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City panel votes to close two Queens high schools

City panel votes to close two Queens high schools
Photo by Christina Santucci
By Rich Bockmann

A city panel voted in the wee hours of the morning Tuesday to approve the closures of two high schools at the Campus Magnet complex in Cambria Heights and place new schools in the buildings currently occupied by Newtown and Flushing high schools.

By votes of 8-4, the City Panel for Educational Policy approved the phase outs of the Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship High School as well as the Law, Government and Community Service High School just after 1 a.m. at a meeting in Brooklyn.

There are four different schools currently housed in the former Andrew Jackson High School building in Cambria Heights, and beginning next year the city Department of Education plans to phase the condemned institutions out over a three-year period while replacing them with a single school that will have a career and technical-education component.

The panel also voted 8-4 to reduce the size of the student bodies at Newtown and Flushing high schools in order to make way in their buildings for new schools that will address the needs of non-native English speakers.