The following is a roundup of school- and COVID-related events, reporting what has happened in recent days.
Gov. Murphy on April 5 announced that all New Jerseyans, from age 16 and up, will be eligible to receive vaccinations on April 19 – a development that will affect more than 100,000 high school students in New Jersey.
In a statement, Murphy said that New Jersey has “successfully administered 4.7 million doses of vaccine to essential frontline workers, educators, high-risk groups, and other eligible adults who live, work, or study in the state.”
With nearly 1.8 million adults already fully vaccinated, New Jersey is on track to meet the governor’s goal of fully vaccinating 4.7 million adults by June 30.
Also on April 5, Murphy praised Newark school officials for announcing that the state’s largest school district will resume in-person instruction on April 12.
During his regular COVID-19 briefing, Murphy said that while nearly 362,000 New Jersey students, in 118 schools or districts, remain in all-remote learning programs, there is momentum behind returning to classrooms.
“We are seeing definite movement,” Murphy said, according to NJ.com. As students return from spring break, more are going back to full-time, in-person instruction, the governor maintained.
Meanwhile, students in Woodbridge resumed a hybrid schedule on March 1 after more than three months of all-remote learning because of the pandemic. Schools Superintendent Robert Zega said on April 2 that he hopes to have all students receiving in-person instruction by the end of the month.
“We are happy to report that we finally have most of our schools back to five days of instruction. Those schools that are not back to five days will be hopefully back to five days very, very shortly,” Zega said in a video posted to the K-12 district’s website.
On March 31, however, school officials in Paterson withdrew a plan to return to in-person instruction by May 1. The Paterson school district issued a statement saying that coronavirus cases in Paterson, and Passaic County as a whole, had increased by nearly 50% during the past month, according to NJ.com. Documented, in-school coronavirus outbreaks this school year — totaling 221 and resulting in 1,002 cases among students, teachers and other employees — have grown by 61% in the past month.