Students from Bushwick protest at a rally against subsidized MetroCard cuts. — Still from Daily News video.

Earlier this year, students from low-income families feared that due to MTA budget cuts they might lose the free or reduced-fare MetroCards they rely upon to get to school. The city’s Department of Education says that over half a million students get free full- or half-fare MetroCards. If the cuts had been approved, by September 2011 all students would have to pay full fares — approximately $750 per student each school year.

Bushwick has one of the highest official poverty levels among New York neighborhoods — students who travel to magnet schools around the city would have been especially hard hit.

At the New York Harbor School at the Bushwick Campus on Irving Avenue, principal Nathan Dudley says at least 70% of the student body uses half-fare or full-fare MetroCards. They commute from all over the city: East New York, Flatbush — one student comes in from Staten Island.

“Our students are very reliant on those MetroCards,” Dudley said.

Student activists met with elected officials, held press conferences, and took trips to Albany to make their case against the subsidy cut. On June 11, hundreds of students, including many in Bushwick, walked out of school in protest. Last week, the MTA relented, though the agency’s statement made it a point to say that it had “hoped the state and city would pay the total cost of this program.”

“We heard loud and clear at our public hearings, in meetings with student leaders and in protests around the city, that charging students would have a life-changing impact on the ability of New Yorkers to receive a quality education,” the statement said.

Bushwick mother Surin Rodriguez works as an administrative assistant and is relieved that the subsidy was saved. Her daughter attends Norman Thomas High School, in Midtown, from their home on DeKalb Avenue.

“It is a blessing to get three fares per day for her. I am a temp so at times it gets really crazy for me to juggle buying her a card for school. So it helps a lot,” she said.

According to the NY Post, the state will chip in $25 million toward the program, the city, $45 million, and the MTA will foot the rest of the bill to the tune of $144 million. But this means the agency may have to look for other service cuts to make up the shortfall.