By Maia Efrem
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Milgrew today urged the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to reverse its decision revoking the free student Metrocard program.
“Children should be given a free education, and a child is also supposed to be given the way to school. They are not supposed to be a revenue stream for the MTA,” Milgrew said at a press conference outside the Bowling Green Station in Lower Manhattan. “A family of three will have to spend 10 percent of its budget for children to go to school. Unacceptable.”
The proposed change will affect the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in New York City, according to Milgrew, who is also concerned that students will begin jumping turnstiles or cutting school. “Children do not need another reason to cut school,” he said.
The MTA plans to demand half-price fares starting in September 2010, and full fares will take effect in 2011.
Joe Lentol, a Democratic assemblyman from Brooklyn, chastised the MTA’s cuts in a written statement. “No one would ever keep going to a restaurant that kept raising the prices for bad food and worse service,” he wrote. “After cutting student Metrocards, the MTA rewards students, their families and the rest of New York with unconscionable service cuts.”
A representative for the MTA told The Brooklyn Ink the cuts are necessary course to make up for the over $800-million budget deficit it’s facing.
“We understand these cuts will have a negative impact, and the two year plan phase-out gives families a chance to budget and take the added expenses into account,” Aaron Donavan said.
But the MTA is not only to blame, said Donavan. “The city and state have been paying $45 million each since 1993, leaving the MTA to incur the rest of the costs, which have gone up significantly,” he said. “If other states and cities pay for school buses to bus their students to and from school, so should New York.”
The MTA will hold public hearings on student Metrocards and service cuts in the first week of March.
Mohammed Ali, 43, the owner of a candy shop inside the Atlantic Avenue subway station in Brooklyn, was ecstatic when his 13-year-old daughter was accepted into Brooklyn Technical High School, but he doesn’t know how he will pay for her commute from Flushing to Brooklyn.
“I’m already paying for tutors, and I’m always afraid of losing my job. I’m not happy that I will have to pay for this too,” said Ali. But he said he has no choice. “I always think of her future and will have to find a way to take care of this cost, too.”
Joseph Blocker, 42, of Crown Heights said getting rid of the cards disproportionately affects poor neighborhoods. “You’re basically telling the poor kids to stay in their poor schools and their poor districts with no resources,” he said. “In Crown Heights the kids barely want to go to school. Now if this is taken away, that’s it. It will lead to an increase in drop outs.”
Michael Green, of Bedford Stuyvesant, said he’s not surprised by the cuts. “The MTA has never been transparent about their money,” he said. “It’s tough to be behind their decisions if they’re crying poverty now.”
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