Jill Biden came to a South Jersey school as her husband hits the road to sell the $1.9 trillion stimulus

First lady Jill Biden came to a South Jersey elementary school Monday to kick off a nationwide “Help is Here” tour touting the impacts of the new $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.

President Joe Biden and the first lady are traveling across the country on a public relations blitz to celebrate passage of the major legislation signed into law last week. President Biden is coming to Delaware County on Tuesday.

Jill Biden toured Samuel Smith Elementary in Burlington City, a Burlington County public school with 260 students in pre-K through second grade, about 57% of whom are economically disadvantaged. The school is about 35 miles from Hammonton, where Biden was born and spent her early childhood.

“Nice to see all of you,” Biden said inside a second-grade classroom as she greeted the two in-person students and 17 virtual learners whose young faces filled a computer screen. “I’m a teacher but I teach English.

“Tomorrow I will be doing the exact same thing with my students,” she said, referring to the community college students she is still teaching remotely from the White House.

Biden spent about an hour touring the school, learning about its COVID-19 mitigation strategies — including what lunchtime looks like during a pandemic — and greeting students. Then she joined local elected officials for a news conference on the school’s playground on the cold, sunny day.

Before she spoke, a loudspeaker announcement dismissed the “blue cohort” of in-person students for the day — about 50% of students enrolled.

“I love being here at a school again,” Biden said “But even with your best efforts, students can’t come in every day … and this school, like schools across this country, can’t fully reopen without help.”

She called the newly enacted American Rescue Plan “help today so we can build back better tomorrow.”

» READ MORE: Here’s what Pennsylvania and New Jersey are getting out of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package

Beyond funding for schools, the bill includes direct payments for 82% of New Jersey families. New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said those payments, along with a huge expansion of child tax credits, could lift 89,000 New Jersey children out of poverty.

“This is the kind of commitment we should be making to each other in a crisis,” Booker said. “A great crisis deserves a great response.”

Biden said support to local governments — which Republicans have criticized as a costly “blue-state bailout” that local governments didn’t need — would keep teachers and firefighters in their jobs.

“These budgets ensure we have the public servants we need,” she said.

“This is going to to make the difference between putting food on the table and going hungry,” Biden added. “For many it’s going to allow them to fix the appliance that’s been broken or get new tires for your car. It’s a chance to breathe again, and when we help families stop holding their breath about paying their bills, local shops and restaurants benefit, too.”

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The legislation allocates $86 million for Burlington County local government and $2.76 billion for New Jersey K-12 schools. Last summer, New Jersey schools received $160 million in federal coronavirus stimulus funds.

Like many schools in the region, Samuel Smith shut down last March and reopened in the fall with only some in-person classes. When coronavirus infections spiked, the district shifted to all-remote learning through February. Now students are back to a hybrid model with about half attending virtually five days a week. The other students are split into two cohorts, each attending two days a week in-person.

According to the latest statewide data, of the 811 districts operating in New Jersey, 100 are open for all in-person learning, 533 are hybrid, 142 are all remote, and 27 are a combination (meaning different models are being used within the same district). That equates to about 74,000 students learning in-person and 760,000 attending school on a hybrid schedule. An additional 447,000 students remain fully remote.

Dawn McGee teaches English as a second language at Samuel Smith, which has been difficult with so many students facing both language and technology barriers at home. She’s hopeful about all in-person school by the fall.

“I am optimistic. We need to turn the corner and have just a shift in the American thinking that things can get better if we work together and work more as a team,” she said. “It can’t always be an everyman for himself way of thinking.”

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Samuel Smith is in the state’s battleground 3rd Congressional District, which has flipped between Republican and Democratic representatives since 2010 and is now represented by Democratic Rep. Andy Kim. It’s a district that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 before flipping to Donald Trump in 2016. Trump won it again by 0.2 percentage points in 2020.

Burlington City, a small town of about 10,000 people near the bank of the Delaware River, is in Burlington County, where food insecurity has increased by 48% during the pandemic, according to Feeding America, an antihunger nonprofit.

Gov. Phil Murphy joined Biden at the school and said the legislation would also help fund continued vaccination efforts in a state where more than 1 million residents havebeen fully vaccinated.

“We do not begrudge that you grew up on the other side of the Delaware River,” Murphy told Biden, who spent most of her childhood in Montgomery County. “Because we know your roots are in the soil of Hammonton and sand of Ocean City.”