by Suzanne Pollak

March 4, 2015

By unanimous vote Tuesday, Montgomery County Council agreed to spend $240,560 to continue a pilot program that will enable students in private schools to ride Montgomery County public school buses to and from school.

All 20 people, including two students from Melvin Berman Hebrew Academy, who spoke at the March 3 public hearing in Rockville favored the program. Busing children results in fewer cars on the road, reduces pollution and relieves parents of time-consuming carpooling, they said.

The pilot program began in September 2014 and picks up and drops off about 2,600 students from three Jewish day schools, two Catholic schools and one nonsectarian school. The county covers 78 percent of the program’s cost while the users pay the remaining 22 percent.

To read the rest of this article in the Washington Jewish Week, click here.