TRENTON (KYW Newsradio) — New Jersey is providing an extra year of school for nearly 9,000 special education students who missed out on in-person classes because of the pandemic.
Students with disabilities are now eligible for an extra year of classes, under a pandemic relief bill signed Wednesday by Gov. Phil Murphy.
Those students would have turned 21 and aged out of the system during the 2020-21, 2021-22 or 2022-23 school years.
At his regular coronavirus briefing, Murphy noted that many of the students may not have had all of the in-person instruction necessary.
"We recognize the pandemic has been especially hard on the roughly 8,700 students this will impact and who may not have had the full set of transitional skills and job training that they need for adulthood," Murphy said.
The governor said the one-time-only extension will require a significant amount of money.
"It could be up to $600 million. So be it," Murphy said.
"This is one of these things where we take the step regardless of the price tag because it is absolutely, without question and hesitation, the right thing to do."
The extension will be paid for with federal money from the American Rescue Plan.
