Schools are stuffed

About 11 a.m. everyday, all 3,674 students of Forest Hills High School file through the building built to hold 2,519 kids. The high school is so crowded that students are dismissed several minutes early from lunch, to lessen congestion.
“It gets very busy in the halls,” said Principal Stephen Frey, explaining the school’s staggered openings that extend the building’s hours from 7 a.m. to after 5 p.m. “Overcrowding is a problem in all large city high schools.”
With Albany’s refusal to pay a court-mandated $1.8 billion in 2006 and $1.7 billion in 2007 to the city schools’ construction budget, there is no solution that will lessen the overcrowding in the borough’s 119 maxed-out schools.
Like Forest Hills, several schools including Francis Lewis High School; Long Island City High School; Bayside High School; Newtown High School, and Benjamin Cardozo High School are forced to accommodate 1,000 more students then their buildings were designed for – some with close to 2,000 more.
“We would very much like to be a school of 2,500 students,” said Cardozo Principal Rick Hallman, quickly adding that the school has worked hard to maintain quality instruction by using four trailers as temporary classrooms outside the building. When asked if Queens’ schools needed more seats, Hallman said, “Yes, yes, yes.”
For parents, overcrowding puts a visible strain on their children’s education.
With nine new Queens schools axed from the city’s five-year capital plan and construction delays at 11 more Queens schools, the borough could lose almost 8,000 school seats. In addition, nine Catholic parochial schools have closed since 2005, and two more – American Martyrs School in Bayside and Queen of Peace in Flushing – will close this fall.
“We are going to continue to see our school systems bursting at the seams,” said Councilman Dennis Gallagher, who will rally with Councilwoman Melinda Katz and Queens parents at the site of one proposed school planned on Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village which cannot be built due to the lack of funds. With 77 percent of schools holding more students than their buildings’ capacities, District 24 suffers from the worst overcrowding in the city.
The shelved Metropolitan Avenue school would have added 1,002 seats alone.
Gallagher has worked with several schools in his district to look at their space and plan for additions to their buildings.
“We are going to need these additions if new schools aren’t built,” he said, adding that space is so short that the P.S. 113 guidance counselor has her office in a converted bathroom.
Adding on space and even making necessary repairs in Queens schools, however, will not happen easily without the additional court-mandated funds from Albany and Governor George Pataki.
City politicians and The Queens Courier are urging Queens residents to call their State representatives and demand the funding the courts have ruled the schools should receive. For more information, visit https://fundourschools.org.