This past week during one of my internet surfing breaks I scrolled through the NJ.com website. This site is, or was, the digital version of the once printed, The Star Ledger (TSL), New Jersey's largest newspaper. If you go on the site now you don't see any mention of TSL but more of NJ Advance Media, the parent marketing company for several "newspapers" in and around New Jersey.
Reading The Star Ledger- Rescue 1 kitchen- Mulberry & Lafayette Streets- 2001
During my 20 years in and around Newark The Star Ledger was the first thing you went to buy in the morning, especially on the way to the firehouse. It was during a time when newspapers and television, not cable, were THE source of local, national, and international news. If you wanted to keep up on the news around New Jersey, and the hotbed of things in Newark and Trenton this was the source. Not only was I a reader, but I also worked for TSL as a freelance photographer starting around 2005.
Let's just say over the years TSL has morphed from an independent middle of the round, well kinda, publication to a more left-leaning liberal source of news, or what some would call, a rag. Media and journalism have become so biased and leaning, either way, that it's hard to find, and be comfortable with, a news source that just gives you the facts, and not the opinions and skewed reporting we see today.
So while I usually pass by articles regarding politics and the economy the above headline caught my eye. Why? Because it is relative to my current position in life. New Jersey and teachers. Hey, I'm one of them. I'm a card carrying member of the NJEA and the Essex County College Faculty Association, which is our Union. Seeing that a district needed $65 million dollar loan to "keep paying its teachers" piqued my attention. So I clicked on the story.
But after I clicked and read it I saw how misleading the headline was. This wasn't just a district that can't pay it's teachers, it's a district that can't support itself and it's needs far outweigh it's ability to pay for them. Lakewood is a 9-square mile town in Ocean County that is home to about 107,000 people. Of that number about 55,000 of them are school age children. Of the 55,000 about 5,500 attend Lakewood's eight public schools. 95% of the enrollment in those schools are black and Hispanic. 25% of the children in the district, not just those actually attending Lakewood Public Schools, are listed as needing Special Eduction Services. That's about 13,000 students. So outside of the 5,500 of the 55,000 that go to public schools where do the other 49,000 children go?
The 49,000 go to private schools and or need to be bused, by law, if the elementary or middle school is greater than 2 miles away or 2.5 miles for high school. Now if you opt out and choose to attend a private school, like a Yeshiva or a Catholic High School, then the district buses the kids there as well. Those private schools fall within or outside of Lakewoods borders. Most of Lakewood's kids are bused to and attend one of 160 Jewish day schools. For some students, as dictated by religious rule, they are not permitted to ride the bus with the opposite sex, or even students from a different school. So most of these buses aren't filled, there may only be a handful on each bus.
When I was a kid I was bused from Millstone all the way to Red bank Catholic and the bus would pick up and drop off kids from public and private schools in Freehold, Holmdel, and Lincroft before the final destination on Peter's Place in Red Bank. When I tell my kids my growing-up story it's something like, "I caught the bus at 430 am....."
I checked in over at app.com, or the Asbury Park Press, to see if they were on this news story as well. Their headline was a tad more neutral, less skewed, and more accurate. In my opinion I would put the APP in a separate class with TSL, as far as actual reporting is concerned. But journalism these days is similar to fisheries management, it comes down to money and politics, as does everything else.
Lakewood's 2024-2025 school budget is $309 million dollars which was voted on by the Board of Education. That INCLUDES a portion which counted on $104 million dollars coming from the State of New Jersey in the form of a loan. What's the $104 million for, well if you ask TSL, it's to pay the teachers. If you ask the APP it's to avoid a budget shortfall. Now listen, Lakewood is educating about 6,000 kids in their public schools. I educate about 150 students personally each year up at Essex County College. This isn't just about teaching, in fact how much teaching is going on in Lakewood? And with that I mean putting the kids butts in the eight public schools seats vs private schools.
What the big ticket item down in Lakewood is busing. The cost is about $30 million dollars per year. But remember only about 6,000 students attend public schools there, and how many don't need a bus, or aren't entitled to busing since they fall within the the 2 or 2.5 mile radius where busing needs to be provided. There's another cost, bussing students to out-of-district schools, or Yeshiva's, which costs about $70 million dollars in tuition and additional transportation costs. Now that would all be fine if a towns population handled their own shit. But in Lakewood they demand, and are allowed to by law, to have those costs offset by New Jersey, or, really the taxpayers of New Jersey, many who have never visited Lakewood. They do that in the way of loans. A loan is something that is borrowed, but then paid back, generally.
The push this year, in their 2024-2025 budget, was for New Jersey to cough up $104 million, but the state capped that at $65 million, in two $32.5 million dollar payments, one to hit their back account in February and then in May. People are up in arms, "How will we get our kids to school and educate our children?". Maybe they need to come up with a different plan.
Since 2014 Lakewood has received $238 million dollars from New Jersey to help educate, and bus, their students. The loans are supposed to be paid back within 10 years but this agreement seems to operate outside of the rule of law. The state loans are as follows-
- 2014-2015- $4.5 million
- 2016-2017- $5.6 million
- 2017-2018- $8.5 million
- 2018-2019- $28.1 million
- 2019-2020- $36.0 million
- 2020-2021- $54.5 million
The 2021-2022 request for New Jersey State Aid, or a loan, was rescinded when the Federal Government awarded Lakewood $108,972,306 million dollars, which is a large chunk of New Jersey's $2,766,529,533 that the state received, as part of the March 2021 ARPF - ESSR, short for American Rescue Plan Fund - Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. That fund kicked $122 Billion dollars to states and school districts across the United States. It was during the start of the Covid pandemic and below was the outline the NJBOE laid out as to "allowable" needs for the ARP- ESSR,
Here's how Lakewood cancelled their request for the state loan, which was $70,716,798.
- 2022-2023- $24 million
- 2023-2024- $50 million
- 2024-2025- $65 million ($104 requested)
How can you continue to ask for monies each year if you haven't even covered the first loan? And what will Lakewood ask for, or demand next year, $150 million dollars?
And to be fair the busing situation isn't just occurring within Lakewood's town borders. As the population of that town has migrated out into Toms River, Brick, and Jackson those towns are feeling the pain that comes with the cost of busing as well. For years private bus companies, like Jay's Bus Service in Lakewood, have had private contracts, all under the Lakewood Student Transportation Authority, which was formed in 2016. And there's costs there as well, in 2022 the Director of the LSTA, Avraham Krawiec, was paid $257,028 while his Assistant Director Schlomo Pichey, was compensated $113,539. The LTSA is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit tax exempt "Authority".
These days the big gun media businesses, and that's what they are, money making businesses, are focusing on what the Federal Government is doing. Every minute of every day people are mentioning DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, with some running scared that their gigs are up and the fraud and money train is going to fall off the rails. Maybe New Jersey needs a DOGE, or at least people in charge who spend our tax money responsibly and don't keep throwing it at programs that benefit only a small representation of the residents of our State.
You can thank NJ.com for this post.