By Mike Caputo
During a Sept. 14 hearing, Judge Geoffrey O'Connell extended a temporary stay delaying the implementation of State Education Commissioner Richard Mills’s decision to discontinue pre-K busing in District 15. O’Connell’s ruling allowed the school district to continue its busing program through Sept. 28.
According to a transcript of the court proceedings obtained by the Herald, the judge could not guarantee an extension beyond that date. O'Connell noted the Department of Education's "consistent" rulings prohibiting school districts from transporting children who are not eligible for kindergarten.
"Based on ... the consistent holdings of the Department of Education, I am unable to find that the petitioners have a probability of success on the merits," O'Connell said during the
hearing.
The judge persuaded District 15 and the State Education Department to agree to shift the case from Nassau County to Albany County, which, according to the transcript, would be the "proper venue," because that is where Mills’s office is located, O'Connell said.
O'Connell emphasized that his stay would expire "unless the proceeding, which is being transferred to Albany County, goes before another judge and unless that judge sees fit to grant ... a new stay or extend this stay."
O'Connell originally issued the stay on Sept. 7, after the school district's legal counsel sought to appeal Mills's Aug. 31 decision to halt pre-K busing in the district. The district was informed about Mills’s decision on Sept. 4, the day before busing was set to begin for many registered students.
Mills decided to discontinue the pre-K busing program after reviewing a case filed by attorney Elizabeth Meyerson, who represented a group of 20 district residents seeking to overturn a May referendum on the busing program. The referendum authorized the district to use public funds to provide a limited pre-K transportation program for public- and private-school students.
Although Mills's decision did not impact the district-run universal pre-K program in the Number Four School, the district was prepared to keep its buses grounded for the first day of classes on Sept. 10. However, O’Connell granted the temporary stay before classes began. The judge then set the Sept. 14 hearing date.
Portions of the hearing’s transcript, which was made available to the public, were read by Trustee Stanley Kopilow at the Lawrence school board meeting on Sept. 18. Kopilow expressed his disgust at the board for continuing its efforts to have Mills's decision overturned. "It seems to me that for us to spend one nickel more on what has been termed a lawsuit with little likelihood of success is not an appropriate use of the taxpayers' money," Kopilow said.
Trustee Uri Kaufman, who supports the district's legal efforts to gain a full reinstatement of the pre-K busing program, offered his take on Kopilow's stance. "The position he took means that 400 kids would be deprived of busing," Kaufman said in an interview after the Sept. 18 meeting, referring to the approximate number of private-school students registered for the pre-K busing program. "Our job is to do what's best for the kids. I am surprised he forgot that.
"If we are going to have to fight the good fight — to defend the interests of those 400 kids, to get them transportation — then we have got to do everything in our power to see that they get that," Kaufman added.
Legal decisions on the matter have no impact on students registered in the district's public-school universal pre-K program, which is funded by the state, unless the district decides otherwise.
Kopilow explained that his opposition to the district's legal effort is based on the determinations of both O'Connell and Mills that the district lacked authority to use public funds to bus private-school pre-K students.
"The court knows that there are going to be kids that are going to lose busing," said Kopilow. "The fact is that all I voted to do was enforce the law. By the way, this is not my ruling, this is Judge Geoffrey O'Connell's ruling, who was just affirming the ruling of the commissioner of education."
Kopilow later added, "All I am doing is saying I want to follow the law."
Mills's spokesman, Jonathan Burman, said the State Education Department would continue working with its attorneys on the case, noting that "the process is not uncommon" for stays to be granted while a district seeks to overturn the commissioner's decision.
In her statement before the court during the Sept. 14 hearing, Meyerson said that Mills's decision to halt busing was "neither arbitrary nor capricious" and that "it should be upheld."
Since the district allegedly violated laws on spending public funds to bus private pre-K students, Meyerson added, she was also requesting that O'Connell's stay be lifted.
O'Connell explained his reasoning behind the stay. "Now, I understand for the record that the attorney general is objecting to the continuation of the stay through Sept. 28 on the ground that it is not authorized, that the expenditure of taxpayer funds is not authorized by law," O'Connell said. "But in reliance upon the representation of the school district, to which the individual respondents agree, that the funds have already been expended and the continuation of the busing through Sept. 28 will not lead to any additional taxpayer funds being expended, I am continuing [the stay] for that limited period of time."
Comments about this story? MCaputo@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 210.
