SENATE BUDGET AND APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

STATEMENT TO

SENATE COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE FOR

SENATE, Nos. 2335 and 3096

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

DATED:  OCTOBER 7, 2024

      The Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee reports favorably a Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Bill Nos. 2335 and 3096.

      This committee substitute requires the State Board of Education to adopt New Jersey Student Learning Standards (NJSLS) in Social Studies on Latino and Hispanic history.

      The committee substitute also requires a board of education to include instruction on the history and contributions of Latinos and Hispanics in an appropriate place in the curriculum of students in grades kindergarten through 12 as part of the school district's implementation of the NJSLS in Social Studies.  The instruction is to be historically accurate, culturally relevant, community-based, contemporary, and developmentally appropriate.

      The Commissioner of Education, in consultation with the Commission on Latino and Hispanic Heritage, is to provide school districts with sample learning activities and resources that may be used to support implementation of the instructional requirement.  The committee substitute also specifies that the standards adopted pursuant to the provisions of the bill are to occur concurrent with each update to the NJSLS.  The NJSLS are reviewed and revised every five years, and the next review of the NJSLS for Social Studies is to occur in 2025.

      A 2023 report released by Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and UnidosUS evaluating how Latinos are portrayed in widely used United States history textbooks found that 87 percent of key topics in Latino history were either not covered in the evaluated textbooks, or mentioned in five or fewer sentences.

FISCAL IMPACT:

      This bill has not been certified as requiring a fiscal note.