Reply To: School Board Monitors in Lakewood & East Ramapo

Joseph: Your idea about forcing is a good idea about forcing the bus drivers to wait until the school opens. The only problem with that is that if the school monitor is willing to break an agreement he already made what makes you think he cares if the yeshiva students are left unsupervised.The bus driver may say “I thought someone was there” and so is not legally responsible. Also the dedicated teachers will be there to insure nothing happens to the students. In East Ramapo there was a school bus driver who kicked yeshiva students off his bus on a busy highway miles from their home. Criminal charges were lodged against him. The bus drivers if they find the school closed will just bring them to the garage and it will be someone else’s job to get them to school. I don’t think that this is in the best interest of the student to be used them as pawns.

Your idea while good but what happens if a student gets hurt, while the bus driver maybe liable he doesn’t have the money to pay, the bus company may have insurance but they will say it the yeshivas fault for changing the starting time. Nobody thought that the monitor would back out of the courtesy bus deal mid year so no one prepared for this situation.

Even my idea of having all yeshiva students be mandated ie attend yeshiva that is over 2 miles from their home the monitor can still threaten co-ed buses. The yeshivas have to plan for that also having the starting and ending time different so that they can’t use the same bus.