NYC NOW - Midday News: MTA's OMNY System Updates This Weekend, Coins for Bus Rides To Be Phased Out, and Newark School Enrollment on the Rise

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

The MTA says OMNY will undergo system updates starting Friday night and through Sunday night. During that time, riders won’t be able to buy or reload OMNY cards and tap payments won’t process until updates are complete. Meanwhile, the agency will stop accepting coins on buses next year as part of its full transition to OMNY. Plus, student enrollment in Newark Public Schools is rising sharply, even as many districts nationwide are seeing declines. We speak with Chalkbeat’s Jessie Gomez.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, October 3rd. Here's the midday news from Veronica Del Valle. Subway riders, make sure to load up your Omni card with money before tonight. MTA says the Omni system will undergo some updates this weekend. That means passengers won't be able to buy physical Omni cards or reload them with more money. The agency also says tap payments won't immediately be processed during the system outage. Charges will go through once the system upgrades are complete.

The outage will run from 10 tonight until 7 the evening on Sunday. The MTA says these upgrades are necessary to continue phasing out metro cards as the year goes on. More in Subway News, your money is no good here. That's the message the MTA is sending to bus riders who pay the fare with coins. Starting next year, the agency will require all bus riders to pay with Omni. They can use smartphones, credit cards, or a special Omni card that can be reluted with cash at a subway vending machine or select retailers. But if you show up with a fistful of change, you'll be out of luck. 81-year-old Joanne Giento says it's not fair for Oral New Yorkers.

My concern about the machine is senior citizens probably save coins because we're so strapped for money. and they use their coins when they get on the bus. I see them. The decision to get rid of the charge is part of the MTA's latest fair hike, which raises the cost of subway and bus rides to an even $3. Beautiful weather right now, 65, crisp and sunny. Today, it's still going to get a little warmer, a high of 72 degrees with some calm winds. Tonight, clear and colder, lows around 59. Over the weekend, nice and warm during the days, sunny with a high around 8,000.

Light Wind and Colder at night. Stick around. There's more to come. I see. On WN.W.N. Michael Hill. An analysis by the Education News site, Chalkbeat says student enrollment in Newark Public Schools is way up and is changing the makeup of students in the district. This comes as districts across the USA are reporting a decline in student enrollment. With us now is the Newark reporter for Chalkpeed, Jesse Gomez.

Jesse, enrollment is increasing, but by how much exactly, and how is that changing the makeup of students in Newark Public Schools? Yeah, so Newark Public Schools has experienced nearly 20% increase in enrollment over the past five years. That's pretty rare because across the country, school districts are reporting a decline in students. And especially in Newark, we're seeing that there are more English language learners now, students with disabilities, and Hispanic students who now represent the largest student group in the district. Do we know why there's an increase over the last several years? Well, experts that I spoke with said that the city has seen an influx of Hispanic residents in recent years, and there's been a pretty big growth in students who speak English as a second language, but whether that those trends actually relate to New Works Enrollment boost is still pretty

unclear at the moment. How much is the pandemic still a factor in all for this? Yeah, I mean, after the pandemic, we did see school districts lose enrollment, and enrollment really dropped by a lot. And that was a trend that experts say even started before the pandemic. But in Newark, it seems to be the opposite trend. We're seeing post-pandemic an actual increase in students,

but specifically, again, in Hispanic students, students of disabilities, and English language learners. You highlight in your article that Newark Public Schools enters its fifth year of local control this school year. How could that be impacting enrollment in? student makeup. Yeah, definitely. So in the last five years, we've seen that Newark schools have shown a lot of progress. So back when the state took over Newark in 1995, state leaders had said that Newark was really at abysmal levels. Everything was down. But in the last five years, we've seen

graduation rates are up, chronic absenteeism has dropped. And of course, enrollment has grown, along with test scores, improving pretty steadily. Now, what's important here is as enrollment grows, that also means that there are more needs of students. And so the district is responsible for setting up the proper systems to make sure all of its students have the right support that they need. So it sounds like what you're saying, Jesse, is that there's a demand, of course, for more money because you have to educate more students.

So where is that going to come from? Are they going to raise taxes? What's the plan for that? Yeah. So in New Jersey, the school funding formula is based on a couple of things, but it's heavily based on student enrollment. So the more students, a district like Newark gets, usually will get more funding. So for a while now, Newark has been getting historically more funding year over year because of its enrollment growth.

But I think what is also kind of at the question here is if there are more students with disabilities, students who require extra services like English language learners, that also means that the district has an extra cost to not only educate its general population, but also its most vulnerable students. And of course, with more support means more money. And in this particular case with enrollment up and these improving statistics for the district, what impact is that having on school policy? Does it mean that they're meeting kids where they are, that they're educating kids? What does it mean? Yeah, yeah. And I think that that is sort of a very mixed question and depends on who is answering that question.

Well, last week there was actually public hearing for a proposal to extend Superintendent Roger Leone's contract to 2030. That proposal failed because there was also a lot of pushback from the community at that meeting about a lot of issues in schools that they felt haven't been addressed since Superintendent Leone has been in office. And so I think it's really important when we talk about, you know, are things working? We really have to kind of ask parents and students and teachers what they think. And a lot of folks that showed up at that meeting last week said that there were questions about how the district goes is responding to and to meeting all of their needs. Our guest has been, Jesse. Gomez, Newark Reporter for the Education

News site, Chalkby. Jesse, thank you. Thank you so much, Michael. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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