$2 THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2020 STATE EDITION AFFILIATED WITH NJ.COM

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The Comet Neowise is seen Tuesday in the night sky beyond a cutout of a buffalo on a hillside near Elmdale, Kansas. Charlie Riedel, Associated Press

The comet is photographed Friday in Geyserville, Califor-nia. Jose Carlos Fajardo, Bay Area News Group

The comet makes an appearance over Stonehenge early Tuesday in Salisbury, England. Neowise made its closest pass to Earth on Wednesday. Dan Kitwood, Getty Images

People use binoculars to view the comet Monday in Delta, British Columbia. Darryl Dyck, The Canadian Press

Comet Neowise might well return someday. It just could take about 6,800 years for it to make the return trip. And

that’s one argument for making an effort to see a visitor from the very origins of the universe before it passes from

view, perhaps by the end of next week, says Derrick Pitts, an astronomer with The Franklin Institute in Philadel-

phia. The comet, discovered on March 27 by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (hence

its name), made its closest pass to Earth on Wednesday and is beginning its journey to the outer reaches of the solar

system. But because of expected storms and clouds in the area, conditions to see Neowise may be better Friday and

over the weekend. Escaping city lights is key; the more stars you can see, the better the chances are that you’ll catch

a glimpse of it. Wire reports

ASTRONOMY

Catch it while you still can

Samantha Marcus and Adam Clark For The Star-Ledger

Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday that New Jersey could be forced to cut $1 bil-lion in school funding for the coming academic year if the federal government doesn’t pony up more coronavirus stim-ulus cash.

The dire warning comes as many dis-tricts are already struggling to plan for an unprecedented school year and despite New Jersey lawmakers just last week authorizing the state government to bor-row as much as $10 billion.

“We cannot fully support our districts in their plans for the upcoming school year without help from Washington,” Murphy said during his latest coronavi-rus briefing in Trenton.

Any cuts to school funding would be devastating, said state Sen. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, chairwoman of the Senate Edu-cation Committee. She supported the state’s borrowing plan with the goal that preserving education funding will be a top priority, she said.

Ruiz, also a member of the Senate’s Budget and Appropriations Committee, said Murphy’s briefing was the first time she heard the possibility of a $1 billion cut to education funding.

EDUCATION

Gov.: Schools face $1B cut without fed aid

Rebecca Everett For The Star-Ledger

New Jersey plans to start resuming jury trials as early as September, using mostly virtual jury selection and even multiple courtrooms and plexiglass barriers to maintain social distancing during the trial.

The process is to begin this month with the mailing of juror summonses and will continue with piloted jury selec-tion and trials in the Bergen and Atlan-tic/Cape May vicinages, the New Jersey judiciary announced Wednesday.

“We do not have the option of shut-ting down. The critical work of the court needs to continue,” said acting Adminis-trator of the Court Glenn A. Grant.

He said about 4,700 pretrial defen-dants are sitting in the state’s county jails, though nearly half of them are not near the trial phase. Civil cases also need to be tried, he said.

The announcement comes a day after the Association of Criminal Defense Law-yers of New Jersey held a virtual town hall to discuss concerns about what “vir-tual justice” might look like in New Jer-sey. The association has argued that the state’s ongoing virtual grand jury hear-ings, piloted in Bergen and Mercer coun-ties since June 18, are unconstitutional.

THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK REOPENING

Jury trials to resume with social distance

GOP senator says figure seems like a ‘scare tactic’

Amanda Hoover For The Star-Ledger

Online college lectures. Socially dis-tanced dorms. Masks on campus and in empty sports stadiums.

All of these new rules to combat the spread of the coronavirus in the close quarters of college campuses will unde-niably upend a traditional college experi-ence.

So some students have decided they would rather take the year off than move into an uncertain semester on campus.

Even as some schools plan to open (for now), Rutgers University has said it will stay mostly remote, while Princeton Uni-versity will allow students to come back to campus for one semester: freshmen and juniors in the fall, sophomores and

seniors in the spring.Freshman enrollment has dipped at

some colleges in New Jersey, but that has been countered at times by transfers who decide to stay closer to home amid the pandemic.

In April, some 16% of college-bound students said they planned to take a gap year due to concerns over the coronavirus, according to a poll conducted by Art & Sci-ence Group in collaboration with the Col-lege Board.

With the fall semester less than two months away, it seems more students have committed to state schools in New Jersey, at least, with several reporting just small drops in freshman enrollment.

But interest in gap years saw new highs.

“With this year in particular, what we’re seeing is many more students thinking about taking a gap year who weren’t even considering it,” said Holly Bull, president of the Center for Interim Programs in Princeton, which provides counseling for students seeking gap year opportunities.

With online learning and campus restrictions, she said, “it’s not their pic-ture of what they were going to be doing their freshman year. It’s bringing in way more people than we expected.”

THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK EDUCATION

More students eyeing a gap year amid pandemic

Bright comet won’t be back for long, long time

Business, A15 Classified, B5 Comics, A27 Editorial, A18 Health, H1 New Jersey, A17 Obituaries, A20 Puzzles, A24 Sports, B1 Today, A23 TV, A26

SEE STUDENTS, A13

As Yanks open in D.C., it’s a whole new ballgame. B1

Virus brings down curtain at NJPAC for rest of year. A23

SEE TRIALS, A14

SEE SCHOOLS, A8