In the summer of 2016, Sen. Robert Singer sponsored a bill to create the Lakewood Student Transportation Authority (LSTA), which would be responsible for transporting Lakewood’s surging population on non-public school students to multiple ultra-Orthodox day schools. Since then LSTA has been going strong (albeit not without some griping from locals about its lack of accountability).

How strong? As Haredi families move to nearby towns, Jackson Township Public Schools is signing on with LSTA to bus its 4,800 non-public school students to Lakewood yeshivas.

They won’t be the last district to do so.

In a notice to the community, the Jackson Board of Education writes,

“Utilizing the LSTA will assist the district in managing the growing volume of nonpublic transportation applications and is expected to be a cost-effective way to meet both the district’s state-mandated responsibilities and the needs of our families. The district is availing itself of a provision in a newly signed law that allows us to contract with private transportation consortiums to manage our state-mandated busing obligations…This move will absolutely ease the steadily increasing workload taken on by the transportation department over the past few years as demand for nonpublic transportation has increased.”

Currently LSTA is responsible for transporting about 50,000 Lakewood yeshiva students. This will bring the total close to 55,000. Jackson Councilman Mordechai Burnstein wrote in a an email,

“We have been calling for the state to start providing transportation aid as this service is another unfunded state mandate that burdens everyone in town. Transportation costs are skyrocketing because we have to abide by the state regulations, but if they are making us do this, they need to chip in more on the financial costs like they do in other parts of the state to accommodate unique educational situations.”

In other Lakewood news, Matthew Holman of HFA Accountants audited the district budget and confirmed that the state school funding formula, SFRA, is inappropriate for a district where there are almost ten times as many non-public school students as public school students. “To me, it is a state funding formula issue,” he said. “Lakewood is a one-of-a-kind school district, it does not fit like any other school district.”

The district has relied on annual “loans” from the New Jersey Department of Education that it will never pay back. The current tab is approaching $200 million. Various advocates and lawyers have argued that the state needs to create a new funding category for this kind of district.

Eventually Jackson, Toms River, Brick, and Howell may need a carve-out too.