Letter: Everyone saw the first number that was floating around for the extra bussing fee and everyone lost it.

My phone was blowing up. WhatsApp groups on fire. Bashing the askanim, bashing our local politicians, “they don’t care,” “they sold us out” – you know the drill.

Then today the Igud puts out an update. The fee is down to $290 per kid. And the instruction is now to opt in – portal opens today at 2pm.

So what happened? The askanim were working. That’s what happened.

While we were all busy typing, they were sitting in rooms with the LSTA, with Trenton, with our local elected officials, all working hand in hand – the Igud, the askanim, the mosdos, and the politicians – trying to bring that number down and make sure we have buses on day one.

This is the part we keep forgetting. Lakewood is not a small town anymore. We are a massive, growing city. There are so many moving parts behind the scenes to keep things running – bussing, housing, infrastructure, all of it. It’s not simple. There are negotiations, legal issues, funding issues, things that take time.

Not everything can be explained in a WhatsApp message in real time.

We have become so quick to bash everyone. If something doesn’t go our way for five minutes, we turn on our own askanim and our own local politicians – the same people who are actually picking up the phone for us at 10pm.

We need to learn to trust the process a little more. When they say “please take no action, we are working on it” – let them work. There is a reason they are saying it.

Is $290 extra something anyone wants to pay? No. But it’s a lot better than where we started, and it means our kids will have bussing.

So let’s go opt in today starting at 2pm and get it done.

And next time, maybe we give the people who are working for us 24 hours before we decide they failed.

A Lakewood Resident.