Teaneck—An unauthorized communication, a release of incorrect information, or a misunderstood overheard conversation and the effects of social media, all have been referred to as reasons why hundreds of parents of Teaneck’s non-public school children were notified on March 10 of a budgetary option for consolidating bus stops.
As of this writing, the option of cutting $116,457 for non-public school busing and $281,496 for preschool and kindergarten busing for children living under two miles from the schools from a $96 million public school budget has not been taken. (There is no busing for middle or high school students.) However, as the vote on the total budget approaches on May 6, parents are still worried as to the transparency of the process and the veracity of what they are being told by the School Board and the effect on 2,400 non-public school students as well as the public school student population of 3,845.
Dr. Ardie Walser, President of the Board of Education, told JLNJ that busing for non-public school students is much more expensive than for the public school students because there are more destinations.
There are 52 non-public school bus routes that contain a total of 513 stops ranging from one stop to 17 stops, transporting 2077 students to 15 private schools at a cost of $1,530,000. The proposed cuts were for eliminating four buses and a total of 65 stops.
However, Walser emphasized that there had never been a specific proposal to consolidate stops and cut courtesy busing. He said a lot of what had come to be the controversy came from a non-public meeting of the finance committee.
In emails received by JLNJ, there is a statement with no original attribution that had gone out to parents on March 10. “Its [sic] official the finance committee will bring their non public consolidation of bus stops for budget cutting purposes to the board for approval tomorrow night at 8 p.m. at the Teaneck HS. All parents will drive or walk their children to one of four of our schools each day or it may change and be the FDU parking lot for everyone.”
Walser said the school board would have vetted the information coming out of the finance committee at the early March meeting had it not been for the public outcry at the misinformation.
“The proposal was the budget itself, which had a laundry list of potential cuts, which by the time we’d go through the several iterations of our budget a lot of those things would not actually take place,” he added.
He said they had put together a preliminary budget because the school district is required to do that by a certain deadline. What would have been seen as potential cuts would come from the 36% of the budget that is discretionary. “You look at everything. You look at public school busing, you look at sports, you look at teachers, you look at programs, it’s a laundry list.”
Part of the list that ended up being cut from the budget was the following: breakage from retirements—$616,862; 32 lunchroom aides outsourced—$98,139; food services—$114,256; outsourcing paraprofessionals, eliminating 39 positions—$1,190,459; three administrator positions—$418,608; five secretary positions—$402,359; 10 teaching positions—$748,000; coming to $3,995,305 in total cuts. State aid to the school for nonpublic aid was cut from $130,000 to $85,000.
The rest of the budget is locked in by state mandates and contracts.
As to the consolidation, Walser said that any plan that would have come would have to have been vetted with the police department to make sure the stops are safe and that the children going on the bus, whether public or non-public, are not in harm’s way.
An email from Karen Shabrack, Transportation Secretary for Teaneck Public Schools, to Dennis Frohnapfel, dated March 9, supplied to JLNJ shows that the police would not have approved the plan. “I spoke to Sergeant (Robert) Menhart at the Teaneck Police Department…He strongly recommends that the Board does not consolidate the bus stops for non-public students by utilizing our schools. He stated it would be a safety issue and cause chaos at each of the locations; there are simply too many students and parents that would have to be waiting at the locations. He mentioned that perhaps using the parking lot at Fairleigh Dickinson University would be a better choice, but also mentioned that we would most likely need a binder for insurance to use their property if they allow us.”
Barbara Pinsak, Superintendent of Schools for the Teaneck Public Schools, agreed that the controversy came partially from the lack of information that the full board had about the safety issue.
“At the last board meeting, the board voted that the non-public busing would not be consolidated and that the public courtesy busing would remain as it is.” She added that part of the confusion came because the former business administrator had left at the beginning of January and the interim business administrator had to go over all the records from scratch.
Pinsak said, “An email was sent out from the district that I didn’t know about, that I wasn’t copied on, that indicated that this was a done deal…and it alarmed people,” while more than half the board had no idea of what this was about. She said the majority of the Board of Education must discuss everything they’re going to vote on in public.
