NYC NOW - April 17, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

New York State lawmakers are hoping to start voting on the state budget at some point this week. Plus, an investigation by the New Jersey Comptroller finds waste and poor oversight in Essex County's COVID vaccine program. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with students on the speech and debate team in Newark about their upcoming tournaments.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. New York state lawmakers are hoping to start voting on a $237 billion state budget at some point this week. But an oversight cyber attack on the legislative bill drafting commission could complicate things. Governor Kathy Hogle says the commission is switching over to an antiquated system that dates back to 1994. No one will do it better than we do in trying to get to the bottom of this attack, but our understanding right now is it'll take a little bit longer to deal with the legislative side of it. The governor announced a handshake deal on the state budget earlier this week.

The bill drafting commission helps put that agreement into actual legislation, which is then put to lawmakers for vote. In New Jersey, an investigation by the state controller finds waste and poor oversight in Essex County's $40 million COVID vaccine program. WMYC's Nancy Solomon has more. In 2021, the Essex County program was celebrated for how many residents in the Newark area were vaccinated and how well the program was run.

But the new report by controller Kevin Walsh finds the county gave out no-bid contracts to vendors, at least one who was politically connected. That contractor was paid twice for an invoice totaling $110,000, among us. other problems. Also, eight people were hired full-time by the county vaccination program, even though they held other public jobs. Essex County Executive Joe DeVincenzo says the report is unfair and only covers a fraction of the money the county spent on the pandemic.

Coming up, we'll hear from a group of students in Newark who are on a winning streak with their speech and debate team. Stick around. Students from Newark Public Schools are on a hot streak at the New Jersey State Championship Tournament for Speech and Debate. A team from the district's debate program is in Indiana this week for the National Debate Coaches Association Championship. And next weekend, they'll head to Kentucky for the speech tournament of champions. WMYC's Michael Hill talked with Central High School Senior Ayomide Adekuya, Science Park High School Junior Victoria Ringle,

Arts High School Jr. Amilla Stewart, and longtime debate coach Jonathan Alston. I need your students to explain to me what exactly is the difference between speech and debate? Who wants to go first? I would love to jump in on this. Whenever people think about speech and debate, they only look at the debate side,

which is kind of like it hurts my heart sometimes. But our debater can say it. It's typically between two people or in groups, my kind of debate policy debate. We're developing our arguments, and then the judge ultimately decides what argument is better developed, which one better references evidence, etc.

Whereas at least my interpretation of speech, it's more of a performative act as opposed to an argumentative sort of event. Yeah, speech, it's just more of acting. You know, it's more of drama. It's less of, you know, debating. There are some debating categories like extemporaneous speaking. But mainly there's like dramatic interpretations, you know, poetry, prose, just all those type of acting. I amide, I have to congratulate you. At the New Jersey State Championship tournament last month, you won first place not in one.

but in two categories, dramatic and oral interpretation categories. Tell me, how did you get involved in this program? I used to be on the track team, actually, and my track team captain joined a speech and debate, like, later in the year. And when I saw that he got, like, fifth place at one of a national competitions, I was like, oh, shoot, maybe I should join. So I joined, you know, my first year, it wasn't bad, but it was a little bumpy. And then this year, just, you know, really bloomed in, you know, I'm loving it. So, yeah. And you, Victoria, you were a first place winner in policy debate. How did you get there? How did you get involved? So I've been doing debate now for the past six years. I originally was exposed to the activity because I took it as a core requirement in the middle school curriculum at science. And, you know, slowly I began to fall in love with the activity. And now I've really enjoyed sort of the event. You get exposed to a lot of domestic politics, international politics. And now I'm a senior here. And, you know, I'm just loving it.

And Amelel, you do improvisational acting. How did you get involved? How did you get there? My friend. My friend actually introduced me to speech as a whole. And I did it mainly as an extracurricular activity. I didn't have much of an interest in it at first. But after my first competition, I completely fell in love with it.

And I'm so glad that I'm into this now. And actually, improv is something that I didn't want to do in the beginning. But my coach said, you know, you are very out there. So why don't you just try it? And ever since then, it became. something that I just am surprisingly good at. Now, Jonathan, as an educator, what do you hope the students participating in this program

are getting from the efforts besides just the accolades? Oh, it's leadership training, right? The kids learn how to be leaders wherever they are. Like, I'm so proud of Victoria Wrenge. She's a senior, and she'll be attending Harvard University next year. And we know that just based on what a lot of my students have done, right? like they become leaders who try to make the world just a little bit better. And one thing I would like to add that might be helpful is that Nork is a working class city.

And the thing that makes the Nork program uniquely important is that most of the world to debate is like very wealthy, right? Like their upper middle class, et cetera. Nork makes sure that it puts a lot of funding so that any kid from any place in our city is able to compete with the best most well-resourced kids in the United States and sometimes around the world. I think that's what makes it special in terms of that leadership. Hey, you immediate, Victoria,

how do you feel about what Mr. Alston just said? Does that feel true to your experiences? Yeah, everything when you said was true, I've definitely grown in my leadership skills. Like, you know, just doing other things besides speech, you can really see that, you know, before I used to be, like, more nervous and more timid about things.

But now it's just, you know, because of speech, it's more of like a day-to-day thing to me. I would definitely like to add to that. I completely agree with Mr. Alston. Being in the program for six years, I think that debate has given me the confidence and the tools, you know, to really put myself out there. A big part of debate that I enjoy is the research aspect and sort of being able to research, being able to use the proper databases, being able to formulate my argument, having the confidence to sort of reach out to specialists on the topic. And now that I'm going to college, I'm extremely excited. Debate has really given me, again, the tools to put myself out there.

And Amilla, how do you feel about that what Mr. Olson said? It is completely true. I actually have social anxiety. So joining in this whole activity was very, very hard for me to break out of my shell and do different things, especially since I not only do improv, but I do DIY2, which is it takes a lot out of you to be able to stand in front of even just ranging from three to 10 people or 15 people in the better, depending on the round you're in. it was very hard for me, but the more you do it is the easier it gets. And it actually helps me a lot in not only just speech, but in other things that I do too. I'm a dance major at Artai. And my teachers have actually been saying that ever since I joined speech,

that I've been showing more true colors in class and being more free. I amita, I have to ask, what would you say to students thinking of getting involved in their school speech and debate programs? I'm telling you, if you have a speech and debate program, in your school, join it. It will change your life. Even if you're not going to pursue anything like acting or anything involving speech and debate later in the future, it will help you in ways that you probably won't know later on

in the future like speaking skills and leadership. Victor, how about you? I think I'm a little biased, but I definitely encourage everyone to join debate. I think it's more of a serious activity. And in terms of what I already touched on before, the research skills are really transferable to anything. and in debate you're exposed to such a wide variety of topics that do require research that then when you go into class or when you try to have, you know, just a conversation

with anyone, you're already exposed to such a wide base of knowledge. And on top of that, I think that debate uniquely prepares you with sort of media literacy that I think in today's climate is just so important, you know, the more sort of, sort of youth a lot of times are getting their information from social media and from unconventional platforms, which having a debate background really equips you to be able to adequately process and sort of gauge that information. That's Ayomide Adekuya, Victoria Rangel, Amilla Stewart, and debate coach Jonathan Olston, talking with WNYC's Michael Hill.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.