Judge Julio Mendez visits Petway third graders in Vineland

Third graders at Pauline J. Petway Elementary School met a judge before most of them have ever stepped inside a courtroom, getting a firsthand look at how justice works in Vineland. Judge Julio Mendez visited Mrs. Nonnemacher’s class and spoke with students about his career, the United States Supreme Court and the role of the judicial system in everyday life.

The visit came on May 19 and fit directly into the class’s Shared Reading unit, Reaching Our Goals. Students have been studying people who reached difficult goals through persistence and service, including Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Mendez tied those lessons to the real world by talking about Sotomayor’s childhood dream of becoming a judge and her path to becoming the first Latina on the Supreme Court.

For a third-grade classroom, the encounter offered an early lesson in civic literacy. Mendez did not just describe a career in law. He showed students that courts shape rights, consequences and the rules that guide public life, and that judges are public servants whose work touches families well beyond the courtroom. In a city like Vineland, that kind of access can make the justice system feel less remote and more understandable.

Petway Elementary, at 1115 S. Lincoln Ave. in Vineland, serves a large elementary population. Federal data list 486 students and 38 classroom teachers for the 2024-25 school year, with a student-teacher ratio of 12.79 to 1. U.S. News & World Report lists enrollment at about 494 students and says the school serves grades K-5. In a setting that size, a visitor like Mendez can have a visible impact on how children think about public institutions.

Mendez brought more than 20 years of experience in the New Jersey judiciary to the classroom. He left the bench in February 2022 and now serves as a senior contributing analyst for Stockton University’s William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy. His background stretches from Cuba, where he spent the first 14 years of his life, to Spain, where he lived for two and a half years after fleeing in 1971, and then to the United States, where he moved in 1974.

He attended Rowan University and Rutgers Law School Camden, was sworn into the New Jersey Bar in 1981, and became the first Hispanic judge assigned to Cumberland County in 2002. Trellis says he was appointed by former Gov. Jim McGreevey, reappointed for tenure in 2009 and named New Jersey’s first Hispanic assignment judge in 2011. It also says he presided over Cumberland County’s first same-sex marriage in 2007. For Petway students, that history turned a classroom visit into an early lesson in how local institutions are built by people whose careers can open doors for the next generation.