Opinion Piece: Rally Attendees Driven to Steer East Ramapo Central School District on a Dangerous Course of Action Regarding Busing

By Rockland Daily Staff

The rally outside the East Ramapo district offices on Madison Avenue in Spring Valley on Tuesday night, June 15, included East Ramapo Central School District (ERCSD) families and advocates. They claimed they were rallying to drive change when it comes to the long history of busing problems plaguing the East Ramapo school district.  

Steve White, a member of the Power of Ten, an organization advocating for the rights of the children who attend the public schools in ERCSD, was on hand to present his plan. This was during the gathering ironically named Rally Against Discrimination in Transportation when it was really quite the opposite. 

The idea that there is discrimination in the busing system is unfounded. White's claim that "the district uses includes exclusive contracts with companies serving only all-white private schools which provide services that are better than those that the public-school students receive" is puzzling at best by anyone who has attended a recent ERCSD school board meeting. During those meetings, attendees and school board members listen to a regular litany of busing complaints coming from both public and non-public school parents. 

In the ERCSD, 30,000 non-public public-school children take the bus to school, and 9,500 public school children are bused. Of those 30000 non-public students, 20,000 are transported by yeshiva busing and 10,000 by one of four companies - Chestnut Ridge Transportation, Student Bus Company. BOCES and Peter Brega. These same four companies provide busing for the 9,500 public school students and 10,000 non-public school students. During ERCSD meetings, parents from both systems regularly complain about unreliable transportation issues, which compel them to drive their children to school. The chronic busing issues are reflected across the board in both systems.

White's ironic suggestion voiced during the rally that the ERCSD mirror a neighboring Suffern's busing protocol is incomprehensible. Suffern is notorious for discriminating against non-public school children in its insistence that one bell time is appropriate for all ages. 

Suffern public school buildings are exclusive to either elementary, middle school, or high school. This is not the case with the yeshivas located there. So when the Suffern school board ruled that every school could only have busing for one bell time for arrival and dismissal, the ludicrousness of dismissing a first-grader at the same time as a twelfth grader mattered little to the public school parents. But what should matter is that Suffern doesn't allow yeshiva busing which would save their taxpayers a considerable sum.

Suffern's clear discrimination against the non-public school community is the model Steve White insists must be adopted. He wants a model where the Suffern school board's practices are questionable when one notes the illegality of a school board not living up to its fiduciary responsibilities of trying to save taxpayers money while providing the busing services necessary to serve all students. 

Suffern's model is also one that denies yeshivas the ability to provide their own busing for their students, which is significantly cheaper than the busing companies presently being used. 

"By calling for a system that mimics Suffern's," a source close to the matter spoke with Rockland Daily, "Steve White is looking to increase the cost of transportation exponentially and make performance worse. There already aren't enough bus drivers, and he wants to take away the yeshiva bus drivers as well? His purpose in calling for a rehaul of the ERCSD busing system can only have one purpose - to discriminate against non-public students. His plan is one he should be ashamed to put his name on!"