Lakewood will be losing courtesy busing this coming school year unless the town votes on a multimillion dollar referendum, sources close to the matter confirm to TLS.
The announcement was made by the State Monitor Michael Azzara, who claims that the Board of Education would need to eliminate the busing due to a flat budget and other losses.
The only way to reinstate the busing, Azarra said, would be to present a $5.8 million referendum to voters, sources told TLS.
However, that option, even if approved, would only reinstate busing if voted and approved by May, 2015. Should the referendum be delayed until November elections, tens of thousand of Lakewood’s private school students would need to begin the year without courtesy busing.
“The situation is worse than last year,” a source told TLS, referring to last year’s fiasco which was saved by a last-minute deal.
Lakewood Askonim were notified of the shocking announcement on Friday afternoon, and will be tackling the issue in hopes of finding a solution.
[TLS]
How much would it cost for private busing per student?
The Board of Education is an educational agency not a transportation company.
The bigger question is, how much would it cost to educate 50,000 children this coming year? The law of “no child left behind” would apply if all private school children registered in the public school system for coming year.
Blah. Blah. Blah. There will be bussing. We all know it.
Your taxes would go up by quite a bit..if you put an influx of 50k children into the school system.
not only private school kids would lose bussing. public school kids would too. article is misleading.
they don’t have money for courtesy bussing, but they do have $30,000,000 to renovate public schools?
David Drukaroff, If it is an educational agency it’s doing a very poor job just look around and see what is going on in the Lakewood schools. Are you blind? The six year olds in the private schools are more educated then the high schoolers in the public school system
those who got rid of Inzelbuch comitted a travesty. bring inzelbuch back and get rid of azzara.
@concerned citizen You could disagree with Mr. Drukaroff without insulting all the high school students in our public schools. Many are intelligent, hard working students, working on their education who will go on to college and careers. It is wrong to insult en masse an entire community of young people, most of whose members you have never met.
Bring Michael Inselbauch back!
Get rid of Hellen Tobia!!
Just make sure all your kids have exact change for that new shuttle bus when your kids load up.
If everyone in Lakewood paid taxes, I don’t think this would be an issue!
We’re being taxed over THIRTY MILLION dollars for fancy new luxury state of the art air conditioning systems for all the schools, but not enough for safety busing!? Something is very wrong!!
This article is very misleading. “Tens of thousands of private school students will go without bussing” What about the public school students? Now the private school students are the one’s who are getting the short end of the stick. The BOE made it a point to have a whole big presentation on how that public school used courtesy bussing more than public school students and how the public schools will be affected more than the private schools. Which is it?
I’m with comments numbers 4, 10, and 14. Lol about 14.
to #16 Common Decency- the public schools are not getting state of the art air, they are fixing the heating systems and in some place air, there are no windows in some of the classrooms using air. the roof replacement for the schools is included in that money
there certainly isn’t any luxury in any of the public schools!
The Parents of the Non-Public school students should pay for their transportation cost. When I sent my children to private school I paid it in my tuition That’s what should be done. If you can afford to send your children to Non Public school paid for the transportation yourself solves all the problems. The BOE is for Education not transportation.