Dear Matzav Inbox,
There comes a point when a community is entitled to ask a question that nobody in government wants to hear.
Is Lakewood, NJ being punished?
I understand how serious that question is. I understand that accusing an elected official of political retribution is not something to toss around casually. I also understand that budgets are complicated, that federal cuts have consequences, that Trenton has its own fiscal problems, and that every government official can produce a spreadsheet explaining why this dollar disappeared and that program had to be reduced.
But there is also something called looking at what is happening in front of your eyes.
And what is happening to Lakewood right now is outrageous.
Families throughout the Lakewood region learned yesterday that the cost of non-mandated busing through the Lakewood Student Transportation Authority is exploding from $385 per child to $945 for the coming school year. It is an additional $560 per child, announced practically on the doorstep of the new school year.
Think about what that means in Lakewood.
We are not talking about a town where the typical family has one child who needs transportation to school. A family with four children affected by the increase is suddenly looking at $3,780 for busing. Five children? $4,725. Six? $5,670.
For a bus to get your children to school.
And this is happening in a community where families are already being squeezed from every direction.
So naturally, people want to know: How did we get here?
The answer begins well before the $945 bill landed in parents’ laps.
Lakewood has an educational structure unlike virtually any other municipality in New Jersey. Tens of thousands of children attend nonpublic schools, creating transportation obligations and other expenses that simply do not fit neatly into a state school-funding formula designed around conventional public-school districts. This isn’t some newly invented Lakewood talking point. The problem has been litigated for years, and an appellate court previously found merit in Lakewood’s contention that its unusual financial circumstances, including the enormous costs associated with transporting nonpublic-school children and providing special-education services, were not adequately addressed by the state’s system.
And now, instead of fixing the problem, government has tightened the vise.
The Sherrill administration came into office confronting a state budget gap and proposed billions of dollars in spending reductions. The governor’s first budget ultimately totaled more than $60 billion, and New Jersey nevertheless retained billions of dollars in reserves.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s federal reductions have placed additional pressure on New Jersey and its municipalities. Governor Sherrill herself has repeatedly complained about the impact of federal cuts on the state.
Fine.
Blame Washington where Washington deserves blame. If President Trump’s administration cut money that Lakewood relied upon, say so. Republican dollars aren’t greener than Democratic dollars. A cut is a cut, and Lakewood families don’t care whether the hand reaching into their pockets has an R or a D attached to it.
But then comes the part that is so difficult to swallow.
Lakewood cannot simply make up the shortfall by raising whatever revenue it needs. New Jersey has imposed restrictions on local property-tax levy increases. The state controls the rules, controls the funding structure and, in Lakewood’s case, has exercised extraordinary oversight over the school district.
In other words, government can reduce the money coming in, limit the ability to replace it locally, and then stand back when services have to be eliminated.
What exactly did everyone think was going to happen?
Money doesn’t materialize because somebody in Trenton uses the words “fiscal responsibility.”
When the dollars disappear and Lakewood cannot replace them, something has to go.
And this time, it was the buses.
The elimination of non-mandated transportation funding has pushed the burden directly onto parents, resulting in the astonishing $945-per-child charge that families are now staring at. According to reporting surrounding the current crisis, approximately $2.7 million had been associated with the busing funding at issue.
And that brings us back to Governor Mikie Sherrill.
Governor, Lakewood remembers Election Day. You certainly do, too.
Lakewood went overwhelmingly for Jack Ciattarelli.
This wasn’t exactly a secret ballot collectively. The Orthodox community’s political leadership made a unified push for Ciattarelli, and contemporary election coverage specifically identified Lakewood as a major source of Republican strength. Even in analyzing congressional-district results after the election, the New Jersey Globe noted that Lakewood had voted overwhelmingly for Ciattarelli.
Maybe Lakewood made the wrong choice. Maybe it made the right choice. That’s democracy. People vote. Sometimes they vote for you. Sometimes they don’t. You won anyway. Congratulations.
But once the election is over, you become governor of all of New Jersey.
That includes Newark. That includes Jersey City. That includes Montclair. And yes, Governor Sherrill, it includes Lakewood.
Even Lakewood. Especially Lakewood.
This is where the optics become impossible to ignore.
A community votes overwhelmingly against the governor. Months later, that same community finds itself facing a devastating financial squeeze involving one of its most basic daily needs. State funding disappears. Local revenue options are constrained. Non-mandated transportation gets sacrificed. And suddenly ordinary parents are handed a bill of $945 per child.
Are we supposed to pretend nobody is going to connect those dots?
Now, can I prove that Governor Sherrill sat in an office somewhere and said, “Lakewood voted against me, so take away their money”? No.
And unless somebody produces evidence of that, nobody should claim that as an established fact.
But politics is also about trust. Government officials have an obligation not merely to avoid retaliation, but to govern in a manner that does not reasonably leave communities wondering whether retaliation is exactly what they are experiencing.
Right now, many Lakewood families have every reason to wonder. Because from where they are sitting, this sure feels like revenge. And if it isn’t revenge, Governor Sherrill has a wonderful opportunity to prove it.
