It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Brian today. Well, today is Governor

Phil Murphy's last day in office. And New Jersey Governor-elect Mikey Sherrill will be sworn in tomorrow.

Last week, Governor Murphy gave his final state of the state address, using it to highlight what he sees as his education legacy.

Many of those priorities are expected to carry over under Cheryl.

That's not to say that the incoming governor hasn't already started to put her

stamp on education policy. We'll dig into public education in New Jersey now and what's likely to

change with Jesse Gomez, a reporter at Chalk Beat. Hi, Jesse. Hey, how are you, Tiffany?

Doing all right. Okay, let's talk about the first, one of the first moves from

incoming governor, Cheryl, putting her stamp on education with her pick for education commissioner.

Cheryl announced on Friday that Lily Lowe is the incoming commissioner.

So just talk about, maybe give us a little background on her and tell us what kind of

signal this gives us on where Cheryl's education policies might start to lead.

Yeah, absolutely. So definitely in a very late Friday afternoon move, Governor-elect, Mikey Sherrill,

announced Lee Lowe as her new kind of pick for, you know,

to lead the state's education department. Obviously, there's still needs to, some bureaucracy

still needs to happen for her to actually take her role. But we do know that she is a former deputy

commissioner from the Texas Education Agency, which is the equivalent of the Department of Education here in New Jersey.

We've known that she's worked in the public school system.

She has experience in, you know, K through 12 education.

And according to the state, she is specifically going to tackle if she gets the role.

She'll tackle literacy outcomes,

help expand early childhood education,

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