NJ bill 3652 was established for Lakewood non public mandated busing. The consortium has no responsibility for non mandated students known as courtesy busing. The bill allows the consortium to use unspent money as quoted in the bill:
"Establishes three-year nonpublic school pupil transportation pilot program in Lakewood School District to provide funding to consortium of nonpublic schools that will assume responsibility for district's mandated nonpublic school busing. "If after providing the required pupil transportation any of the disbursed funds remain unspent, the consortium, as it deems appropriate, may provide courtesy busing to pupils who are residents of the eligible district and are attending the nonpublic schools of the consortium."The Lakewood Township committee gave 2 million dollars from the municipal budget to the Lakewood school district BOE and paid for non mandated courtesy busing for all public school students. By doing say they took responsibility to pay for courtesy busing and legally can not discriminate and must pay the same for students in the Lakewood private schools. The private school students who are not mandated are not under the control of the LSTA consortium. Parents of private chools should not have to pay out of pocket $150 per child when the Lakewood school district is paying the courtesy busing costs for non mandated public school students.