The Lakewood Vaad today sent a letter of support to the Lakewood School District amid its budget crisis.
Dear Colleagues,
It is with great regret that we learn about the crisis of the Lakewood School District’s budget situation, which anticipates a $30 million plus deficit for the 2018-19 school year.
This is an outrageous situation, causing untold anxiety to Lakewood’s children, teachers and indeed the Lakewood community as a whole.
Teachers deserve to know that that they will not be abruptly laid off.
Parents and students need to know that can expect that their children will be transported to their respective schools safely and efficiently, as required by State law.
Special Ed students deserve what is legally and morally their right.
Schoolchildren deserve the full gamut of athletic and extra-curricular activities to afford them a robust and healthy academic environment.
Governor Murphy! We met with you and you expressed genuine empathy to our dire situation. Please take bold action and fix our situation once and for all. Enough with the Band-Aids!
For years, the Lakewood Vaad, representing the majority of Lakewood’s residents, as well as the organized Orthodox Jewish community, has taken a leading role to secure proper State funding for our school district – which we all know is unique in all of New Jersey.
Along with our legislators, Township officials and Board of Education members we have pleaded, cajoled, requested, demanded and begged for a real fix. Our children have demonstrated in Trenton and our teachers have absorbed much pain and personal expense to make Lakewood’s schools work.
It is now – finally – acknowledged that the current funding formulas simply do not work – as they ignore 80% of the children of Lakewood. These 30,000 students are justly entitled to many mandated services, as are all other children. Yet they are ghosts and statistically invisible.
No other district has this glaring discrepancy that causes such severe yearly and systemic budget deficits and well as real pain to our students, parents and teachers.
The Lakewood taxpayer and the Lakewood Municipality have done more than their fair share to assist with shouldering this burden and are simply tapped out.
Governor and State Education Department: Please step up to the plate and hit a home run for us!
Sincerely,
Rabbi Moshe Zev Weisberg
The Lakewood Vaad
Wow! Realy well written, hope they do something in Trenton
Alex,
Trenton? Do something?
Those 2 don’t go together!
My wife is a school teacher in Lakewood High School you have no idea how much we spend out of our pockets to make sure the kids have pencils papers other stuff well it’s not fair on the one hand we believe we have to do this just please take into account that people pay money out of their own Pockets to help the kids learn in this town
Why hasn’t someone give to court over the formula. If the victims were black they’d be suing because it unfairly targets minorities and some sympathetic judge would rule in their favor. Why are we afraid to go public with this issue?
Because a free education is given to all secular students that is the law in United States private schools are funded by private funds and I don’t understand how come it cost $100,000 to educate a child of special needs when we turn that child over to a private entity for education it seems like a lot of money