVID-19 deaths and fifth in total cases.
Nearly half of New Jersey’s COVID-19 deaths have been residents or staff members of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. At least 6,864 of the state’s lab-confirmed deaths have come from those facilities.
The total number of coronavirus cases in New Jersey is cumulative and does not reflect the thousands of residents who have recovered. More than 31,800 residents in the state have recovered from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.
There have now been more than 1.8 million COVID-19 tests administered in the state.
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New Jersey’s bay and river beaches are most likely to be impacted by bacteria pollution and should be better protected, a comprehensive report issued Thursday found.
The “Safe for Swimming” report issued by Environment New Jersey Research & Policy Center found that in 2019, bacteria levels at New Jersey beaches made swimming potentially unsafe on at least one day 73 times.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection conducts weekly bacteria tests at 222 beaches. Some river and bay beaches in Ocean County were the most severely impacted in 2019, according to the report.
Beachwood Beach West, which sits along Toms River, had potentially unsafe water nine of the 18 times (50%) it was tested.
Barnegat Light Bay Beach saw 43% of testing days with potentially unsafe water. Brick’s Windward Beach along the Metedeconk River had 38%, while Harvey Cedars’ 75th Street beach along Barnegat Bay had 25%.
Other beaches potentially unsafe for swimming at least twice in 2019 included beaches in Sea Girt, Wildwood, Surf City, Belmar, Long Branch, Somers Point, Seaside Park, Upper Township, Highlands Borough, Neptune, North Wildwood, Sea Bright, Sea Isle City, Wildwood Crest and Cape May, according to the report.
Federal officers use chemical irritants and crowd control munitions to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Wednesday, July 22, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) ORNB104 ORNB104 ORNB104
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