The school bus problem in Lakewood is as follows there is 24,000 yeshiva students who cost the district $20 million but the state only pays for the 8,000 public school student @ 14000.00 per public school student for a total $112 million. Every student living within 2.5 miles from the school is entitled to bus service according to state law.
The monitor in order to cut yeshiva school busing threaten to have co-ed school busing and the yeshivas walked out.
The problem with implementing co-ed yeshiva busing is as follows:
A) The bus routes are design by the schools and each school is only one sex so the district would have take a boys school and a girls school and mix them together. Assuming 50 kids to a bus that’s 480 bus routes that he has to do by Aug or at least Sept..
B) Unless most of the buses are half empty he is not going to get much saving.
C) Even if there is savings by combining students from more then one school why not combine students of two schools of the same sex.
D) If he goes through with his threat of co-ed busing. He will have to pay $20 million for busing that nobody will use while at the same time explaining to a judge why the state IS NOT VIOLATING THE YESHIVA STUDENT CIVIL RIGHTS. Also if the district does not provide busing they are suppose to pay $884.00 per student for the 2015-2016 school year for 24,000 all yeshiva student that comes to $ 21,260.00 at 16,000 those who live outside the 2.5 miles it come to $14,144,000.00.
E) On top of the district and or the state being liable for $14 – 21 million dollars the states ability to take over a school district will also be in jeopardy.
The only cut the monitor can take is courtesy busing which will effect about 8,000 yeshiva and 4,000 public school students for a saving of about $6 million this year. The only problems are:
A) How many yeshiva students will transfer to schools 2.5 miles
away and become state mandated?
B) How will the cancellation of courtesy busing effect public school attendance. Each day a student is absence it cost the district $63.63 and so they will have to encourage the students to walk the 2.5 miles in all types of weather.
The only way is to have school bus funding for private schools separate from public school funding