Asbury Park Union President To Staff: Hang In There
January 30, 2024
LILLEY: NJEA President/Montclair Mayor Pleads the Fifth
January 31, 2024As Goes Lakewood, So Goes Jackson. Hat-Tip to Asbury Park.
Last year NJ Education Report predicted that, like Lakewood, other New Jersey school districts will face fiscal distress as the number of students attending Jewish Orthodox day schools increases. These increases in enrollment mean districts must pay more for transportation because non-public students are eligible for busing or, alternatively, “aid in lieu of transportation,” an annual payment to parents.
Case in point: Jackson Public Schools, where, according to the Asbury Park Press (paywalled), the number of students attending Lakewood yeshivas has grown “fivefold,” from less than 700 students in 2014 to more than 3,800 last year. As Lakewood runs out of housing, Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) families are moving not only to Jackson but to Brick, Howell, and Toms River.
And their kids, like all NJ private school students, are entitled to busing and security and textbooks and special education services.
How is this affecting Jackson?
In order to close the budget hole in this year’s budget, the district had to get a “massive” loan from the state for $11 million, not close to Lakewood’s “loan” of $50 million but moving in that direction. With that loan comes the requirement to hire a fiscal monitor, in this case state-appointed Carole Morris, recently of Asbury Park, who spent a decade there failing to rein in costs. She’ll cost taxpayers $160,000 a year in compensation, along with district-provided liability coverage and reimbursement for expenses. (According to Shore News, Jackson officials are “upset” with Gov. Phil Murphy for this requirement.)
Morris’s mandate, spelled out in her contract from the State Department of Education, is to correct “deficiencies” in the district, oversee all staff hiring, manage employee sick leave buyouts, and have veto power over any actions made by the board. Additionally, she could also overrule the district’s superintendent at any time.
Yet Jackson isn’t Asbury Park with its profligacy, rock-bottom student achievement, and a annual cost per pupil of $30,949 per year. (Asbury is an Abbott/SDA district, one of 31 in the state entitled to compensatory aid.) Jackson is more like Lakewood—not demographically but fiscally— with only $16,758 per student per year. But that money has to cover transportation for all students, and those costs have soared to $18 million, according to the 2023-2024 budget.
Busing costs eventually may go down because the Jackson Town Council recently approved construction of 12 Orthodox private schools that it expects will serve 7,000 students who won’t have to be transported to Lakewood. Yet we’re still left with this: our School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), passed in 2008 to comply with court-ordered compensation for students trapped in low-performing districts like Asbury Park, doesn’t work when so many students attend private schools.
It’s not hopeless: there are solutions out there but they require the State Legislature and the Governor to open up SFRA and collaborate on solutions, like having a line item for private school transportation and other sundries.
Kind of like a state voucher. Huh. Let’s not go there.
5 Comments
Thank you so much Laura, I appreciate your writing on this I’m married to a high school teacher in Lakewood and the , The funding that’s draining our schools for the transportation costs fpr the private schools is crazy,Thanks for shining a spotlight on this again
Let them walk to school like we did back in the days
Funny. When I was a kid attending parochial school, if you wanted a bus you had to pay for it. Needless to say we walked to school (2 miles) or carpooled with neighbors. If you elect to send your child to private school, you elect to pay for everything associated with that decision. The state should not be funding anything related to non-special needs private education. NJ needs to get its act together and realize that the staggering rate at which private schools are being built and enrolled in Ocean/Monmouth counties will bankrupt school budgets in no time. And no one will be able to afford the tax increases that will be required to make up for these deficits. Wake up Trenton.
This is not even the tip of the iceberg Ms Waters of things to come in the next few years in Northern Ocean County. Why the state continues to look the other way is perplexing especially with Lakewood’s $200 million dollar loan and growing. Jackson Township and other neighboring school systems are all ready experiencing budget cuts, some more than others. Along side this, there are 20 applications for Orthodox schools to be built in the coming few years in Jackson. With each Orthodox family having 5-10 kids, this number will only exponentially increase. How in the world will Jackson, Howell, Toms River, Manchester and Brick schools be expected to stay afloat? There is a public school budget crisis looming in this region and it is scary. This issue is as much about Jackson public schools as it is for all the local towns seeing a surge in Orthodox school age kids who will need busing and special education and what other else that community demands.
The LSTA was a failed pilot program that the state still allows to operate in Lakewood. They refused to give the state the information asked for. Which was how much money each family paid. It was 150 per family or child I can’t remember. NJ still allows a failed program to transport private school students.
It won’t long ago Lakewood had its own public school transportation. Then they sold those beautiful busses in less then 4 years. That was the second time Lakewood went private. Have to wonder if they ever paid the state back. It was a 5 year deal, and I can’t find where any of the money for the busses was ever paid back. The 1st contract with private bussing always sounds good and usually is. After that it skyro keys. I mean the 1st contracts good when they don’t leave children out in the dark and cold by just not showing up. Makes you wonder if the busses were purchased just to sell them to private companies. Lakewood straight out said “We have no idea what the next contract will be”. Yes in a BOE open meeting. The state regulatersaid it and the million dollar mouth piece lawyer. They seemed to not care. Well heck at the time one BOE member was caught up in the Medicaid fraud, didn’t even step down. No consideration for public school children.