Tap Into Camden. By Noah Zucker

A Biden administration cabinet member with the power to shape schooling on a national scale conferenced with students, educators and local politicians in the city on Friday.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited the North Camden Community Center and participated in a round table hosted by Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) after a morning of touring educational facilities across South Jersey, including a stop at the Rowan College of South Jersey where they met with students and educators to discuss college affordability.  

“You can tell the strength of a community based on how the children are doing,” Cardona said.
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He concluded that Camden is a strong community after witnessing the youth programming at community center with Norcross and Mayor Vic Carstarphen, where athletics and the arts are a focus.

The round table discussion featured several local students.

“I feel excited to be around all these people that are top-notch in the government,” said Jai Boggs, who will be a senior at Camden Academy in the fall.

“The pandemic was kind of tough for school,” he said. “It was harder to learn in my opinion.”

He found it much harder to stay motivated at home and was looking forward to going back to school, where he would be able to interact with his peers.

This made sense to Cardona.

“Students need to be around one another,” he said. The impact of the pandemic was most significant when they were not able to engage with their peers.”

Kevin Acevedo, a rising sophomore at Camden County Technical Schools’ Pennsauken Campus, was looking forward to living out the high school experience he missed out on his freshman year.

Just the thought of “going to lunch (and) walking around the halls with my friends,” seemed like a treat to him, he said.

Acevedo was also looking forward to forging strong relationships with his teachers, something he missed out on with virtual learning, which he found to be challenging.

Craig Walton, a rising junior at Big Picture Learning Academy, said he excelled with virtual learning.

“To me it wasn’t hard,” he said.

Craig said his ability to create a good routine and his desire to get his family “out of the hood” kept him motivated through over a year of online learning.

But this was in part because his mother Gabrielle Walton, who was also featured on the panel, was heavily involved in his online schooling.

“I told him I didn’t want him to slack and fall off just because he was in the privacy of his own home,” she said.

The students had some ideas about where all the new federal education funding flowing to schools in the Camden area through the American Rescue Plan should go.

Acevedo wanted to see better technology and better wages for teachers while Boggs thought new athletic equipment should be purchased.

Cardona and other educators stressed the importance of getting students back to school in person and the role federal money provided through the American Rescue Plan will play in that.

Katrina McCombs, the superintendent of the Camden City School District, was happy with the way these ARP funds were distributed.

“We are so grateful they were distributed in equitable ways so that communities that need more funds got more funds,” she said.

McCombs said that things were looking up for the district before the pandemic and that these funds would help it stay on that trajectory.

“We want to wrap our students with the supports that are needed – socially and emotionally, academically, anywhere we can – because we know how far we’ve come and we want to keep moving forward,” she said.

Naeha Dean, the executive director of the Camden Education Fund, believes this ARP funding will be “transformational” for Camden’s schools, naming investments in academic enrichment, co-teaching, mental health supports and facilities as examples of how schools plan to use the money.  

While Dean said more resources would always be better, she said the amount of ARP funding that’s available for Camden schools to apply for should put them on good footing to come back strong this fall.

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