“Save our school! Save our school!”
Students, administrators and politicians recently gathered on the steps of Jamaica High School protesting the school’s potential closing. With chants, tambourines and megaphones students and administrators hoped the noise they were making trying to save their school would not fall on deaf ears.
“No one is going to stop us from what we want to do with our futures,” said Mariela Argueta, a sophomore at the school. “It’s not fair.”
Marching around the schools flagpole on Friday, March 18 around 100 students brandishing signs were joined by State Senator Tony Avella and Jamaica High School graduate and City Councilmember Leroy Comrie.
“We are here to say to the city of New York we’re not going to let you close Jamaica High School,” said Avella.
Jamaica High School opened in the 1890s and the building where the high school currently resides opened in 1927, receiving landmark status last year.
“There is no reason why [the DOE] should close this high school,” said Comrie, citing the rising tests scores the school has seen.
The students’ spirit and willingness to fight impressed Comrie.
“We will stand together,” said sophomore Elvin Ventura. “We have the right to have this school open.”
Students, many of whom have followed family members to the school, felt the school is being bullied, but instead of tearing them apart the fight has brought the student body together as a family, they said.
“I just hope our school stays open,” said Ventura, who lives in the area and is unsure of where he would end up next year if the school is closed.
Jamaica High School is one of over 20 schools slated to close following a February vote by the Panel for Educational Policy to close underperforming schools.
Comrie spoke about Jamaica not receiving every resource and chance to become a successful school echoing what he wrote in a Queens Courier op-ed.
“Since 2003, Jamaica High has had a 63 percent reduction in school support staff,” he wrote. “It is my contention that the Department of Education has purposely employed a systematic deconstruction of Jamaica High School by co-locating three smaller schools within Jamaica’s premises. These smaller schools were then given incredible resources, such as laptops and Smart Boards, as well as priority classroom and office space.”
Queens Collegiate, High School for Community Leadership and Hillside Arts and Letters Academy share space within the building of Jamaica High School.
“What is being done to this wonderful institution is just wrong,” said Comrie.
“We need to save Jamaica High School.”
