Free transit program for Sacramento students receives $1.75M in funding from county supervisors
Joseph Williams depends on the RydeFreeRT program to go to and from school and for his job at a local fast food restaurant.
So do many of his friends.
Without the free fares RydeFree provides, school for the South Sacramento senior would mean a five-mile walk. His fast food job, a bus and a connection away, would likely be out of the question.
“If I didn’t have the program, I’d have to get up at 3 a.m. to get to school,” said Williams, a 17-year-old senior at New Technology High School in south Sacramento. “I use it to go to a friend’s house, to go to work, to buy clothes. I work (in fast food). I take two different buses to get there. I’m extremely happy they gave us that in the budget.”
Sacramento County will invest $1.75 million in the popular free transit program for Sacramento students, county supervisors decided this week.
The deal authorizes an annual $350,000 over the next five years to Sacramento Regional Transit’s popular RydeFreeRT program. The retroactive agreement backdated to July 1 provides RydeFreeRT with three years of county funding plus two one-year options to extend the funding.
With Tuesday’s consent vote, Sacramento County becomes RydeFree’s largest single contributor to the program.
“The No. 1 reason given for truancy in our schools is transportation,” said Sacramento County supervisor Patrick Kennedy. “I think this money is well-spent for numerous reasons. This is really good for our kids and for our transit system.”
The kids are students like Williams, one of those who rallied to preserve RydeFree funding in June.
“Honestly, the program has been such a beneficial thing for me — it’s something we all benefit from,” Williams said this week.
RydeFreeRT was the first program of its kind, providing free transit to youth in Regional Transit’s service area. Youth from transitional kindergartners to high school seniors, home-schooled students, foster and homeless youth, could ride RT at no cost with a pass and the program quickly proved a success.
The program is available for youth who live or go to school within SacRT’s service area: Elk Grove, Folsom, Citrus Heights, Rancho Cordova and parts of Sacramento County. Schools distribute RydeFreeRT cards to students each school year.
Just years earlier, Sacramento posted some of the highest youth transit ticket prices in the nation.
Under RydeFree, youth ridership soared and school attendance rose dramatically, particularly among Black students and other students of color, but the innovative program was in peril earlier this summer as Sacramento mulled deep city budget cuts.
Sacramento, staring down a $66 million budget deficit, was considering a city manager’s proposal to cut off the city’s $1 million-a-year investment in RydeFreeRT, the yearly infusion funded by a city Measure U tax increase approved in 2018.
Reaction from students, parents and teachers, transportation and education equity advocates was swift. Students and cash-tight parents especially in Sacramento’s most financially challenged neighborhoods fretted over the dollars-and-cents impacts.
Teachers, schools officials and equity advocates said ending funding would sever a home-to-school lifeline for thousands of Sacramento students including in Sacramento City Unified School District where as many as 30% of students at some schools rely on the free fares.
Students like Williams and his friends.
Williams’ family does not have private transportation. Regional Transit and the free passes provided Joseph are “integral,” he said. “If anything were to happen to it, it would be detrimental to the students of Sacramento City Unified,” he said.
Sacramento City Council ultimately approved a cost-sharing plan with Elk Grove, Natomas, Sacramento and Twin Rivers school districts in June that reduced the city’s contribution to $250,000 while keeping the plan funded through 2025.
Parent advocate Vanessa Cudabec cheered the news this week.
“This program is absolutely essential. We must continue to invest in the youth of Sacramento, reducing barriers to equity such as lack of transportation to school, work and enrichment activities,” she said on learning the supervisors’ decision.
Cudabec, a teacher at New Technology High School in south Sacramento, helped organize opposition in June to the proposed cuts.
“Hopefully, we learned from the immense reaction from the community when this program was almost cut, that it is a necessity and should be preserved,” Cudabec said.
This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 3:41 PM.
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