Sacramento kids will ride free on RydeFreeRT for at least another year

Sacramento students will ride free on Regional Transit for at least another year after the City Council approved a cost-sharing plan to keep the popular RydeFreeRT program in next year’s budget.

Sacramento City Council passed a $1.6 billion budget on Tuesday that tackled the city’s $66 million deficit and managed to keep RydeFreeRT on track. Sacramento parents, students, teachers and advocates had worried for weeks about what an end to the program would mean for thousands of students who rely on the free transit passes to get to and from classes, jobs and more.

The city’s $1 million contribution to the program, funded by a city Measure U tax increase approved in 2018, and credited with substantially boosting youth ridership and school attendance among the city’s Black and brown students, was in danger of being cut as part of a slate of proposed budget cuts.

Parents like Cristiana Zamora brought those worries to council chambers Tuesday, saying simply of RydeFree: “It helps my kids. I’m a single parent. I need that. Money’s hard to come by. I’m just trying to make it.”

RydeFreeRT was the first program of its kind in the nation to make free transit available to youth from transitional kindergartners to high school seniors, home-schooled students, foster and homeless youth when it debuted in 2019. The goal: make Sacramento more accessible to more young people and lessen the burden on financially stressed families.

Black students and students from lower-income families were especially frequent users and significantly more students overall were using RT to get to and from school, work and after-school activities. More than one in three students at some Sacramento City Unified schools use Regional Transit’s buses and light rail.

“If the city were to cut this program, the consequences for students could be profound,” said Darryl White, chair of Sacramento education equity advocacy group Black Parallel School Board. White cited the pioneering program’s role in improving transportation equity in Sacramento.

To keep the program going, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg found Sacramento-serving school districts willing to reduce the city’s $1 million stake in RydeFreeRT to $250,000. Elk Grove, Natomas, Sacramento and Twin Rivers school districts will pick up the rest of the tab.

How long will RydeFreeRT last?

The agreement continues the RydeFreeRT program from July, when the new budget kicks in, through the following school year.

Sacramento Regional Transit leaders signed off on the pact in a unanimous Monday vote, leaving Sacramento council members to give their OK the following day.

The deal, Steinberg said before the council’s vote, promises to extend the free ride program beyond 2025 “because we have a collective agreement. It’s my judgment that this program will stay because the funding has been spread out.”

Steinberg said he had worried that “the outcome might be different” without the agreement.

“Without hesitation, they understood that these are their children and we have to partner together,” said Sacramento council member Lisa Kaplan, who represents Natomas and talked with Natomas and Twin Rivers schools officials before the Regional Transit vote. “While it is difficult for everybody, they are on board in realizing that school districts must invest with the city. The city still has a stake in the game and we have to invest in our youth.”

Kaplan, also an RT board member, called on Regional Transit to work more closely with Sacramento’s school districts.

“We need RT to start meeting with our school districts. We are the bus lines,” Kaplan said. “How can we partner together?”

But though parent advocates agree the Steinberg pact saved the popular transit program in the short term, they said the deal felt less like collaboration and more like an ultimatum with free RydeFreeRT passes set to expire at the end of the month.

“The district was cornered. They did what they had to do and here we are,” April Ybarra of south Sacramento, told council members Tuesday. Ybarra’s daughters attend Hiram Johnson High School in the Sacramento City Unified School District.

“They planned to collect from Sac City Unified. They didn’t ask our stakeholders,” said Vanessa Cudabec, a parent and teacher at Sacramento City Unified School District’s New Technology High School. “Our school board was put in an awful position, but they weren’t going to leave their kids behind.”

Cudabec, Ybarra and others said the district should have a seat at the Regional Transit table to keep RydeFreeRT on the road, draw up more direct routes to schools, improve student safety and other transit issues affecting Sacramento’s youngest riders.

“We need to be direct partners,” Cudabec said. “This is a temporary solution. We have to figure out how to make this a permanent program for a program that everyone agrees should exist.”