Pictured left to right are SPAN Director of Health Programs, Jeanne McMahon; New Jersey Ombudsman for Individuals with Intellectual of Developmental Disabilities and Their Families, Paul Aronsohn; and SPAN Policy Director, Peg Kinsell.

SPAN Celebrates Open House on 9/18 with NJ Ombudsman Paul Aronsohn

Turnout was fantastic at the SPAN Open House on Wednesday, 9/18 as families, community partners, parent leaders, board members, community neighbors and more visited the SPAN offices for a tour, to learn from our Project Directors about SPAN's current work, and enjoyed food, beverages, raffles, and the ribbon cutting of SPAN's Tree of Gratitude Donor Wall.

The SPAN team was honored to have in attendance New Jersey's Statewide Ombudsman for Individuals with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities and Their Families, Paul Aronsohn. Paul took the office tour, learned more about SPAN's programs and was gracious with his comments before the ribbon cutting.

To see more pictures of the event, click here.

It's National Attendance Awareness Month

September marks the beginning of the school year and Attendance Awareness Month, a period dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of school attendance, the negative impact of chronic absence, and strategies to engage students in school.

Prior to the pandemic, NJ’s chronic absenteeism rate was at 10.6%, which rose to 13.1% in the 2020-2021 school year, and eventually climbed to 18.1% by 2022. So even though New Jersey recently improved its chronic absenteeism problem and developed one of the lowest rates in the country at 16.1%, there are far too many students missing out on essential class time.

The New Jersey Dept. of Education (NJDOE) has developed a webpage offering a collection of resources designed to assist local educational agencies in addressing chronic absenteeism by fostering safe and inclusive learning environments that encourage consistent attendance.

To visit the NJDOE "Conditions for Learning" website and access all of their resources, click here.

Study Details Maternal Health Risks for Black Women in NJ

(As reported on NJ Spotlight News)

Black women in New Jersey are 25% more likely to receive an unplanned C-section than white, non-Hispanic women, according to a new study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The results show the wide disparities in how Black mothers are treated, even those with similar pregnancies, similar socioeconomic status, and even the same doctors, in the same hospitals as white women.

That proves what New Jersey’s first lady Tammy Murphy and her team found when she first launched her Nurture NJ program in 2018, Murphy said Monday in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. Their work was aimed at reversing that high rate of Black maternal and infant death in the state.

To read the story, click here.