A free bus pass for all Tacoma high school students? That’s tax money well spent
The kids filed off the Pierce Transit bus, one by one, greeted by the Lincoln High School drum line and a small gaggle of photographers.
It was a picture-perfect entrance.
Or, rather, it was an almost picture perfect entrance.
There was only one, small problem: The students — 11 in total, from Foss and Lincoln high schools — used the wrong exit for the occasion.
The kids got off the back of the bus, as most seasoned transit riders know to do, but the cameras were waiting for them in front.
So everyone hopped back on and tried again.
It was funny, because the kids clearly knew their way around a bus.
What they were less accustomed to is the pomp and circumstance of a press conference.
Luckily, Monday offered a crash course.
On a sunny, brisk afternoon, the high schoolers, along with Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, school board director Scott Heinze and Pierce Transit CEO Sue Dreier, gathered to announce that all Tacoma high school students — roughly 7,900 total — will be offered a free ORCA card.
Described as a “pilot program” that will run from now through the start of the 2020-2021 school year, the effort has the potential to more than double the number of free ORCA cards Tacoma Public Schools distributes.
The students invited to speak and stand for pictures already had ORCA cards through the district.
Now, all of their classmates will be provided the same opportunity. It’s about time.
“It means opening a city to the kids,” said Lincoln High School Principal Pat Erwin, who was watching from the crowd.
Erwin knows the value of students receiving free ORCA cards as well as anyone. His school has one of the largest enrollments of low-income students in the district.
It’s not uncommon, Erwin said, for a field trip to be a student’s first journey downtown or outside their neighborhood.
For other students, particularly the large number who “opt-in” to the school from outside its catchment area, Erwin said city buses often serve as their only transportation option — to school and sometimes to work.
Syncear Loyd, a Lincoln senior who will turn 18 on Thanksgiving, called the free ORCA card he’s received the last two years “a game changer.”
Loyd said it’s allowed him to participate in after-school activities, like Lincoln’s poetry club and Asian Pacific Islander club, and accomplish other important tasks — like running errands for his family of eight and applying for jobs.
Not having an ORCA card, Loyd said, would change his “daily outcomes.”
“If I didn’t have an Orca card … I would have to get up a lot earlier in the morning to catch a school bus,” Loyd said. “When it comes down to mom wanting to send me down the street to Walgreens, or send me down to Fred Meyer to get some milk, it’s not the stress of walking or finding a way to get there. I have a … consistent basis of being able to get somewhere.”
All that makes a difference, district officials said — in student outcomes and the quest for citywide equity.
Equity was a word on a number of people’s lips Monday and for good reason.
Tacoma Public Schools has been distributing a limited number of ORCA cards to high schools throughout the district since 2016, according to district spokesperson Dan Voelpel, but the method for doing so was recently, and rightfully, reevaluated.
Instead of spreading the ORCA cards evenly among schools with a high need for them and schools with less of a need, as had been the case since January 2017, earlier this year Lincoln began receiving some unused cards from Foss as a way of helping to even the playing field.
The small adjustment was just a minor step.
Monday’s announcement was a far bigger and more substantial one.
“We have students who go to the University of Puget Sound, and they’re surprised to realize there’s a place called the North End and that it’s very different than where they grew up,” Erwin added. “It’s just getting them to see the entirety of Tacoma … to start to spread their wings and see what the city has to offer.”
Providing every high school student with free mobility throughout the city is a large part of the motivation, Woodards, Heinze and Dreier said Monday. It goes hand-in-hand with the Tacoma Whole Child Partnership, they said.
Each also acknowledged that offering ORCA cards to every high school student in the district is something that’s been discussed for some time but is just now becoming a reality.
What pushed the plan over the finish line, they said, was voter-approved Tacoma Creates initiative, which passed last November. It included a one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax to fund arts, cultural, heritage and science offerings for kids throughout the city, and particularly under-served youth.
The new ORCA card pilot program was made possible by $100,000 in additional funding from Tacoma Creates and what Voelpel described as an “in-kind donation” from Pierce Transit.
For the current school year, Tacoma Public School already had $415,000 budgeted to provide a limited number of ORCA cards to high school students. So far this year, 3,625 cards have been distributed, Voelpel said.
Roughly 7,900 high school students in Tacoma now eligible for a free ORCA card, Voelpel said. The district isn’t sure yet how many kids will take advantage of the new program.
Heinze said the pilot program will be evaluated to figure out “who’s using it and how much they’re using it” before a decision is made on whether to continue or expand it.
“We’ll want to look at the data to make sure that this is the solution,” Heinze said. “A lot of times solutions get proposed, and people are so passionate about the solution. We need to go back and reconcile that with what the data is.”
At the same time, Heinze said, his instincts tell him “that kids are going to use the pass and that’s going to justify a continuation of the program.”
“Then we’ll have to figure out what those long-term costs are … and then figure out funding to do it,” Heinze said.
Ultimately, those will be questions for the same leaders who celebrated in front of Lincoln High School on Monday afternoon to figure out.
For students like 18-year-old Laila Salah, on the other hand, the case has already been made.
The senior at Foss said her ORCA card has allowed her to get to school, participate in the yearbook club and take advantage of several programs designed to help students who too often fall through the cracks have success and reach college.
“It would be tough,” Salah said of what life would be like without her ORCA card. “I wouldn’t have the opportunities that I have right now.”
That’s the whole idea and why the district and its partners deserve credit for finally figuring out a better way to deliver it.
In the end, it will be tax money well spent.
This story was originally published November 26, 2019 at 1:12 PM.
