Staten Island teen issues Instagram plea to Mamdani for OMNY cards to cover express buses

After her letter to City Hall went unanswered, a teenager from Staten Island took to Instagram with a plea for Mayor Mamdani.“I have only one wish, and that’s for me to get free bus rides to school next year,” 17-year-old Daeun Kim begins in the video, which published on Thursday.Kim is about to start her final year at Fiorello H.LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts — whose alumni include actor Timothée Chalamet — in Lincoln Square next fall.She said her parents, working-class immigrants from Korea, have had to shell out a whopping $18,270 just in bus fare to send her and her brother to public school in Manhattan over the past four years.Students get free public transit rides with their OMNY cards, but express buses are excluded.

That’s what most Staten Island students like her — who go to school in the city — have to take, she said.“People bring up the free ferry but for a lot of us, the ferry isn’t close.It would mean a 30-minute drive or a 90-minute bus ride just to reach it, and then another subway after [the ferry] to go to the school,” she explained in the clip.“The express bus stops right in front of my house.”The video quickly went viral — amassing 97,000 likes since it was posted.Kim, who has a 4.0 GPA, said taking the ferry would make her entire commute three hours long instead of the hour and a half it takes on the express bus, which cost $7.25 each way — or $14.50 per child a day.“That’s a geographical disadvantage that kids from other boroughs don’t have,” she said.“A lot of immigrant families in Staten Island commute to school in Manhattan every day for better schools and opportunities.

I have one year of high school left and I don’t want my mom to keep sacrificing her weekend just to afford my commute.”Kim, who hopes to study psychology at Cornell University after she graduates next year and open an art therapy foundation for immigrants, mailed a letter to City Hall in June, but it...