Good morning. It’s Thursday, the first day in class for students in public schools in New York City. We’ll also look at how the judge in Donald Trump’s hush-money case has tried to treat a landmark proceeding no differently from any other.
The first test on the first day of the fall semester for public school students in New York City today will not involve reading comprehension or math skills.
It will be the test of getting there: Public school students will be carrying OMNY transit cards for the first time.
Some of those students will go to one of 24 brand-new schools, the most opening at once in 21 years.
The OMNY cards are replacing MetroCards that have been issued to public school students across the city since 1997, a decade before most of this year’s high school seniors were born.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s subway and buses, is moving to phase out the venerable but antiquated MetroCards in favor of OMNY’s digital tap-and-go system, now used by more than half of transit riders. But unlike other commuters — who can tap their cellphones or cards at turnstiles or fareboxes — the students will not be able to use their phones.
But just wait until next year.
Janno Lieber, the chairman of the transit agency, said the OMNY system would function on students’ phones next year, “when all of the software is done.”
The M.T.A. does not anticipate problems with OMNY on students’ cellphones if the city imposes a ban on phones in schools.
Earlier in the summer, the schools chancellor, David Banks, indicated that new cellphone restrictions would be announced before the fall semester began. But last week, Mayor Eric Adams said the city was not ready for a ban. “We’re not there yet,” he told reporters at City Hall, saying that he did want to have to retract or revise whatever policy was eventually adopted.
The M.T.A. expects students to be able to carry their phones from home, even if they have to stow them when they arrive at school. Banks noted on Wednesday that more than 400 city schools had already set their own rules on cellphones, and he said that another 500 were planning to do so. That means that roughly half the schools in the system are regulating phones without a systemwide mandate.
For now, the OMNY cards have expanded and simplified the fare structure for students. Students can take four rides in any 24 hours, seven days a week. With the MetroCards, students could take only three rides a day, only on school days — and then only 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Also, the MetroCards were valid for a single semester. Students can use their OMNY cards year-round, including on weekends, on holidays and during the summer.
Lieber said that the transit system, which lost ridership and revenue in the coronavirus pandemic, was ready for the students going to school today. “We have plenty of room,” he said. On Aug. 14, the subway system’s busiest day last month, trains carried 3.54 million passengers, slightly more than two-thirds of the load for that date in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
The decision to make the OMNY cards less restrictive came after officials watched focus groups that included high school students who said the rules for MetroCards were too complicated. “Our bottom line was, take the complexity away,” Lieber said. “Four rides a day instead of three,” which he said would let students who went to a practice or a rehearsal after school take public transportation.
He said the M.T.A. had another motive in introducing OMNY to students: “We want to turn the school-pass users into customers” who would tap rather than dodge the fare. The M.T.A. says that roughly one out of every two bus passengers boards without paying.
Students in the focus groups “told us they wanted more discussion of why paying the fare was important — what fares do,” he said. “They actually thought that understanding would increase compliance. There was no real sense of where the money goes and where fares make possible the service they’ve grown up with.”
As for the first day with students and their OMNY passes, Sarah Kaufman, the director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University, said she was “feeling optimistic, since this addition to the existing system has been in the works for a while now.”
“Of course there will be glitches, as happens with any new system — but hopefully we won’t see any major problems,” she said, adding that she hoped that M.T.A. personnel in subway stations would “be empowered to help kids through the fare area” so that students could make it to class on time.
Weather
Enjoy a sunny day in the mid-70s. The evening is partly cloudy, with temperatures in the low 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Rosh Hashana).
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Ex-doctor pleads guilty to manslaughter: A former doctor pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years’ probation after admitting that he had helped a 59-year-old woman kill herself in a motel room in the Hudson Valley in New York last fall.
Arts & Culture
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The truth about Patti LuPone and Mia Farrow: The longtime friends are appearing together in the new Broadway play “The Roommate.” Everything you think you know about them may be wrong.
A momentous decision for Justice Merchan
Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the criminal trial of Donald Trump on charges of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal, has tried to treat the former president like the hundreds of other defendants who have appeared before him over the years.
Now the veteran judge faces a big decision: whether to sentence Trump on Sept. 18, as planned, or wait until after Election Day, as requested by Trump, the Republican candidate for president.
Merchan’s decision on timing could influence the election and the politics in this country for years to come. A delay in sentencing Trump would reward the stalling tactics the former president has used throughout the case and feed the impression that Merchan has worked to dispel — that Trump is above the law.
Yet if Merchan, a moderate Democrat who was once a registered Republican, imposes a sentence so close to Election Day, Trump will no doubt accuse him of trying to tip the campaign in favor of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.
Martin Horn, a professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the executive director of the New York State Sentencing Commission, predicted that, despite Trump’s protestations to the contrary, Merchan would again try to treat the former president as he would any other defendant.
“A potentially troublesome defendant, an argumentative defendant,” Mr. Horn said, “but just a defendant.”
METROPOLITAN diary
‘It had to be you’
Dear Diary:
On Thursday nights after the Broadway shows let out, the M104 from the theater district to the Upper West Side tends to be crowded with cranky passengers anxious to get home.
On this particular night, I was standing toward the front of the bus. A man who appeared to be in his 80s was holding on to a pole nearby and humming softly.
I recognized the tune: “It Had to Be You.”
“A half-price fare and a serenade!” I said. “What a deal!”
The man’s voice rose, and I joined in.
“Some others I’ve seen, might never be mean,” we sang. “Might never be cross, or try to be boss, but they wouldn’t do.”
Soon, almost everyone on bus was singing along. When we reached the end, we all basked in the moment, sharing nods and knowing smiles.
Then we moved on to “Sunny Side of the Street.”
— Sybil H. Pollet
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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