By Mike Caputo
The district's pre-K busing, designed to serve registered public- and private-school students, had been suspended until last Friday, when Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Geoffrey O'Connell issued a stay of Commissioner Richard Mills's decision. The judge's stay, which allows the buses to continue to roll, came as a result of the Lawrence school board's recent legal effort to appeal the commissioner's ruling.
The school board, which was notified of Mills's decision to suspend pre-K busing only hours before its regularly scheduled work session on Sept. 4, voted to authorize its attorneys to appeal.
As of Monday, the pre-K buses were on the road, but whether they remain there may hinge on the outcome of a hearing O'Connell set for Friday at the Nassau County Supreme Court building in Mineola.
Mills's decision did not affect transportation for universal pre-K, a non-mandatory state program that operates out of the Number Four School. But Superintendent Dr. John Fitzsimons announced last week that there would be no transportation for any pre-K programs, whether students are enrolled in public or private schools.
Several pre-K programs in private schools began classes during last week's transportation shutdown, forcing parents to search for other options. The Number Four School's pre-K was not affected because classes did not begin until Sept. 10, when transportation was reinstated.
Board President Murray Forman said it is unclear how long the pre-K transportation program will run for participating public- and private-school students. "Pre-K [busing is] for everybody as planned until further notice," Forman said. "All we can do is keep [parents] posted."
The future of the busing program remains in doubt until legal matters are sorted out, Fitzsimons said. "It all depends on if it is taken away, what we are left with: no busing for any pre-K kids or just busing for the universal pre-K," he said. "I need to find out what the legal counsel has to advise the board and the board has to advise me."
The arguments behind the decision
Mills's decision, dated Aug. 31, came in response to an appeal of the transportation referendum on the District 15 ballot in May, which was approved by the public. A group of 20 appellate court petitioners, led by attorney Elizabeth Meyerson, sought to overturn the referendum that authorized the district to use public funds to provide a limited pre-K transportation program for public- and private-school students, while reducing distance eligibility.
Meyerson's clients' appeal was based on the content of Proposition 3 of the referendum. According to the proposition, part of the pre-K transportation policy accepted by the board in June states that the school utilizing the busing must have "an established enrollment of 25 students, with a least five students from Lawrence School District [who] requested transportation." In addition, the pre-K program cannot include students more than 7 1/2 miles from a participating school.
According to Mills's decision, Meyerson's group claimed that publicly funded busing benefited certain schools, and "improperly restricts pre-K transportation to eight non-public Jewish religious schools," or yeshivas. The yeshivas were not named in the decision.
The decision also mentioned the group's claim that education law does not authorize pre-K transportation.
Meyerson's group made a bid for an appeal after the school board agreed to put Proposition 3 before voters. On behalf of the group of petitioners, Meyerson requested a stay of the public referendum, but was denied on May 4 - 11 days before the May 15 vote.
Attempts to reach Meyerson for comment were unsuccessful. Board trustees and attorneys would not comment on the legal specifics.
However, Mills wrote that the school board said the distance limits were "reasonable" and "do not impermissibly benefit anyone." The commissioner's decision also revealed the board's argument that education law may not authorize pre-K transportation, but it also does not prohibit it.
"Pursuant to Education Law 3635, [the school board] has no authority to use district resources to provide pre-K transportation," Mills later wrote.
Mills's spokesman, Jonathan Burman, said it is a "long-standing policy" of the State Education Department not to comment on legal decisions. "The commissioner acts like a judge in rendering decisions in these kinds of appeals, so it's inappropriate to comment on it," Burman said.
The public does not always
have the final say
Since voters approved Proposition 3, the school board argued that the appeal "should be dismissed as moot," Mills's decision stated.
However, similar appeals have been sustained by Mills in the past, including a decision involving a public referendum in November 2006, when Mills ordered the annulment of the voters' approval. The vote authorized the annex of western New York's Bradford Central School District to the nearby Campbell-Savona School District.
"It absolutely has happened in the past," said Burman. "Referenda have been set aside for a number of reasons by either the commissioner or the courts previously."
Depending on Friday's Supreme Court hearing, there may or may not be busing for prekindergarten schoolchildren. Members of the public were not allowed to comment on the issue during the Sept. 4 school board work session. Many residents who attended, including public school advocate Andrew Levey, were perturbed by the lack of an open comment session. Levey also said he was surprised to see few members of the private-school community.
"[Forman] didn't put it on here because he didn't want to hear public comment on both ends," Levey said. "I personally would have thought there would have been more people here from the private-school community."
The agenda for the Sept. 4 session was released on Aug. 31 - the day Mills reached his decision, but four days before the district was notified of it. That day, Forman said that the short regular session on Sept. 4 was meant to take care of items necessary for the opening of school the following day.
An agenda has not yet been released for the next regular session of the Board of Education, on Sept. 18. The public portion of the meeting begins at 8 p.m., and will be held in the cafeteria of the Lawrence Middle School.
Comments about this story? MCaputo@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 210.
