Lakewood is unique. That’s the message professionals have been relaying to the District during the Board of Education meeting this evening. During the meeting, the Board heard from multiple different transportation directors and others how Lakewood is like no other district in the Country.
Joining the meeting were many members of the BOE transportation team, and two of the past transportation directors.
The transportation team reviewed a power point outlining the details of the budgeted transportation costs for the coming year.
“One serious concern, was the fact that the state has a mandate on students that the BOE needs to provide transportation for, yet the state only is funding based off the numbers of approximately 6,000 public school children when the mandated numbers come from the pool of the approx 36,000 students in Lakewood,” a Board official said.
During the lengthy meeting of reviewing numbers, many questions came up regarding the accuracy of the presentation.
The State monitor stated that the BOE should not buy any more buses.
Bard member, Isaac Zlatkin, questioned, that if we can’t get a real analysis of the transportation costs, how can we say not to buy more buses, maybe we are saving so much money by doing it in house that we should really be buying more buses.
The lack of answers to the many questions lead the board to make a motion to hire an independent contractor to come and look over the budget and past years costs to be able to asses the situation for its accuracy and provide solutions on how to save money.
The motion was put to vote twice, yet each time the state monitor vetoed the motions stating his authority as state monitor allowed him to veto bringing in an independent contractor to look over the numbers and issues.
Going forward, he states that he will work with the board’s business administrator, to review all costs and provide for the public an updated and accurate budget.
Officials have continuously stated that Lakewood needs to be recognized by the State as a unique district, and should therefore – just like Atlantic City – become a ‘carve-out’ district, to receive million of dollars from the State.
At the start of the meeting, the Board held a moment of silence for the victims of the Florida massacre.
None of you have a clue as to what needs to happen and what is happening.
@loneranger What are you talking about?? We all know that this district does NOT have a spending problem, rather it’s as clear as day that there is a revenue problem which CAN be fixed by the state fixing the funding formula, which grossly underfunds the Lakewood district. This is neither the fault of the district nor the fault of the private school parents who save the taxpayers hundreds of millions a yr by sending to private school. It’s just a plain old funding issue. Sorry to all those who would like to blame the Orthodox for all of the world’s problems, but the reality is just different, despite how much it hurts you that the Orthodox aren’t responsible for this problem. Facts are stubborn things. Sorry
The School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) counts all mandated transportation students both public and nonpublic students. It does not exclude nonpublic students like other state aid calculations. The problem is the formula has been frozen for the last decade, a period of astronomical growth in nonpublic schools. Based on information reports from the NJDOE, on a fully funded SFRA, Lakewood’s Transportation Aid would increase by $12 million. Additionally, the state reimburses the district for nonpublic transportation costs per student exceeding $710. This aid source is not frozen. The district must provide the LSTA, $1,000 per mandated nonpublic school student. The district will receive almost $6 million this year in nonpublic transportation reimbursements.