R’wood Campus Honors Late Rep. Ferraro
Set to open its doors next year, Ridgewood’s newest public school will bear the name of a former educator who became a trailblazer in both local and national politics.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan announced last Wednesday, Apr. 24, that P.S. 290—currently being constructed at the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Tonsor Street—will be named the Geraldine A. Ferraro Campus, honoring the first woman to serve as the vice presidential nominee for a major American political party.
Ferraro, who died in March 2011, was a former teacher and prosecutor before serving three terms in Congress as the representative of the Ninth Congressional District. She made history in 1984 when she accepted the vice presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.
Last year, as previously reported, Nolan wrote letters to Walcott, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and School Construction Authority President Lorraine Grillo requesting the naming of P.S. 290 for Ferraro, who began her career in public service as a teacher at P.S. 85 in Astoria.
“I have championed both this school and this name from the beginning and could think of no other person more fitting to have a school named in their honor,” Nolan said in a press release. “Geraldine Ferraro was a great role model to me and countless other women in politics, a champion for our community, city and state, a wonderful member of Congress, teacher, lawyer and an inspiration to us all.”
“I am thrilled to announce the name of this new campus after a Congresswoman who was a teacher at one point in her career and continues to be an inspiration to youngsters around the country who are interested in public service,” Walcott added.
A long-time resident of Forest Hills, Ferraro would transition from the classroom to the courtroom, earning a law degree and joining the Queens District Attorney’s office as an assistant prosecutor.
In 1978, Ferraro was elected to Congress, eventually serving three terms as the representative of the Ninth Congressional District, which then covered Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth, Middle Village and a host of other communities in central Queens. Among her achievements on Capitol Hill was securing a separate, Queens-based ZIP code for Ridgewood and Glendale (11385), which previously had its postal service based in Brooklyn.
A rising star in the Democratic Party, Ferraro was selected by former Vice President Walter Mondale to be his running mate in 1984 in their challenge of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush. She was the first woman and Italian-American ever to be nominated to the presidential ticket of a major political party.
Though the ticket lost in a landslide, Ferraro’s run was nonetheless a milestone for women in politics, as it opened the door for future female elected officials to seek the highest offices in the land.
Having given up her Congressional seat to run for vice president, Ferraro left office after 1984. She would make two unsuccessful bids for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992 and 1998. In 1994, she also served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.
Ferraro died on Mar. 26, 2011 at the age of 75 following a lengthy battle with cancer. She was previously honored with the renaming of the Long Island City post office in her honor. Last year, the intersection of Austin Street and Ascan Avenue— close to her former home in Forest Hills—was also renamed “Geraldine Ferraro Way.”
P.S. 290’s first classes are already in session at its temporary home in Maspeth’s I.S. 73. The school will relocate to its permanent home in Ridgewood in September 2014 with a school known as the “A.C.E. Academy for Scholars at the Geraldine Ferraro Campus.”
In addition to thanking Walcott, Bloomberg and Grillo, Nolan also expressed her gratitude to others who supported the tribute to Ferraro, including Dmytro Fedkowskyj, Queens member of the Panel for Educational Policy, and members of Community Board 5 and the Community Education Council of District 24.
