Reply To: School Board Monitors in Lakewood & East Ramapo

In Lakewood I thought the monitor made a deal to have courtesy busing if the town gave the school district $2.5 million. The board approved the deal but the monitor reserved the right to veto it. The board also authorized a lawyer to sue the state if the monitor overruled the deal on busing. With a week to go parents don’t know if they will have to take off work in order to take their children get to school.

The monitor also need to make a deal with the yeshivas if they want to keep the tiered bus system otherwise school busing will cost twice as much. Lets try to make the deal early not like last year when the deal wasn’t made until August by which time no one was interested in the bus routes and he had to pay top dollar.

A budget is due by next month, March so that the public can vote on it and get it to the county by May so that they can calculate the real estate taxes for the new year. Otherwise the budget will be the same as last year and the district will have the same or a larger deficit. There is a limit to how high the deficit can go before the district is bankrupt. If the district goes bankrupt the state will probably be liable as they underfunded the district.