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OPINION

While watching the first gubernatorial debate Sunday night, I became more convinced that Jack Ciattarelli’s positions on education, housing and health are regressive, and so backward-looking they would further divide the state along racial and economic lines.

Ciattarelli classifies cities and suburbs as distinct entities rather than collaborative for equitable education, intelligent growth, and fair distribution of healthcare resources.

Here is a snapshot of his views. There is no value in integrating our schools. Affordable housing is an urban problem. Rising healthcare costs should be shouldered by state funding for public employees, rather than rein in the exorbitant costs charged by doctors and hospitals that prevent all working families, the poor, and elderly from seeking care.

Let me first say Ciattarelli’s use of the Newark schools as an example of a substandard system because of a lack of choice is wrong on both counts.

Our best performing high schools, Science Park, Arts High and University High, have the same graduation rates as Millburn, Summit and Mountain Lakes, and other top-ranked schools.

When Ciatterelli spoke of the hallmarks of failing school systems, he overlooked the following facts about Newark.

The New Jersey Department of Education estimates Newark’s graduation rate for all its high schools is 89.6 percent for the school year 2024-2025, up three percentage points from the year before. These numbers reflect a precipitous drop in our chronic truancy, which is under 10 percent. These numbers are the best in decades, including the years the schools were under state supervision.

While lauding his plan to give students “choice,” he failed to mention one-third of Newark students are in charter schools because it didn’t fit his narrative of the city’s school system.

I found Ciattarelli’s comment that if Black schools outperformed white schools “we wouldn’t be having this conversation” dismissive of the whole integration issue.

Perhaps most troubling was his comment that “if we integrated the Newark school system tomorrow and it’s not going to improve student performance. we need to change the curriculum.”

It sounded like something from the Civil Rights Era when Bull Connor stood in the way of desegregation in Alabama, and little Ruby Bridges had to walk through a jeering crowd in New Orleans to go to a white school.

It also shows true ignorance of the social determinants, like poverty and substandard nutrition that impact learning, and also ignores the collective achievements of our students.

Jordan Thomas, a University High graduate, went on to Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Oxford and was the first Rhodes Scholar from Newark.

Jeremias Castillo was the National Honor Society’s Student of the Year while at Technology High and is now at Harvard.

Our students have been accepted at every Ivy League school and hundreds have gone to the nation’s best HBCUs, while pulling down $632 million in academic scholarships.

Technology High was named a Blue Ribbon School in 2023, Newark’s eighth since 1999.

Ciattarelli’s comment also ignores research that all students at integrated schools have better SAT scores and lower dropout rates, and benefit socially, too, as they get to know people from diverse backgrounds.

His reach back to the 1960s and decades-old stereotypes to portray Black students as hopeless, was meant to stoke fear in mostly white districts that integration would ruin their schools.

He used that dog whistle again in the affordable housing discussion, claiming infrastructure can’t support 50-unit developments in suburban cities.

First, if zoned and planned correctly, development improves infrastructure. Development has helped Newark continually upgrade our water delivery and storm water and sewage disposal systems. It’s simple math. The more customers we have, the more money we can spend to improve our systems. Also, by making developers plant trees, create rain gardens and other green spaces, we can create more permeable landscapes and lessen the impact of torrential rainstorms.

Second, every suburb on a train or bus route has an opportunity and I would say, an obligation, to create affordable housing. While it’s true that a trackside apartment tower would change the character of small- and medium-sized suburbs, it is also true that there are less imposing ways to build affordable units and spread them out within walking distance of the transit lines.

I can’t think of a suburb on a train or bus line that can’t easily absorb their fair share of affordable housing. There are creative ways to do this. Change restrictive zoning laws on multi-family housing. Allow single family homeowners to add accessory dwelling units to their property for elderly long-time residents or town workers who can’t afford to live in the place they work. Create more low-income set asides in all projects. We’ve done this in Newark, and our residents get first dibs. If suburbs took this approach, affordable housing units wouldn’t change the character of their towns, they would help preserve it.

When Jack Ciatterelli talks about the state spending more to fund healthcare costs for state employees, it shows he has no understanding of the system or the will to fight healthcare providers to lower their costs. Since Chris Christie’s Chapter 78, which required public workers to contribute a larger percentage of their health insurance premiums annually, costs have skyrocketed.

This year, the City of Newark fought to curb those costs, and introduced a healthcare plan for our employees with reference pricing and offered it as an opt-in. This means the city will pay a hospital or insurance company 150 percent of what Medicare will pay for a visit, procedure or hospital stay. We saved tens of millions of dollars, and our employees got more money in their paychecks, and the City had to contribute less for their insurance costs.

Without a fight to reduce medical costs, working people who aren’t state employees will continue to see costs rise unabated, and find it harder to pay for preventive and wellness care.

For too long, New Jersey’s home rule has divided the state by racial and socioeconomic lines. These regressive policies have led to stunted housing growth, economic stagnation and have failed to give all our residents a fair stake in the state’s future. I fear Ciatterelli will lead us backward at a time when we should be moving forward.

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