23 New School Sites Advanced At Borough Hall Shulman Calls For Greater Public Support For New Schools

Greater public support to build new schools was called for by Borough President Claire Shulman at a Queens Civic Congress luncheon.
Shulman told Congress members that Queens educators are engaged in two battles: Educating 270,000 youngsters and trying to squeeze them into 240,000 seats.
Some Queens school districts have schools that are operating at 130 percent of capacity. Some elementary schools are so crowded that they conduct a special mid-year registration for September kindergarten entries.
Shulman said that Queens had been traditionally shortchanged in terms of new school construction. This problem, she declared, was being compounded by a two decades long heavy immigration influx, as well as to pockets of local resistance who object to increased traffic, noises and parking limitations that come with the schools.
Torn by this space shortage, Shulman has established an emergency educational "war room" in Borough Hall, where educators meet regularly to plan construction and funding strategies for a current listing of 23 new schools.
At last Mondays meeting, progress was reported in the acquisition of six sites:
One site in the former Edwards store in Maspeth.
 One site in the former Stevens site in Woodside.
 Three school sites in Creedmoor Hospital.
 One school in the Forest City-Ratner site in Woodhaven.
"There are some folks who say not here," Shulman told the civic activists, "but we have to take whatever sites are available and build them schools. Our children need the seats."