By Nina Mandell and Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — A week after students walked out on their classes to protest the loss of their free subway fares, state lawmakers struck a deal with the MTA to preserve the student MetroCard program, the MTA confirmed in a statement today.
"While we had hoped that the state and city would pay the total cost of this program, we recognize the very difficult financial environment for not only the state and city, but for the hundreds of thousands of families in New York City who frankly could not afford to pay the added cost of transit fares for school transportation," the statement read.
"We heard loud and clear at our public hearings, in meetings with student leaders and in protests around the city, that charging students would have a life-changing impact on the ability of New Yorkers to receive a quality education."
State Sen. Martin Malave Dilan told the New York Post on Thursday that Albany hashed out a deal with the MTA that could resucitate the discounted or free MetroCards in exchange for $25 million from the state and $45 million from New York City.
The sticking point in the debate was the $214 million the transit system would stand to gain by discontinuing the program, according to reports.
The MTA balked at footing the bill after the state's contribution dried up to a paltry $6 million, down from a combined contribution of $90 million with the city last year, the Daily News reported.
To help sweeten the deal for the indebted transit system, the legislature agreed to lift a cap on MTA borrowing, sources told the News.
Following the announcement Friday, a group of city councilmembers and transit advocates visited a Lower East Side school to thank students for helping defeat the plan.
“Students got a history lesson, and students gave a history lesson,” said Bronx Councilman James Vacca, chairman of the Council’s transportation committee.
“I think the lesson learned is that they can fight city government, they can fight state government.”
Students from the outer boroughs attending the School of Global Leaders on Stanton Street, which contains a middle school and two high schools, said they would have been forced to transfer to schools closer to home if made to pay their own transit fares.
“My mother’s a single parent with two kids in high school,” said Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Diana Abad, 17, noting that her mother could not have afforded to pay nearly $200 extra for her children’s monthly MetroCards.
Her classmate Oxwell Ojo, 17, who travels all the way from Coney Island each day to attend the Lower East Side high school, said “too many people start too much conflict” at her 4,000-student local high school.
“I think I would have dropped out if there was no MetroCard,” she said.
