A 17-year-old daughter of Korean immigrants spent four years watching her parents scrape together $18,270 in express bus fares so she and her brother could attend public school in Manhattan, and when she asked City Hall for help, nobody answered.
Daeun Kim, a rising senior at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan's Lincoln Square, mailed a letter to City Hall in June requesting that New York City extend its free student transit program to cover express bus rides. The letter went unanswered. Two months later, Kim posted a video on Instagram addressed directly to Mayor Mamdani, and within days it had drawn 97,000 likes.
The Mayor's Office did not immediately return a request for comment from the New York Post, which interviewed Kim by phone over the weekend.
The core problem is straightforward. New York City students receive free OMNY cards for public transit, but express buses are excluded. For students in the other four boroughs, the subway or a local bus can get them to school. For many Staten Island families whose children attend specialized schools in Manhattan, the express bus is the only realistic option. It costs $7.25 each way, or $14.50 per child per day, round trip.
Kim's family has two children making that commute. Over four years, the fares added up to $18,270, a figure Kim cited publicly and one the city has not disputed.
In her Instagram video, Kim addressed the argument that Staten Island students can ride the free Staten Island Ferry to reach Manhattan. She called it impractical for families like hers.
"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 just to reach it, and then another subway after [the ferry] to go to the school."
Kim said the express bus, by contrast, stops directly in front of her house and cuts her total commute to about an hour and a half. Using the ferry route would stretch it to three hours.
"That's a geographical disadvantage that kids from other boroughs don't have."
She is right on the math. A student in Brooklyn or the Bronx can swipe a free OMNY card, board a subway, and reach a Manhattan school in well under an hour. A Staten Island student without access to the express bus faces a multi-seat journey, ferry, then subway, then walking, that can consume the better part of a morning. The city's transit benefit covers the Brooklyn student's ride but not the Staten Island student's.
Kim told the Post that both of her parents immigrated from Korea and gave up professional careers to support their children in the United States. Her mother was a nurse in Korea but has been working as a nail technician in Brooklyn, the only job she could find without fluent English.
"My mom was a nurse in Korea, but she's been working as a nail technician in Brooklyn because that was the only job she could get without speaking English. I've gone to the salon and watched her kneel in front of customers until 8 p.m., and this past semester we often didn't get home together until 10 p.m."
Kim said her father also sacrificed his career. She described the express bus fare as a burden her mother covers partly by working weekends, time the family loses together.
The Mamdani administration has shown a pattern of claiming credit for helping working families while leaving gaps like this one unaddressed.
"If this issue gets resolved, I'm hoping I'll finally get to see my mom on weekends, and have dinner and say good night to her on school days."
Kim carries a 4.0 GPA and hopes to study psychology at Cornell University after graduating next year. She wants to open an art therapy foundation for immigrants. LaGuardia High School, her school, is one of New York City's most competitive specialized public schools, its alumni include actor Timothée Chalamet.
Kim did not start with social media. She started with a letter. In June, she mailed a written request to City Hall asking that express bus fares be covered under the student OMNY program. She received no reply.
She told the Post she gave the mayor a deadline, informally, among friends.
"I jokingly said to my friends that I'm going to give Mamdani two months and if he doesn't respond, I'm going to go to City Hall or do something about it."
Two months passed. Nothing came back.
"So then when it didn't happen, I sat at my desk and made a video."
The video, posted on a Thursday, quickly gained traction. Kim's single stated request was direct: "I have only one wish, and that's for me to get free bus rides to school next year." By the time the Post reached her on Saturday, the post had accumulated 97,000 likes.
The silence from City Hall is consistent with a broader pattern. The Mamdani administration has ducked accountability on other fronts, including skipping a City Council hearing on a botched tax rollout.
Kim framed the express bus exclusion as a problem that falls hardest on immigrant families. Many Staten Island households with children in Manhattan's specialized schools are immigrant families who chose those schools precisely for the opportunities they offer.
"A lot of immigrant families in Staten Island commute to school in Manhattan every day for better schools and opportunities. I have one year of high school left and I don't want my mom to keep sacrificing her weekend just to afford my commute."
The families doing this are not asking for a handout. They are asking for the same benefit every other public school student in the city already receives, a free ride to school on public transit. The only reason they do not receive it is that the transit line serving their borough happens to be classified as "express."
Meanwhile, the administration has faced scrutiny on other fronts that suggest misplaced priorities. A federal probe into a $100 million nonprofit fund allegedly tied to a Mamdani ally raised questions about where the mayor's attention and political loyalties actually sit.
And the administration's own personnel choices have drawn embarrassment. One of Mamdani's housing advisers reportedly owes $108,000 in unpaid rent and faces eviction, an awkward look for an administration that claims to champion working New Yorkers.
Kim's request is modest. She is not asking the city to build new infrastructure or launch a new program. She is asking it to extend an existing benefit, free student transit, to the one bus line that Staten Island students actually need. The cost of doing nothing is borne entirely by families like hers: parents working second jobs, weekends lost, children arriving home at 10 p.m.
A 17-year-old with a 4.0 GPA wrote a letter, waited two months, got nothing, and made a video. Ninety-seven thousand people noticed. City Hall still has not said a word. When a teenager has to beg on Instagram for the same bus pass every other student gets for free, the system is not working for the people it claims to serve.