By Adam Kramer
Community School District 29 will celebrate the building of the first of three new schools for the district at a groundbreaking Saturday.
PS 270, which should be ready by September 2003, will be located at 234th Street and Merrick Boulevard in Laurelton and house 704 students from prekindergarten through fifth grade. The three new schools should help to alleviate the severe overcrowding that has plagued the district and the borough.
“Of course, we are all excited it is the first new school in a lot of years,” said School Board President Nathaniel Washington. “We want the community to come together and celebrate at the groundbreaking.”
He said the school should relieve the overcrowding in the surrounding schools — PS 176, PS 38 and PS 156. Washington said the board would continue to look for possible sites for new construction and work toward getting some additions put onto the existing school buildings.
“I can’t remember ever seeing a new school being built in District 29,” he said, “additions but not a new school.”
Rose Walker, special assistant to the district administrator, Michael Johnson, said the construction of the three new schools will help tackle the overcrowding problem and has been welcomed by the community.
“I don’t know if the building of new schools is real to people yet,” she said “All of the district’s parents want a smaller class size, but the district can’t do class reduction.”
The three new schools and additions on two existing schools for School District 29, which covers Queens Village, Springfield Gardens, Rosedale, Laurelton and parts of Jamaica and Fresh Meadows, will create 2,642 new classroom seats by 2003.
District 29’s 23 elementary schools and five middle schools, which provide classroom seats for 27,000 students, are operating at a utilization rate of 130 percent.
PS 263, another of the new schools, will be built at 222-21 Jamaica Ave. in Queens Village, the site of the old Best Ford car dealership. and PS 268, the third school, will be at 175-02 Jamaica Ave. in Jamaica
The new elementary schools will be magnet schools drawing students from all over the district. The curriculum, according to Johnson, will be based on the multiple intelligence theory. This method of teaching will offer the schools students additional means of learning beyond the “traditional verbal and mathematical-oriented curriculum.”
Some of the accessories to be built in the new school are a dance studio, music rehearsal room and state-of-the art science lab. In addition, computers will be installed in the classrooms and library for all of the students.
The construction of the new schools is good news for the district, which has been in a state of turmoil for the last few years.
The school district has been in limbo since Superintendent Celestine Miller was fired in February 1999 by then-Chancellor Rudy Crew for delaying to report that an 8-year-old boy had gone into a Rosedale school carrying a loaded gun. Miller was recently indicted on bid-rigging charges involving computer sales to schools under her control.
After Miller left, District 29 had an acting interim superintendent, but Schools Chancellor Harold Levy suspended the school board, which was reinstated after Johnson arrived on the scene.
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
