Earlier this year, Newark paved the way for students to have a say in their school board elections by giving 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote for those seats.

Now, a bill floating through Trenton will give young residents statewide that same opportunity.

But it's moving a little more slowly than some advocates had hoped.

Governor Murphy stopped by a Hoboken classroom today to talk about the pending bill and ramp up pressure on lawmakers to get it done.

Senior political correspondent David Cruz was there and joins us from outside Hoboken.

Hi, David.

Brianna, the idea of 16 year olds getting the right to vote in school board elections was first broached by the Newark City Council earlier this year.

They approved it unanimously today.

The governor, who says he supports a statewide bill to do the same thing, was here in Hoboken talking to an AP honors class of history and politics.

Students as well as advocates who have been moving this measure forward.

Newark is leading the country and it is all systems go, including with the support of our our folks at the state government for school board elections this coming April.

We, the three of us and our colleagues would like to make that state law not just allowing Newark to do what they're doing.

God bless Stuart for doing it, but every community, Hoboken and every other in the state, to be able to do that, not just to be able to do it, in fact, to be mandated to do it, since that commission, as much as it is, this is the way it's going to go.

It's a huge deal to be the first state in the nation to do that.

And I think it's the first step for 16 and 17 year olds participating into the broader participation in ultimately all of our elections.

The bill makes a lot of sense.

No harm has resulted in the other jurisdictions throughout Europe and Latin America and even the United States and California and Maryland that have tried it.

Voting is habit forming.

If you start voting when you're 16, you're more likely to vote throughout the rest of your life and you're more likely to inspire others in your household, adult voters to vote when you're 16 and 17.

And finally, what we're seeing with school boards, with book bans and rolling back protections for or for certain students, it impacts these young people's lives.

It only makes sense.

They have a say.

I tell you from the students that we were just with.

I know the governor and somebody with integrity would agree with me.

They are better informed about their democracy than many older New Jerseyans and Americans and should have the right to participate in democracy, certainly at the school board level with low turnout, if not more broadly.

And it's so important that they have the right to choose who's going to represent it on the school board and they have a chance.

Let them know what we what they want and some of the ideas that they can pass on to the adults that this is not listening to what they want to come across with.

And they can have that.

Having a young person vote on the school board, even being on the school board would be fantastic because you get a chance to get a.

Chance to learn.

And get a chance to prove that they're just not there, just to go to school and it also makes the whole family around young people ready to go out and focus on my child and go out and vote in the school board election.

Think there's no way that I'm not going to go out and vote in the general election.

If I can let my child go, I can go.

And it's just something a step forward for everybody.

It was only 1971, Brianna, when the federal voting age was brought down to 18 from 21.

This measure being considered in New Jersey would only cover students voting in school board elections.

But organizers say the idea is that if students can vote in school board elections, maybe they can vote for mayor or governor or even president of the United States.

I'm David Cruz in Hoboken, NJ.

Spotlight News.