Since the historic busing bill was signed about four weeks ago, a lot has been happening behind the scenes to get the system off the ground.
In order to incorporate this new system, a new legal entity was set up, called the Lakewood Student Transportation Authority (LSTA).
The schools in town were then tasked to sign a member agreement to join the consortium, thus allowing membership and partnership in the bill, and elected a board to oversee the LSTA.
The board was tasked with hiring a director, and Rabbi Avraham Krawiec was picked.
The director and board then initiated the incredible task of setting up the infrastructure to bus the thousands of students, and bidding for the routes began.
The bidding for the approximately 125 schools will continue for the next week to 10 days.
There will be a fee for the non-mandated children to have membership in the consortium. The price is $150 per year – $100 due the first day of school, and $50 due on January first.
“I am a parent like all of you,” said Rabbi Krawiec. “I understand the frustration this busing causes us in our daily routine. We are setting this up with a look to the future, but this system cannot be built in a few days or weeks.”
Adds Rabbi Krawiec, “This bill allows a tremendous opportunity for our Lakewood kids to be able get the most amount of students on a bus, but sadly, there aren’t enough buses to service our community. In addition, vendors have the ability to choose which routes make most sense for them.”
Which means, parents can expect a delay until it’s all sorted out and things get off the ground properly. Parent can expect an approximately two-week delay until it’s all sorted out.
“This bill is a community-wide initiative and will slowly be rolled out as we build this from scratch,” says Rabbi Krawiec. The key to making it a success, is “patience and an understanding of the long-term prospects this bill can bring to our community.”
Just so parents understand, the bill doesn’t provide funds for every non-mandated child to be picked up, “but rather allows funding to try to include as many non-mandated as possible via creative routing, less stops as well as a new mindset that the system of old doesn’t exist.”
“I respectfully ask that local and state officials that sponsored this bill see this bill as an example of a unified community banding together to make this alternative – which isn’t perfect – work,” says Rabbi Krawiec.
The long-term plan is to bring more vendors into the community, modernize the communication with the parents, and deal with issues such as Jackson and Toms River.
[TLS]
——————————
This content, and any other content on TLS, may not be republished or reproduced without prior permission from TLS.
Copying or reproducing our content is both against the law and against Halacha.
To inquire about using our content, including videos or photos, email us at [email protected]
Stay up to date via our news alerts, by sending ‘follow LakewoodScoop’ to the number ‘40404’ or via Twitter @LakewoodScoop
Got news? Email us at [email protected], text us 415-857-2667, tweet us @LakewoodScoop.
How do we know if we get mandated busing or not?
Perhaps the existing L bus routes from Westgate can be diverted between 7-9:30 to do Westgate to Oak St. It would cover a lot of schools and minimize a lot of traffic.
Thank you Rabbi Krawiec for taking on this challenging task wishing you lots of hatzlacha.
Just one point to mention, It would be expected that non mandated bussing should not be bidded out until all the mandated children are covered with bussing. Many of us drove our children the ENTIRE last year who were entitled to mandating bussing, but were told that no bus company wanted your route. This shouldn’t happen again. Getting “aid in ieu” doesn’t compensate the many many many hours we spent on the road in the morning and coming late to work.
Thanks so much in advance
why is Jackson and toms river an issue for us let them pay in its Lakewood’s tax dollars at work here they need to pay in
To huh:
My understanding is that Jackson township pays to Lakewood board of Ed to transport Jackson kids to Lakewood schools. Therefore, we should be getting normal stops as long as they can be reasonably accomodated into routes.
In some schools, there are enough kids in Jackson to take up a route on their own, why should they not be transported, while one town us the other? There is no need to assign us Lakewood stops because it’s impractical. Imagine your stop is 7 min drive away from your home. How are you supposed to drop off kids with different am stop times, and pick up kids from there when return times in the pm could take up a span of 1.5 hours?
Edit:
Reasonably incorporated into routes;
one town pays the other
@mo
The bus companies choose the bus routes that are profitable for them. If you live far from your child’s school and the route for your (mandated) child was not picked up by any company, there’s a good chance it won’t be picked up again and you’ll get aid in lieu again. It’s the economics- the bus companies are not mandated. The township is and if a bus company doesn’t pick it up, you get the money and there’s not much you or your school can do about it.
How can you get aid in lieu? I thought they took that top At for the ones that aren’t mandated.
The “L” bus is a private agency not run or controlled by the LBOE or Lakewood Twp. They are not controlled and can not be “diverted” to run school runs. Its there for one reason, to get people to town and work. School runs are the BOE Problem not the L bus
to #7 Belle,
That’s my point, they should package a few routes together when they bid it out to the bus companies so that will force the company to take all routes. If the companies don’t like the packages they can of course decline to bid and they therefore wont get the profitable routes either.
i thibk this is a great opportunuty for all of the children in lakewood. to all the haters, first get a little knowledge before you spew your garbage