Restore the funding. Fix the problem.
Call in the people who understand Lakewood’s unique school transportation system and figure out how to prevent thousands of working families from absorbing a massive, last-minute increase.
Don’t give us a speech. Don’t tell us about federal cuts. Don’t explain that the formula is complicated. We know it’s complicated. Governing is complicated. That’s why we have a governor.
What is particularly galling is that the state knows Lakewood is different. Everyone knows it. Lakewood isn’t hiding 30,000-plus nonpublic-school children in somebody’s basement. The demographic reality of this town has been discussed in Trenton for years. The transportation problem has been discussed for years. The funding problem has been litigated for years.
And yet somehow every few years Lakewood arrives at another crisis and everybody acts surprised.
How many times can you watch the same movie and still gasp at the ending?
There is another point that needs to be said plainly. Busing in Lakewood is not some luxury perk. Anyone who lives here understands what putting thousands more children into private vehicles twice a day would mean.
Have you driven on Route 9? Have you tried Cross Street at school arrival time? Have you been on County Line Road, New Hampshire Avenue, Cedar Bridge Avenue or Oak Street when schools are letting out?
School transportation in Lakewood is not merely an educational convenience. It is part of the functioning infrastructure of one of New Jersey’s largest and fastest-growing communities.
Take children off buses and you don’t make the transportation need disappear. You replace buses with cars. Lots and lots and lots of cars.
Parents still have jobs. Children still have to get to school. Schools still open in the morning. So now mothers and fathers who cannot afford another several thousand dollars annually will have to start arranging carpools, leaving work, juggling schedules and putting additional vehicles onto roads that are already bursting.
Who wins? The children don’t. The parents don’t. The schools don’t. Motorists don’t. Lakewood doesn’t. And New Jersey doesn’t.
Which is why the response from Trenton cannot simply be: Sorry, that’s the budget.
Governor Sherrill campaigned on affordability. That was one of the central themes of her campaign and of the Democratic message that carried New Jersey in 2025. Well, Governor, here is affordability. It isn’t a slogan. It is a father sitting at his kitchen table calculating $945 times four. It is a mother wondering whether she should pay the transportation bill or try to construct a carpool for children attending different schools at different times. It is a family already paying tuition, property taxes, food bills, insurance and every other expense of raising children in New Jersey being informed, at the end of August, that another several thousand dollars is now their problem. That is affordability.
And there is something else.
Lakewood pays taxes too. Sometimes one gets the impression that because so many Lakewood children attend yeshivos, the families raising those children somehow exist outside the ordinary compact between taxpayers and government. They don’t. Their parents pay property taxes. They pay sales taxes. They pay income taxes. They pay gasoline taxes. They own businesses. They employ people. They contribute enormously to the economy of Ocean County and New Jersey.
Their children count.
A child does not become less deserving of a functioning transportation system because his parents send him to a yeshiva. And a family does not forfeit its right to fair treatment from Trenton because it pulled the lever for Jack Ciattarelli.
That, ultimately, is the issue.
Not Jack. Not Trump. Not Republicans. Not Democrats. Fairness.
If the state government’s position is that these reductions were entirely fiscal, entirely neutral and entirely unrelated to Lakewood’s politics, then show Lakewood.
Don’t demand that the community prove retaliation. Prove that it wasn’t.
Explain why these dollars had to disappear. Explain what alternatives were examined. Explain why a community whose transportation situation is unlike anywhere else in the state should absorb this blow. Explain why Trenton cannot find roughly $2.7 million for transportation in a state budget exceeding $60 billion.
And then fix it.
Because $2.7 million sounds enormous around a kitchen table. In a $60.74 billion state budget, it is approximately four one-thousandths of one percent. Four one-thousandths of one percent.
You’re telling us the State of New Jersey cannot figure this out? Please.
Lakewood should also learn something from this. We love politics when politics loves us. We take pictures with candidates. We announce endorsements. We talk about voting blocs and influence and access and who can deliver whom. Wonderful.
But political influence is not measured by how many politicians appear at a pre-election event. It is measured the morning after the election. It is measured when your candidate loses. It is measured when the person you didn’t support controls the budget and your community needs $2.7 million. That is when you discover how much influence you actually have.
So where is everybody? Where are Lakewood’s elected officials? Where are the people who have relationships in Trenton? Where are the people who told us for years how important Lakewood has become politically?
This is the moment. Not three weeks before an election. Now.
Governor Sherrill, Lakewood didn’t vote for you. Yippie do. Shame on us, perhaps. Or perhaps not. But you are our governor anyway. That’s how America works. And if what is happening here truly has nothing whatsoever to do with politics, then there is a very simple way to demonstrate that.
Treat Lakewood like it voted for you. Find the money. Restore the transportation funding. Get the $945 burden off the backs of families who cannot afford it. And show the people of Lakewood that elections determine who governs us — not which communities deserve to be governed fairly.
Because if Trenton cannot do that, people are going to keep asking the question: Is this about the budget? Or is Lakewood being taught a lesson for Election Day?
Governor Sherrill, the next move is yours.
Avi Shapiro
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Maskim!