Zoe Berg, Senior Photographer

A group of New Haven and Hartford high school students have lobbied to allocate $175,000 in funding towards free bus fares.

The effort began when Siddharth Krishnan, a student at University High School of Science & Engineering in Hartford, noticed that less of his classmates were showing up to school or cross country practice during the 2023-24 school year. He talked to his principal, Sean Tomany, who had noticed the same trend. 

Together, Krishnan and Tomany formed the Social Justice League of UHSSE, which went on to be a group of 12 students who convinced the state house to pass a bill allocating $175,000 each to New Haven and Hartford school districts to use for free bus fares.  

“It is probably one of the most engaged and passionate groups of kids that I had the pleasure of working with in 10 years in the legislature,” said Jeff Currey (D-11), who worked with the Social Justice League in advocating for bus passes in the state house. 

When the Social Justice League began their campaign, originally advocating for bus passes for all Connecticut students, they connected with youth from the New Haven Climate Movement, who were advocating for free bus fares for students from both a perspective of equity and one of pollution reduction. 

The two groups met up virtually to discuss their similar goals and made plans to advocate for free bus transportation in their respective cities. 

“With the free bus pass initiatives, a lot of people are doing it through equity, and we want to bring something new into this, which is how having buses be free can contribute to people using cars less, and how that overall will help the fight against climate change. The transportation sector has an outsized impact on carbon emissions, and we want to sort of frame this in that type of light, too,” Manxi Han, a member of NHCM, said. 

Now that New Haven has the funds to provide free bus passes, the Board of Education, in an Aug. 19 meeting, announced its plans to use the money to purchase bus passes for student transportation, according to Justin Harmon, director of marketing and communications for New Haven Public Schools.  

New Haven students will be able to obtain either two-hour or 10-day bus passes for any of the aforementioned activities free of charge. Typically, two-hour passes start at $3.20 and 10-day passes start at $28.80. 

Back in Hartford, Tomany said his school’s rates of chronic absenteeism dropped from 24 percent to 13 percent during the 2022-23 school year when bus fares were free for everyone. 

In the 2023-24 school year, absenteeism rates shot back up, despite students still having access to school buses. Tomany attributed the rise to the lack of free public city transportation.

In fact, from March 2023, the last month of free rides, to March 2024, the Federal Transit Administration calculated a total bus ridership drop of 28 percent in the CT Transit Hartford Division and 27 percent in the New Haven Division. 

This year, Tomany plans to distribute the bus passes and track how they affect absenteeism rates. He plans to prove to the legislature that this program is beneficial to students and should continue to be expanded. 

“The key part of this is if a kid has a job, then they can get to their job. Whatever they need to do, it provides them transportation to get there, whereas the school bus only brings them home,” he said. 

Last year, many of his students had to drop sports or other extracurricular activities because they had no transportation options other than the school bus. This year, with the return of free city bus fares for his students, Tomany hopes things will be different.

Rep. Currey also pointed out that access to city buses allows students to still come to school if they miss the school bus. Students may miss the bus for any number of reasons, he said, and without access to city buses, they will either have to find an alternative mode to get to school or be forced to stay home.

“Students from Hartford specifically rely on public transit. It’s a means of connecting with aspects of their community, whether that be their school, whether that be sports, whether that be extracurricular activities,” Nariyah Lindsay, a member of the Social Justice League who participated in the advocacy, said. 

Schools can only purchase bus passes for students who are enrolled in grades nine through twelve.