Corzine Refuses Help for NJ Children
Saturday, December 9th, 2006In case you had doubts about the politics of our governor . . .
The federal government provides grant money to states for a variety of programs from roads to crime prevention to historic preservation to maintaining hiking trails. New Jersey will not receive any federal grant money this year for teaching abstinence because Governor Corzine rejected the grant.
There is no cost to New Jersey taxpayers directly (granted, some of our federal tax dollars fund the program), yet Corzine refuses to accept the grant.
Peer Challenge, the group Pratt and Andrea Maher run, operates on $99,500 per year in federal funding and visits about every eighth grade in the county each year.
They have been doing it for nine years, speaking to more than 12,000 students, but the funding source is being cut off. The state has been offered $945,000 for next year to fund groups such as Peer Challenge, but Gov. Jon S. Corzine won’t accept the federal grant because of a dispute about what the program teaches.
According to the state of New Jersey, Peer Challenge’s goals are to:
* Increase the number of youth who postpone initiation of sexual intercourse;
* Reduce the number of teenage pregnancies, births and sexually transmitted diseases;
* Increase adolescents’ ability to reject unwanted sexual advances; and,
* Increase effective communication between parents, families and their children.
Those are things Governor Corzine has decided New Jersey students are not to know about. Yet, the Core Curriculum Content Standards (2.4) require teaching abstinance.
Corzine hides behind the morality argument:
“The state should not legislate morality,” said Assistant Commissioner Celeste Wood of the state Department of Heath and Senior Services.
Bah! Government should be setting the example. Corzine’s decision will negatively affect children in New Jersey.