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. Daeun Kim is begging Mayor Mamdani for free bus rides for Staten Island students. Instagram/@daeunk_im 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
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