Reply To: Lakewood school board State monitor (and Five Towns)

ujew: That isn’t correct. The New Jersey law (passed in 1927 therearound) mandating school busing for private school children allows private schools the prerogative of deciding their own starting and ending hours.

The Lakewood yeshivas two months ago tentatively agreed to tier their hours, so that some yeshivas started 8:45, others at 9:15, etc., so that the BOE could reduce the number of buses needed and thus their transportation costs would be saving millions of dollars a year. (The same bus could do another round for a second yeshiva after dropping off the children at the first yeshiva.) The yeshivas understood the State would, in return for them voluntarily tiering their hours, continue providing courtesy busing (i.e. busing for children living close to the school.) As it turned out the government in the end did not agree to continue the courtesy busing. So a couple of weeks ago the yeshivas announced their tentative deal to tier their hours was off and all the schools would again be starting at 9:00 AM next year. (All this information I researched over the last couple of days.)

If the school monitor/board had the right to impose hours on the private schools, they could have just told the schools they have to start when they tell them to. But they can’t do that under the law.