Reply To: School Board Monitors in Lakewood & East Ramapo

It seems the Lakewood school monitor cancelled school busing for over 700 yeshiva students 2 days ago. (“14 School Bus routes have been discontinued”) There was suppose to be a BOE meeting about this yesterday but it was cancelled. Now it’s being reported that the district will be using it own buses to transport these children, as reported in the APP.

This is pay back for not passing the $6.2 million referendum and the first salvo in budget negotiations for the new school year. I think what happened is that they (Lakewood) threaten to sue the state as there was suppose to be a deal for this year and the state got the monitor to back down. I think the monitor will deny some more yeshiva student busing next year even though the state will have to reimburse the parents $900.00 per student, because it cost the parents more to arrange for private transportation.