More Somerville Students To Receive Free MBTA Passes This Year

SOMERVILLE, MA — More Somerville students will receive free MBTA passes for the 2022-2023 school year, the MBTA and Somerville Public Schools (SPS) announced Monday.

The city’s M7 program, which launched last school year at the high school level, will now include middle school students. This means all SPS students in grades 7-12 will be provided with M7 cards, or M7s, which are MBTA Student CharlieCards that are pre-loaded with monthly passes for the school year and are paid for by SPS.

Students with an M7 card can ride the subway, buses, and up to Zone 2 of the Commuter Rail at no cost from September through June.

“We are excited to continue this great partnership with the MBTA and to be able to expand the M7 program to our middle grades students this year,” Dr. Jeff Curley, Acting Superintendent of Somerville Public Schools, said in a statement. “The M7 MBTA passes help to directly address the transportation barrier that many students face, increasing students’ access to opportunities, programs, and services that might otherwise have been out of reach. We appreciate the School Committee’s, City Council’s, and Mayor Ballantyne’s support of this critical resource for our students.”

The M7s will be provided to approximately 2,000 Somerville middle and high school students for the upcoming school year as part of a budget line approved by the City Council and School Committee in July.

“I am proud that we are expanding the M7 program to even more Somerville students this year,”Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne said in a statement. “Funding these passes is one way we are increasing our local investment in youth and families while also advancing our climate action goals. Public transportation is a public good that must be an accessible, reliable resource for all residents, and this is a vital step in that direction. I thank the MBTA, the City Council, and the School Committee for supporting this program and look forward to building on initiatives like these going forward.”

For more information on the M7 program, visit the SPS website.