By Nathan Duke and Anna Gustafson
State Assemblywoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing) joined Queens students last weekend in Flushing to protest cuts in the MTA’s 2010 budget that will force schoolchildren who receive free MetroCards to start paying fares.
Meng and a small crowd of students held signs reading “No Cuts to Student Aid” as they decried the Metropolitan Transportation Authority actions Saturday along Union Street in Flushing.
“We are not going to sit back and take this,” the assemblywoman said. “We’ll fight for our students.”
Under the agency’s 2010 budget plan, students will begin paying half fare that year and full fare in 2011. An estimated 417,243 city students currently receive free MetroCards, while another 167,912 get half-fare cards.
Meng said the city has provided a policy of free and discounted rides to students since 1948.
“The cuts approved by the MTA are a disheartening sign of our priorities,” she said. “Cuts in service are acceptable in difficult economic times, but cuts into our children’s future are not.”
The MTA is facing a $383 million budget gap in its $11 billion budget due largely to cuts in state aid and lower revenues from a payroll tax that was enacted to fund public transportation. Planned cuts include eliminating the W and Z subway lines, several bus lines and weekend service on other lines.
State Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Whitestone) said the city’s decision to close several Queens high schools, including Jamaica High School, will force students to travel farther.
“It is wrong for the MTA to eliminate free student MetroCards because I see it setting off a ripple effect,” she said. “Without that benefit, some families will have to choose between paying for food or transportation to school. I hope this doesn’t result in students missing school or jumping turnstiles.”
Several Flushing students who attend Manhattan’s Hunter College High School said the cuts will likely make their travel to the city more difficult.
“We work hard and our parents want us to have a good education,” said Lily Kong, 15. “Our parents do not mind sending us to school farther away.”
Meng said the cuts would likely cost the average family an additional $1,000 in transportation fees each year per child.
Saturday’s event was one of several protests officials and students are holding on the student cuts, and students from throughout the city gathered in Manhattan Monday afternoon to voice their anger over the transportation proposal. Monday’s event was publicized through Facebook’s “Protest the MTA getting rid of student MetroCard” page, which has more than 71,000 members.
Forest Hills students expressed outrage over the possibility that they could lose their student cards. While meeting with state Sen. Joseph Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) and state Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) last week, Forest Hills High students said the proposed cutback would discourage students from attending school.
After Forest Hills High junior Ronel Puello asked why the MTA was getting rid of the cards, students erupted into cheers and applause.
“It’s a bad proposal,” Addabbo said. “We’re not going to balance the MTA’s budget on the backs of the students.”
Hevesi also said he did not believe the MTA would actually go through with any plan to eliminate the student card program.
“This is just to scare us into not implementing those cuts,” Hevesi said of the state Legislature’s decision earlier this month to carve $143 million from the MTA to fill the state’s budget gap.
Another student said should the MTA eliminate this program because “half of us aren’t going to go to school and a lot of us will get into trouble.”
Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e-mail at nduke@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
