By Ben Fractenberg and Simone Sebastian
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — A group of high school students from across the city walked out of classes Friday to protest the proposed elimination of free student fares for public buses and subways.
Hundreds of students from a reported 23 schools attended the afternoon rally at City Hall before marching across the Brooklyn Bridge to demonstrate outside the New York City Transit building.
The gathering was the latest in a series of protests against the MTA's plan to start making students pay full price for riding to and from school. Currently, students get free or reduced-fare passes.
Waving homemade signs and chanting “save student MetroCards,” the group gathered along Broadway next to City Hall Park in defiance of school truancy rules.
“If I don’t get a MetroCard, I’m not going to school,” said Dolcean Perdomo, 17, of the Bronx, who commutes an hour to the Upper West Side each school day for classes.
“If it’s not free transportation, it’s not free education,” added Nazifa Mahbub, 16, a junior at Long Island City High School in Queens, who also uses public transportation to get to school.
The MTA says the move is needed to close a major budget gap, a problem it blames on reduced funding from the state and city government.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg was evidently unhappy with the students' protest plans, saying in his weekly radio show that by skipping classes "to be cute and be out there and picketing," the students were missing out on valuable learning in the classroom.
The mayor also said that funding for the student fare cards should come from the state, as the city was already doing its share.
"The city puts in $45 million towards paying for those [student MetroCards] and we have not cut that back one penny. I've cut back police fire everything else not that," Bloomberg said.
"We're not going to make up for the state. So, maybe they should be at the state capital steps not the City Hall steps."
The students' plan to cut school came one day after Bloomberg announced a plan to combat truancy in the school system.
“If our students can’t go to school, that’s not only a shame — that’s a crime,” said Councilman Robert Jackson, whose upper Manhattan district includes portions of Morningside Heights, Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood.
“It’s our obligation to make sure you go to school,” he added.
Khaair Morrison, 16, who attends Francis Lewis High School in Queens, said he has to take two buses each day to get to school.
“We’ll shut down the city if we have to,” he said of the importance of demonstrating against the proposed cuts. “It’s time for us to step up and do what we need to do.”
The MTA board has not yet made its final vote on the proposal to eliminate the student fares.
