By Alex Christodoulides
The h-shaped complex will house a 700-student junior high school and a 1,000-student high school with the capacity for 200 special needs students, for a total of 1,900 new seats.Work to level and break ground began last fall at the roughly triangular site on Metropolitan Avenue, 69th Avenue, Sybilla Street, 70th Road and the tracks of the New York and Atlantic Railway freight line and the Long Island Rail Road's defunct Rockaway Beach branch.”The schools are scheduled to open in 2010,” said School Construction Authority spokeswoman Margie Feinberg. “We're on schedule but we don't have a blow-by-blow” of what steps have been completed in the construction.A source familiar with the project said that the high school is one of few in the city, and probably one of the last, to be locally zoned.That guarantee has not been made for the junior/high school, which is expected to draw students from throughout District 28, which comprises Forest Hills and Rego Park as well as parts of Ridgewood, Glendale, Middle Village, Ozone Park and Jamaica. The DOE said that most students for these district-wide schools typically come from a 1.5-mile radius around the site.Feinberg said that the decision of whom to admit has not been made yet for the junior/high school and would likely not be made this year or next.”We don't make that decision until we get closer to the opening date,” she said.Reach reporter Alex Christodoulides by e-mail at achristodoulides@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
