FREE RIDES FOR SOME, $675 FOR OTHERS: Lakewood Restores Courtesy Busing for Public School Students While Yeshiva Families Must Pay

FREE RIDES FOR SOME, $675 FOR OTHERS: Lakewood Restores Courtesy Busing for Public School Students While Yeshiva Families Must Pay

Lakewood’s Board of Education has reinstated free courtesy busing for more than 300 public school students following protests by parents, even as thousands of families sending their children to yeshivos and private schools are being required to pay $675 per child for the same category of non-mandated transportation. The decision, approved unanimously in a 9-0 vote, commits approximately $245,000 in district funding to restore transportation for …

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Reuvain Borchardt A surprise vote restores courtesy busing for Lakewood’s public-school students while the state monitor’s denial for private-school students could face a legal challenge. The battle over busing nonmandated students has escalated yet again as a state fiscal monitor has allowed the Lakewood School District to provide courtesy busing for all public-school students while denying busing even to private-school students who have to cross hazardous roads on their walk to yeshivah. The drama unfolded before a standing-room-only crowd at a Board of Ed meeting the Wednesday before Sukkos. Over the course of more than four hours, irate public-school parents goaded the board into providing courtesy busing for their children—and the state monitor shocked just about everyone by allowing the vote to stand. It was the latest salvo in a clash brought on by the township’s recent financial woes but rooted in the school district’s long-standing funding crisis. The township’s budget shortfall meant it could no longer contribute the $1.4 million needed for courtesy busing for nonmandated public-school students or the $2.75 million used to subsidize busing for nonmandated private-school students. The loss of township funding left nonmandated yeshivah families facing a $675 charge for a seat on an LSTA bus and initially left nonmandated public-school students without district-provided transportation. But when the Board of Ed voted in August to end courtesy busing for public-school students, state monitor Louise Davis said transportation would continue for those whose walk to school required crossing one of 30 roads the Lakewood Police Department had deemed hazardous. Eighty percent of the district’s 1,475 nonmandated public-school students qualified under this exception. How would the cash-strapped district pay for the exception? Through another state loan, adding to the hundreds of millions of dollars it already owes the state and has no hope of repaying. This debt to the state is the reason Trenton installed the fiscal monitor in the first place. The district blames its large deficits on a state education-funding formula that is largely based on a district’s public-school population although some 90 percent of Lakewood’s school population attends yeshivos. After Davis approved hazardous-route busing for nonmandated public-school students, the Board of Ed held a special meeting on September 9 to extend the same benefit to private-school students. (Ninety-eight percent of Lakewood’s 12,952 nonmandated private-school students have to cross a hazardous road to get to school.) Davis placed the vote under advisement, holding it up until she issued a final decision in writing. Her ruling came on the afternoon of the next regularly scheduled Board of Ed meeting, held Wednesday, September 23. As expected, she denied the hazardous busing for private-school students, based on budgetary concerns. She noted that the resolution made the proposed $14.9 million service subject to “availability of funds.” “There is no available funding,” Davis wrote, noting that the Board of Ed had already requested a state loan of over $132 million for this school year and that this $14.9 million would mean an additional loan. Her letter also argued that the case law says the government is not required to provide the same levels of busing to private schools as it does to public schools. Davis’s denial brought a handful of politicians and activists from the frum community to that evening’s board meeting. But hundreds of public-school parents, students, and educators also packed the house to voice their opposition to the loss of busing for the 302 nonmandated students whose walking routes did not qualify as hazardous (as well as to support the separate issue of rehiring paraprofessionals, who were also cut due to budget concerns). Students and parents lined up to protest the cuts, with many older speakers delivering their remarks in Spanish through a translator. Just 23 minutes into public comment, the board abruptly voted to restore courtesy busing for all nonmandated public-school students. The motion passed unanimously. Many eyes turned to Davis, expecting her to take this vote under advisement as she had with so many others. But she did not. And so courtesy busing was restored to public-school students. The vote appeared to register with few in the crowd. Speakers continued protesting the loss of busing, prompting exasperated board members to explain that it had just been restored. The board then returned to the subject of hazardous-route busing for private-school students, approving a revised resolution that removed the condition that it was subject to “availability of funds.” In a separate vote, it authorized borrowing the $14.9 million needed to pay for the service. Davis put these resolutions under advisement, and she is expected to deny them whenever she issues her written ruling. In an interview with The Voice after the meeting, Board President Moshe Bender said members had expected Davis to block the public-school resolution. That would have allowed them to show the angry parents that the board was on their side and that Davis was the one responsible for blocking their children’s busing. “She surprised us when she allowed the resolution to stand, but we really had nothing to lose either way,” Bender said. “Now that she allowed the resolution to pass, it’s a win for us because it shows how she is willing to give the public-school students courtesy busing—which is like a treat, which no one is legally entitled to—while denying nonpublic-school students busing even if they have a hazardous route to school.” During the meeting, board member Joel Kleinman challenged Davis over the case law underlying her decision. He argued that the 2006 case cited in her letter does not apply to the issue at hand and that two subsequent cases indicate she could not deny private-school students a transportation service provided to their public-school counterparts. Davis said she was unfamiliar with those cases and had received the citation from her legal adviser. Yeshivah parents are expected to file suit challenging Davis’s rulings, setting the stage for a legal battle over whether public- and private-school students must be treated equally when it comes to transportation.