Dear Matzav Inbox,
I can’t read another article on Matzav about the Lakewood bussing situation. It infuriates me and I’ll explain to the olam why.
Maybe it’s time for Lakewood to stop begging.
After this latest LSTA disaster, with families suddenly being told that non-mandated busing will cost $945 per child instead of $385, I keep coming back to one question: Does anyone in Trenton understand what Lakewood’s frum parents are saving the State of New Jersey every single year?
Maybe they need to be reminded.
According to the New Jersey Department of Education’s own review of the Lakewood school district, Lakewood has approximately 50,000 school-age children, with about 84% — roughly 42,000 children — attending nonpublic schools, most of them private religious schools. (If my numbers are slightly off, I apologize, but I believe that I’m in the ballpark.)
Think about that number for a minute.
More than 40,000 children in one town are being educated outside the public-school system. Their parents pay property taxes like everyone else. They pay state taxes like everyone else. But they don’t ask the government to provide their children with public-school classrooms, teachers, principals, textbooks, buildings and everything else that comes with educating a child.
And now we’re fighting over buses?
Maybe it’s time for every frum parent in Lakewood to register his or her children for public school. Seriously.
No more meetings. No more carefully worded letters explaining Lakewood’s “unique circumstances.” Just show up and register 40,000-plus children for public school and say: Here you go. You educate them.
Where exactly would they put them?
According to the New Jersey Department of Education, the average Budgetary Cost Per Pupil in New Jersey for the 2024-25 school year was $21,199. And that figure doesn’t even include transportation, school construction debt and certain other major expenses.
Do the math.
40,000 additional students multiplied by $21,199 comes to nearly $848 million a year.
$848 million a year!
And we’re fighting over $2.7 million? Peerim.
If you use the roughly 42,000 figure indicated by the state’s own Lakewood numbers, you’re approaching $900 million annually using that statewide per-pupil average.
And again, that $21,199 figure doesn’t even include transportation.
The state’s broader Total Spending Per Pupil figure, which does include transportation and a number of other expenses, is $29,978. I’m not suggesting that you can simply multiply that number by every private-school child and declare that Lakewood is “saving” the state that exact amount. Obviously, school funding and expenses are more complicated than that. But come on.
We’re talking about tens of thousands of children who would have to be accommodated somehow if their parents actually exercised their right to send them to public school. The financial and logistical cost would be staggering.
And what are Lakewood parents asking for? A ride to school. That’s what makes this so infuriating.
People love to say, “Well, in other cities, if you send your child to private school, you pay for transportation yourself.” Fine. Lakewood is not other cities.
Lakewood has tens of thousands of private-school children traveling every morning to scores upon scores of schools scattered across town. We have a road system that was never designed for anything remotely resembling our current population. Traffic is already unbearable. And Lakewood has nothing resembling an adequate public transportation system that would allow thousands of older children to get themselves to school without buses.
Those two problems — inadequate infrastructure and inadequate public transportation — are not the fault of parents.
In Lakewood, busing isn’t some cute little perk. It is part of what keeps the town functioning.
Imagine taking thousands of children off buses and putting them into thousands of additional cars every morning and afternoon. Anyone who has driven down Route 9 at 8:30 in the morning should understand why that is not a serious solution.
And meanwhile, the elephant in the room remains untouched: Lakewood’s private-school community is educating more than 40,000 children without asking the public-school system to actually educate them.
Nobody is asking New Jersey to pay the tuition.
Nobody is asking the state to pay the rebbeim.
Nobody is asking the state to pay for the teachers, menahelim, classrooms, school buildings or the electric bills.
We’re asking for buses.
The state should be looking at Lakewood and saying, “You mean tens of thousands of children are being educated privately and transportation is what we have to help with? Where do we sign?”
Instead, parents are being handed a bill for $945 per child.
Maybe the people making these decisions have become so accustomed to Lakewood parents sending their children to private schools that they have forgotten the alternative.
Perhaps they need to see it. Register the kids. Forty thousand of them.
Let the state explain where they should report on the first day of school. Let them find the classrooms. Let them find the buildings. Let them figure out the transportation. And let them figure out how to pay for it all.
The state has the luxury of never having to confront what Lakewood’s educational reality would cost if tens of thousands of families weren’t paying to educate their own children.
Perhaps it’s time that somebody in Trenton took out a calculator.
More than 40,000 children. More than $21,000 per public-school student under the state’s own average budgetary-cost figure.
And Lakewood is fighting over buses.
If New Jersey thinks courtesy busing is expensive, they should try the alternative.
It’s time, rabbosai, to teach them a lesson.
Who’s ready to enroll in public school along with my kids?
Sincerely,
A Fed-Up Lakewood Parent
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