Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

New York Mulls $5.8M School Bus Bill To Drop Yeshiva Students at Door

A $5.8 million proposal being pushed by some Brooklyn lawmakers would order New York school busses to drop yeshiva students much closer to their homes, a new report said.

Simcha Felder

The Daily News reported that the budget add-on would mandate school busses to drop children off within 600 feet of their homes if they leave school after 4 p.m.

The current rule requires the service only after 5 p.m.

The vast majority of those who would benefit are students at private yeshivas, who enjoy publicly funded school bus service, the paper reported.

“At a time when the city is being forced to do more with less, it is outrageous that the state would create a new unfunded mandate that will benefit a politically powerful special interest group,” Mark Botnick, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, told the paper.

Senate Republicans are pushing the change, with help from Orthodox allies such as Simcha Felder, a conservative Democrat who often sides with the GOP.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.