School districts around Connecticut are preparing to distribute thousands of free bus passes to high school students under a new program administered by the state.
The state allocated $2.5 million to the Connecticut Department of Transportation for the initiative, which provides free passes for students and veterans. Of that amount, $1 million is going toward the high school program, which is coordinated by school districts, CTDOT and the state Department of Education.
The money will pay for about 28,000 passes this school year.
The passes were allocated to 73 school districts based on how many students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. A high school also had to be within a quarter mile of a public bus stop.
Districts will decide how many passes each school will get and which students will receive them.
CTDOT communications director Josh Morgan said that flexibility is intentional.
“Branford's different than Griswold, and it's different than Meriden,” he said. “We don't want to be in the business of telling each individual school district how they run the program.”
CTDOT and state education officials sent a joint memo to superintendents last month explaining how the program will work.
Districts don’t need to apply or sign agreements with transit providers or the state. Instead, each district is allocated a certain number of passes, which it receives from a transit provider.
Providers bill CTDOT directly.
“We set this up to be as simple and as easy as possible,” Morgan said.
While CTDOT recommends monthly passes as the best option for students, independent transit providers have different fare systems and will each create their own pass. Students in areas served by CTtransit, the state-owned transportation system, will receive 31-day passes.
Adrian Huq, co-founder of New Haven Climate Movement, a community advocacy group, said monthly passes are the best option to help students get to school, work, medical appointments and extracurriculars.
“These bus passes can really change the trajectory of a student's life and their job opportunities," Huq said, adding that easy access to transportation will improve chances of going to college, and engage some disconnected youth who are frequently absent.
Since there is a limited supply of passes, Huq stressed the importance of quickly creating a process that reaches students who will use the passes regularly.
“It would be more useful for a monthly pass to go towards a student who will use it potentially every day versus someone who plays school sports and maybe would use it twice a week,” Huq said.
Huq said districts should create a simple, voluntary process that allows students to explain how a pass would help them rather than singling students out based on income, or requiring them to seek assistance through an administrator.
The state plans to make passes available to districts in three batches during the school year. CTDOT could eventually shift unused allocations to districts where demand is greater, Morgan said.
The statewide program follows a 2024 pilot program in Hartford and New Haven to expand student access to public transportation.
At the University High School of Science and Engineering in Hartford, former principal Sean Tomany helped administer a program that distributed free 31-day CTtransit passes. The school had enough resources to offer passes for two school years, he said.
Students who received passes were surveyed about how they used them, including whether the transportation helped them find employment.
An impact report based on the surveys showed 1,089 passes were distributed between November 2025 and June 2026. About 22% of survey responses indicated a student had obtained a job through the program.
“Give these kids bus passes, they're going to get jobs and spend money,” Tomany said.
The data Tomany collected was pivotal in securing this broader bus pass program, he said. Now, other districts will need someone to step in and collect similar data to illustrate the program’s success at other schools.
The Department of Education is determining how it will measure the program's effect. So far, districts have been told they will need to report which students receive passes and how many passes each student receives.
It remains unclear how long it will take for passes to actually reach students in different school districts.
For Huq’s organization, attention remains on getting the word out.
“This can immediately start benefiting people's lives,” Huq said. “Especially since the school year has already started.”
