Lakewood, NJ – Lakewood Board of Education President Carl Fink told board members Monday night that the public school district is broke due to transportation costs incurred from an unanticipated massive influx of private school children, and will have to turn to the county and state for help.
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APP.com (http://on.app.com/GzLEQN) reports that Fink said the town is about $4M short in transportation and special education costs after receiving 5,700 new private school kids this year, almost double what was anticipated.
Fink said trends show that an additional 2,000 private school kids will be added by June.
Fink said the district is currently providing transportation to over 30,000 children attending 103 different schools, and that the board was not going to be able to certify that it has available funding for costs, as required by law.
Driving up costs is the state law which allows private school children services like special education and transportation, combined with zoning laws which provide no restrictions on where schools are located or what time they dismiss their students.
In the past ten years private schools requiring transportation services have sprung up anywhere a handful of students and a teacher can assemble, including residential homes and industrial parks.
According to transportation officials, efforts to coordinate dismissal times among private schools have proven fruitless, and they are left having to pick up the children sporadically, causing excessive wasted spending.
Plus they mostly low income so they don’t pay tax to pay for their needs.
Same as East Ramapo. Shanda
Well having all yideshe kids in public school will be cheaper for them voos hacken zei a cheinik they only have to pay transportation which if this kids would of been in P School would anyways have to pay
That’s because the price the government is paying is about 6-7 times the actual cost.
Schools are taking the government on a ride and not even compensating parents fairly. The government should rather give these grants directly to the parents so they can coordinate transpiration themselves.
Denying transportation grants all together is unfair, after all parents save the government millions by paying for private schools.
take the ILLEGALS out and send them to Washington DC
Simple Solution;
Walk more!
When I grew up in Brooklyn we walked a few blocks to the school bus stop. (The priveleged who were able to pay for private transportataion got house stops) Today in Lakewood everyone needs a corner stop. Buses should not shelp around inside developments. The end of the development should suffice.
This NY parent has trouble understanding what is going on.
Is the issue that there are more kids? What would they do if these kids were in Public School?
Is the issue Special Ed? I am sure the kids are not more prevalent than before.
Is the issue too many frum therapists creating demand for services not really needed?
If all the families are paying taxes and not using the public schools, just the busses- how is there no money??? Something is very wrong!!!
Also the special Ed is making millions and millions every year. Time to get better Rates. There is no way to justify one school to get paid 10+ million a year for 100 kids. Yes I know they do amazing work- just not legit to milk the system like this.
A few practical solutions:
1) Eliminate state funded bus service to private schools (keep only for special needs children)
2) Ask private school parents to subsidize (their own) bus service.
3) Provide tax incentives for parents who carpool/bus their own children to school.
4) Form a private bus company catering to private (religious) schools.
5) Raise state taxes specifically to provide bus service to all school children.
6) Raise property taxes specifically to provide buses for all school children.
7) Allocate the money saved by the state as a result of private school students and put it towards a bus service fund.
8) Have each private school (or small groups of schools) hire their own bus service.
There are some cities in which Religious private schools do NOT have state sponsored bus service, rather parents band together and carpool their kids to school. I believe both Los Angeles and Baltimore do NOT have state sponsored bus service for private schools…
Where is all the real estate tax revenue going to? Just from my home and business alone they are getting 145 K per year and I don’t send to public school! In addition, I pay for my own commercial garbage collection. This article is intended to foment ill feeling against our community to no end!
We need to register all of our children in Public schools, Brooklyn, Queens and upstate and lets see how they will provide the classrooms the buildimgs, teachers etc. We are entitled for thesr services
The problem is very simple. Real Estate taxes pay for public school costs. If there are many, many families who rent, who are on section 8 who do not pay real estate taxes, well, then the money is not there to pay for the transportation of the kids.
Remember, Lakewood is a relatively poor community with alot of homeowners, but with many more renters (who do not need to pay real estate taxes)
In our community, the yeshivas are required to co-ordinate dismissal times so there is little lag time between runs, This saves alot of money.
What makes them think that Private school kids are somewhat less entitled to this benefit, how many of their parents are paying school tax.
For any claims of inefficiency, if have a solution. Give a voucher for every private school student, so let the private schools handle it, Oh, the unions doesn’t let, whine to them, not about the private school children.
Another option is to give the parents vouchers or tax credit toward busing and transportation.
Did you know that during the NYC school bus strike, the City admitted that the cost of busing per student was $7000 a year. That’s right $ 7000 !!!. If you gave parents half that money I’m sure they could find a way to transport their kids to school.
It is no wonder, that the public school system runs a deficit. Property taxes are supposed to cover public school costs (so they say), yet $7000 alone (per child) is the cost of ‘Busing’ them alone, what about teachers? supplies? utilities etc?
What a racket !!
Only give bus transportation to accredited schools- problem solved.
All of the exempt organizations not paying their share of taxes is the problem. It’s not peanuts, it must be about 5 million dollars a year or more. When the will feel the pinch (the exempts) they will take their hands out of our pockets. What a chilul hashem
To # 10
“1) Eliminate state funded bus service to private schools (keep only for special needs children)
2) Ask private school parents to subsidize (their own) bus service.”
Why don’t you give all private schools free busing since the government doesn’t have to pay for their schools,
And let all all public school parents pay for their busing since they get free schools?
He clearly says the reason they are short is because they under estimated how many new kids will be enrolled. Not one of the 30 intelligent commentors before me addressed that problem.
I heard about the frum community of South Bend, Indiana. The school has a voucher system through the state which covers 70-100% of the tuition. Imagine how much money you could save if you moved there. If i did not have my practice here, I would move there in a heartbeat. Oh, a 4 bedroom home on a tree lined block is $100k!
It is also mostly Mexicans and illegals from Central America that live in Lakewood who are the problem causing this.