Board of Education member Sarah Rappoport spoke on condition that she was expressing only her own opinion. She also felt that it was a big mistake. “I know that the finance committee had to work very hard to come up with cuts to the budget to balance the budget. Our reserves have dwindled way down because we’ve stayed at a zero increase in taxes for two years. Because of that one of the sets of cuts…was the non-public busing. They were considering everything they could find. Courtesy busing for public school children was also on that list.” She said it was on the preliminary budget. The budget seen at last week’s special meeting, April 22, did not include any busing cuts, either non-public or public. It’s technically not finalized until May 6. “It seemed to be [in] agreement that’s what we will be voting on.”
With all these reassurances, there is still suspicion. While the school officials say this whole thing was in error, a mistake at best and talking out of school, so to speak, at worst, parents aren’t buying it.
Keith Kaplan said “going beyond just the busing issue, I am a little disturbed at the lack of transparency and the way my OPRA (Open Public Records Act) request was handled was strained to the bounds of illegality trying to get information about the busing issue.”
Kaplan said he asked for any information related to reports that the police had considered, asking for emails and correspondence to the council and to the police, and traffic studies. He said he got emails back from the business administrator, who by law is the School District’s custodian of records, saying, “we know nothing.”
(Superintendent Pinsak told JLNJ that all discussion with the police was by phone and there was no written record of any kind.)
Kaplan said that during the entire time of the March 7 meeting where all the parents had come out to express their objections, the business administrator had an email from the transportation coordinator indicating she spoke to the police who did not approve the plan.
“The next meeting it came out that the transportation secretary had sent the email to the private schools.”
However, the BOE maintained they had known nothing about it. Kaplan said, “I don’t know if it was incompetence or they wanted to let it blow over before they admitted it was them, in which case it would have been absolutely illegal. The best-case scenario is rank incompetence because the email that they sent over to me had about 10 key words from my email that I asked of them.”
Kaplan said this has come up year after year but they found savings of $70,000 just by re-negotiated contracts and made the whole thing up. “It’s going to be coming up again in a couple of years. I was just shocked by the lack of transparency at the same time the BOE keeps getting up there and saying ‘transparency is our goal and we need to speak out to the community at large.’”
Another parent, Kenneth Goffstein, said it’s his understanding that regardless of the previous decision, “there’s no solid plan around busing cuts other than consolidating a couple of the buses, which is not what they really had proposed. I think there’s going to be some minor changes with some bus consolidating but nothing that will be drastically affecting the non-public school parents.”
Goffstein said research he’s done showed that Teaneck is in the top one percent of spending per student in New Jersey, “so people are starting to get outraged on both the Board of Education perspective and the Town Council budget, which are two separate budgets but make up 90% of the realty taxes.”
He said with taxes going up at about 4% a year when the consumer price index is only up about half of that, there is now a movement to get people elected to the BOE and the Town Council who are more fiscally knowledgeable and responsible than people who are on both boards now.
Another parent, Zev Darack, also said, “There seems to be some funny business going on with all this busing stuff.” He said he didn’t feel people were being honest about how the school district got into this situation in the first place. He said none of the board members questioned anything about the consolidation at the meeting or seemed to know what any of it meant.
“In addition, Dr. Pinsak said at the meeting that these were the cuts that she was comfortable with presenting. In subsequent discussions with members of the Board and Dr. Pinsak, everybody said they had no idea about the bus cuts and where they came from.” Darack said it made no sense, as the Superintendent of Schools said she had reviewed the cuts. “The whole story doesn’t add up in my opinion. You have people denying knowing things that they should have known about. Either these people are lying or they’re just being incompetent.”
As to the possibility of these issues being brought up again next year, with a two percent tax levy cap, teacher salaries going up, the cost of maintenance and repairs rising, and state and federal grants still on the decline, unwelcome cuts are going to be proposed.
By Anne Phyllis Pinzow
