NJ21st sent the following email (yesterday) to Ms. DeBang of the EIC Ticket regarding her most recent public statement on Transportation:

Your recent article on transportation raised several concerns, primarily due to significant omissions of key public information surrounding the transportation discussions, presentations, and the policy shortcomings.

Could you please clarify where your facts originated, and specifically, if you could provide more insight into how the state would remit additional funds to our district based on efficiency ratings? From our perspective, the article may mislead the community—a risky approach, as we’ve seen a troubling pattern of leadership turnover tied to unfulfilled promises.

Additionally, with both the township and police departments on record confirming they were not involved in transportation policy decisions, and Board member Pamela Stanley, along with highly paid consultants, documented as misrepresenting their involvement, do you still fully stand by your article? We can provide these records if you’d like to review them.

Given that prior reporting hasn’t consistently reflected community input, it appears this piece may follow a similar path of partiality. Should you be elected, we would expect, at the very least, comprehensive due diligence in the future.

The issue of lost funding was addressed  several times during the transportation discussion and it surprised us that it was advanced here.  As we reported earlier this year:

Assertion 3:  The District is going to lose money by getting rid of Courtesy Busing

We have looked far and wide for any evidence of this and could not find a single shred.  There is pending legislation that has been held up forever that would allow for this, but nothing current.  If and when that passes, the District could certainly re-evaluate the current decision.

In fact, if you look at the 2023 minutes above, the state and the finance committee at the time felt that getting rid of courtesy busing was a cost saving measure.

What they might be referring to is a formula that applies to ALL students being bused. While this formula is inclusive of students receiving courtesy busing it is not specific to courtesy busing. The best the consultants or BOE members who supported the policy could argue is that the District MIGHT obtain state aid in the future. Given that this formula has been in place and considering the State’s feedback from 2023, whatever amount we receive if any, does not cancel out the cost. Source

Ms. Joly, BOE Representative, also reported there was no “lost funding” issue during a public meeting in response to this concern and none of the BOE members opposed to a more equitable transportation policy could point to where this “lost funding” exists.

The Berkeley Heights Police Department (BHPD) and Township had no role in providing input to Ms. Stanley’s failed policy initiative—this is also a matter of public record.

Earlier this year, the Acting Superintendent confirmed that all students who applied for subscription busing received it, and the new policy provides one of the most affordable options for subscription busing among comparable districts.

Unlike previous years, there were no last-minute cuts to services for elementary or middle school students, and transportation criteria have been made clearer.

Ms. Debang’s article omits that, for years, there were no established criteria for courtesy busing—not for safety, nor any other standard. Ms. Stanley’s proposed policy essentially repeated these past practices, that led to an inconsistent and unpredictable system where some families paid as much as $1,000 while others paid nothing. This inconsistency even drew the State Department of Education into a legal dispute over public access to transportation records.

Last week we published a review the full history of the Transportation debacle (to the best of our ability) that families of this community have been raising concerns about for the past three years and that this Board of Education Corrected- here is a timeline of this issue that we posted last week.

NJ21st calls for thorough, accurate reporting on transportation policies that respects community transparency and considers the full scope of public records.  We also recognize that new information we may not be aware of has revealed itself and look forward to the EIC ticket’s response to our questions.

BHPSN Transportation Issue Timeline

More Article on School Transportation

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