TLS reached out to the LSTA for information regarding this year’s school busing.

Here’s what you need to know:

The LSTA runs busing Monday thru Friday beginning on September 1st, 2022 and ending on June 30th, 2023. Any other days (including all Sunday busing) are serviced directly between the schools and bus vendors.

“We have finalized many routes and the drivers will be practicing their routes before the year starts,” says Rabbi Krawiec. “We will continue to work on the remaining routes. Please bear in mind, that there is a continuing severe driver shortage throughout the United States and we here locally are experiencing the same issue. The labor shortage is impacting our vendors and their ability to service us. This is results in a higher numbers of routes that weren’t yet picked up. We are hopeful that more drivers will return to work in the near future and which would result in additional routes being picked up. The process to have more routes covered continues well past the start of the school year.”

“As we have done in past years, there will be no change-requests or move requests processed for the first four weeks of school. This policy will be enforced across the board in order to allow the vendors to be able to service the routes in a safe and efficient manner. We understand that some of the stops or routes may need to be altered and improved but ask all parents to allow the routes to settle in for four weeks before requesting any changes.”

For the first week of school, all primary children MUST have a name tag with address  pinned to their uniforms (clothing) both to and from school. Failure to do so, may result in your child not being allowed on the bus. Primary parents must meet their children at their drop off locations daily.

Please note, that some children may have different AM and PM stops – so it’s important to look closely at both AM and PM bus passes to confirm stop locations.

“Special thanks to the individuals that take care of transportation in each school,” said Rabbi Krawiec. “Through your efforts, we were able to begin bidding early and have access to a large number of buses even with today’s driver shortages. There are close to 50,000 students in the immediate Lakewood vicinity!”

Earlier this year, the LSTA rolled out an alert notification system.

The notification system gives parents the option to choose regarding which schools they would like to receive alerts for, by clicking on the schools in the list.

Parents can choose whether to receive the alerts via Text or Email.

The LSTA last year also rolled out a safety hotline, as well as a number parent can text or call with their concerns the number is 732-707-7287. Parents can also email [email protected] with their concerns.