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Some New York City students who have lost, damaged, or otherwise non-working school-issued OMNY cards have been waiting over a month for replacements, parents and educators said.
They are especially concerned that the delays could hurt attendance for recent immigrants, who might fear that jumping a turnstile to get to school could lead to deportation.
Education Department officials insist, however, that new cards — which they receive from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — can be delivered within a week of requesting them.
The student OMNY cards, issued for the first time this school year, offer up to four free rides 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s a major upgrade from the previous cards that allowed three rides during limited hours on school days. New York City paid the MTA $50.5 million for 1.5 million cards for roughly 500,000 - 600,000 eligible students. So far, the Education Department has delivered more than 890,000 OMNY cards to schools, officials said.
The need for new cards may be mounting as the school year enters its second half and wear-and-tear is starting to show on many of the paper-thin bright green cards. (MTA officials advised against laminating the cards, and while schools often encourage their students to keep them in protective cases, the cards still might easily bend.) Lost, stolen, or damaged cards are the most common reasons for replacement card requests, officials said, declining to provide a specific breakdown.
“These cards are made of paper. They’re at the bottom of the bookbag. They’re crumpled. They have juice on them,” said Jorge Izquierdo, transportation coordinator at P.S. 145. He estimated receiving about 60 new card requests, with a steady stream of parents showing up at the Upper West Side school since November.
Some cards also “looked perfect,” but families said they had stopped working, Izquierdo said. Several parents across the city have also reported that cards appearing in mint condition have stopped working, and while cards can be deactivated after the MTA flags possible misuse to schools, the number of cards that have been deactivated for this reason was low, Education Department officials said.
P.S. 145 parent Naveed Hasan said about a third of the school’s students live in temporary housing, and a large number are newly arrived in the country.
“Leaving them without official transportation is opening them up to detention by the Feds,” worried Hasan, who is on the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, the school board that authorizes Education Department contracts. “As you can imagine, attendance is not helped by this situation.”
A nearby middle school saw a similar delay in getting new cards.
“Please help your child figure out a system for securing their OMNY card,” Principal Elana Elster of M.S. 54, wrote to parents on Jan. 31.
The 700-student school has received 144 replacement card requests, with some students losing their card multiple times, she wrote.
“It takes a while to get new cards. It’s taken over a month recently,” Elster wrote. “Although we have complained to the city about this and about the flimsy cards, we haven’t had any luck in getting replacement cards faster.”
The principal from M.S. 54 did not respond for comment. But a parent from the school said her daughter, who had lost her card more than a month ago, got a replacement card this week after Chalkbeat sent the Education Department an inquiry about the delay.
P.S. 145 also received 50 new cards this week, after Chalkbeat’s inquiry, Izquierdo said.
Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle urged schools who are experiencing delays to flag it for their superintendents or transportation liaisons.
“New York City Public Schools works every day to ensure that our students have the resources they need to get to and from school,” Lyle said in a statement. “If schools are experiencing any delays or issues with getting replacement cards, they should reach out to their superintendent or transportation liaison.”
Questions and confusion about deactivated cards
Izquierdo, P.S. 145’s transportation coordinator, didn’t understand why mint condition cards had stopped working, and wondered if parents might be confused on how to use them. For instance, maybe they didn’t realize the cards only offered four rides a day, he posited. But he also worried that cards may have been erroneously deactivated.
MTA officials explained that they might flag cards for possible misuse if a card issued to a particular school has seen a flurry of activity, but none of those swipes are near that school. Some students have been selling their OMNY cards online for upwards of $1,500, the New York Post reported.
The transit authority knows which cards are tied to specific schools, but only the schools know which cards are assigned to specific students. When there are no swipes near a particular school, the MTA might deactivate a card. The transit authority alerts the Education Department, which in turn contacts the school, Education Department officials said. The school can request the card not be deactivated if the student is actually using it. Otherwise, Education Officials said they ask the school to issue a replacement before the card is deactivated so a student should always have a working card.
“In the relatively few situations where student passes are being used improperly, as we’ve said repeatedly those cards will be deactivated, and we defer to NYC Public Schools to resolve those matters with any students involved,” MTA Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara said in a statement.
Izquierdo said he has never been contacted about possible misuse of any OMNY cards.
He suggested that the school system create some sort of kid- and parent-friendly guidance or FAQ sheet to hand out to families, in multiple languages, explaining the terms of how to use the cards, how to care for them, and the consequences of misusing them, which students would be required to sign before obtaining their cards.
“Having guidelines, something that you sign to acknowledge what you’re responsible for, would have been helpful,” Izquierdo said.
Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.
