Drivers Protest Holiday Work at Jewish Schools
Some school bus drivers in Lakewood, N.J., are expressing their displeasure with having to work on Thanksgiving driving Orthodox Jewish students to school.
About 200 bus drivers will work on the holiday – half the number of a regular school day – taking some 18,000 Orthodox students to private Jewish schools in Lakewood, according to the Asbury Park Press. The state requires the school system to provide transportation Monday through Friday from September to June.
Bus driver Kofo Ademosu, 23, told the Asbury Park Press that in addition to getting up at 5 a.m. for work, she will have to cook her Thanksgiving dinner.
Ademosu said that “we [bus drivers] are being treated like worse than servants. There’s really no amount of money that would make it OK [to work Thanksgiving].”
In the past, parents carpooled to school on Thanksgiving, but the number of students has grown too large for that to be practical, school officials told the newspaper.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
