Instead of getting up early to head to the pool or beach, youngsters throughout the borough and city, were waking up early on Wednesday, September 8 to head back to school. “I’m excited,” said 8-year-old Tatiana Ochoa, who was walking into her first day of school at P.S. 242, the Leonard P. Stavisky Early Childhood School in Flushing. “I think I’m gonna have fun!”
More than 1 million schoolchildren throughout the city boarded buses or got into their parents cars to head back to school – some entering new buildings that were just completed.
In Queens, six new locations including a new Gateway High School Building in Jamaica, which city School’s Chancellor Joel Klein visited Wednesday morning, and the Metropolitan Avenue Campus in Forest Hills, opened for the first time.
The Metropolitan Avenue Campus, which has been in the works for nearly two decades, will house a middle school and a high school as well as a separate high school and will create an additional 1,911 seats for students in Queens.
“Amazing,” was what Kathryn Thome, a parent who has been involved in advocating for the school for many years, said about the new facility.
“To go from an idea that the community has backed for a long time to it being not just an actual dream but to being a school that students will be learning in an actual environment is really impressive,” Thome said.
Overall, the city added more than 4,100 new seats in Queens, and approximately 17,000 seats in 26 locations throughout the city.
While the new seats throughout the borough are welcomed additions, some feel they do not address the overcrowding that many say are plaguing Queens schools, particularly high schools in northeast Queens.
“While I applaud the efforts of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein in increasing the number of school seats city-wide, I am disappointed that there are no new seats for any of our students from Flushing to Whitestone to Bayside,” said Assemblymember Grace Meng. “As the representative for the area where the new Flushing Commons will exist, as well as numerous other new housing developments, it is imperative and crucial for the future of our city that lack of school seats is taken into account when new developments are planned.”
But, students won’t have to get too comfortable in their school routine just yet as schools throughout the city will be closed the next two days for the Jewish holidays.
