Reply To: School Board Monitors in Lakewood & East Ramapo

ZD: The state can takeover the district and make all the financial decisions. The problem is that the state will be stuck with the bill which it doesn’t want to pay.

The key reason for this problem which even the school monitors agree is under funding by the state. The state doesn’t count the yeshiva students who make up the majority of the students in the district but the district must provide mandated service for ALL Students in the district. Also since the majority of the students are not public school students the district is considered RICH and so is funded on a lower level.

In Lakewood the state has a monitors with veto power and has been forced to cut the public school service drastically. The state doesn’t want to increase funding the district and since the monitor wants to cut services for the yeshiva students the voters reject budget increases, resulting in drastic cuts in public school services.

The only area that the Lakewood state monitor can cut is school busing. They were unsuccessful last year, will they be successful this year we will have to see. Also we will have to see if a reduction in school busing for public school students will it affect public school attendance as school funding is dependent on school attendance.