$3.5 Million Dollars Allocated For School Transportation In State Budget

If you’re a parent, you are likely all too familiar with the challenges of long drives to school, navigating carpool lines, and managing multiple campus pickups in a single day. At Agudath Israel of Florida, we have been attuned to these difficulties for quite some time and wanted to do something about it.

Over the past two years, our office has been engaging legislators about this issue, and with the recent rise of antisemitism it took on an a even greater sense of urgency. This past session we requested a state appropriation of $3.5 million dollars to go towards a transportation pilot program.

The goal of the program is to ease the load on parents, reduce traffic congestion, and most importantly, increase campus safety and security.

Baruch Hashem, we are thrilled to announce that the House and Senate both agreed to grant our full request of $3.5 million, and we have been awaiting the Governor to sign the budget for final confirmation. This week, the Governor did just that.

We are incredibly thankful to our bill sponsors, Representative Mike Caruso and Senator Lauren Book, for championing this cause and leading the way, and to Governor Ron DeSantis for understanding our concerns and supporting this issue.

As this is a pilot program, we will unfortunately not have sufficient funding to service all students in all of the Jewish day schools. However, our goal is to maximize the funds and operate a successful pilot program at select schools, and B’ezras Hashem expand the program in the future.

We look forward to the positive impact this funding will have on our community and express our deepest gratitude to all who have supported and helped us along the way.

Stay tuned for further updates,

Rabbi Moshe Matz

Rabbi Avrohom Luban