[SEE AGREEMENT EARLIER] Today Lakewood Mayor Isaac Akerman, members of the Lakewood Board of Education, and district and state officials signed an agreement to restore busing for public and private school students. According to the agreement, all regular pupils, grades K- 12 with mileage under a half-mile from school will not receive busing, the same arrangement as last year. All pupils, grade K-12 who would have to travel more than a half-mile to school will be bussed.
Mayor Akerman said, “This is a great thing for Lakewood that we could resolve this issue. If there were no agreement, it would be very taxing on the township because of the safety and traffic issues it would create, not to mention the confusion. We are trying to go in the other direction by taking traffic off the roads, keeping our children safe, and preventing the expense of hiring crossing guards. Of course, the safety of our children is our number one priority.
“I am grateful to Committeeman Lichtenstein, the schools, the district, Aaron Kotler of BMG, the Senior Action Group, Mike Azzara, and everyone who worked to make this happen.”
Isaac Zlatkin, Lakewood board of education member and former president, said, “After many months of being consumed with trying to find any possible way to ensure that the children of Lakewood will be provided with courtesy busing, the Board is relieved that an agreement has been finally reached. Like with last year’s agreement, the heroes in the deal that was struck are the nonpublic schools who are making a difficult and costly adjustment to their schedules in order that all children of Lakewood will be provided with courtesy transportation to and from school.”
Laura Winters, Superintendent of the Lakewood Schools, expressed her satisfaction with the agreement. She said, “I am both excited and proud that the district, nonpublic school administrators, state and township officials, along with the community leaders were able to come together to resolve the courtesy busing issue. The students of Lakewood deserve the best, and were the focus of all discussions. Working together, the educational and safety goals of all communities have been met, with a respect that should be commended by all.”
Township Committeeman Meir Lichtenstein said, “Now that the busing issue has been resolved for this year, we must work diligently to plan for the future of our vibrant, growing town. I am happy to report that discussions have begun in this regard.”
Zlatkin agreed. He said, “At this point, everyone recognizes that the nonpublic schools exhausted all of the operational efficiencies possible in order to make this deal work; therefore, because we will inevitably be in the same predicament next year given our growing community, it is not too early to start directing our attention to securing additional funding from the State which finally accounts for the fact that Lakewood is a unique and rapidly growing community.
“I together with other board members have had discussions with State Monitor Azzara, and I am pleased that he has committed to go to Trenton and attend budget committee meetings to raise concern about the finances of Lakewood and our dire need for additional State aid.”
[TLS]
thank you!!!
why are ther terms of the agreement being concealed? who is coming up with the money? what sacrifices will the schools need to make this year? Will we need to sacrifice our first born for this deal?
Are the busses segregated by gender?
Your scarfice will be a loss of 30 minutes with your son, and a gain of 30 minutes with your daughter.
To #3
The buses are not segregated by gender. The schools are either boys schools or girls schools. Each school is in its own building. Each school has its own bus routes. Therefore, boys going to boys schools will only have boys on the bus and the same goes for girls.
Where is the 8 Million coming from?? Seems no one wants to say!!! But we did save the cost of hiring crossing guards.
I hope the mosdos where the kids are getting to school by 8:30 will have an ealier dismissmal the kids are leaving their houses before 8AM and geting home after 5PM.
The 8 million was never a real mumber just a broad guess. They claim that the tiering will save 5 million ,the state is deferrung 2 million in certain payments it is owed by the board of ed and only if really needed ,the twp will give 900,000. That adds up to about 8 million
I thought that the staggered start times were abolished. i noticed in the parent handbook of bais faiga that the start time was listed at 9am and not later.
does anyone know?
The sacrifice for the parents IMHO is the Friday schedule! How are 2 parent working families supposed to work Fridays with the girls out of the house 2.5 hours? Add in a 30 minute commute and essentially you can work 1.5 hours on a Friday.