Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Parents Push for New Middle School in Sunnyside and Woodside

 Parents in Woodside and Sunnyside are calling for a new middle school in the neighborhood, which currently only has I.S. 125.
Parents in Woodside and Sunnyside are calling for a new middle school in the neighborhood, which currently only has I.S. 125.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Jeanmarie Evelly

WOODSIDE — His daughter is only in first grade, but Sean McGowan is already thinking about middle school.

The Woodside father and his wife, Deborah, have been campaigning for months to get a new middle school built in their neighborhood — saying the influx of new elementary school seats in the area will eventually mean more overcrowding at I.S. 125, the only middle school nearby.

The city opened new elementary school P.S. 343 on 42nd Street and 47th Avenue in September, and is building another elementary school on 39th Avenue that's expected to open this fall. An annex is also being built at crowded P.S. 11 in Woodside.

While the new elementary school seats are welcome in the area — which lies on the border between Districts 24 and 30, where schools are notoriously overcrowded — parents worry the city isn't building enough middle school seats to keep up.

"All these kids from these new schools need to go some place, and there's only one middle school," said McGowan, whose daughter attends P.S. 11 and whose son will go there next year.

"They’ve been slow to figure it out, but they’ve solved the elementary school problem in our area," he said. "After that they're going to have to solve the middle school problem."

The McGowans say they've collected more than 600 signatures on a petition asking the DOE to build a new middle school in the Woodside/Sunnyside area, which they plan to present to Chancellor Carmen Fariña Wednesday night at a Panel for Educational Policy meeting in Brooklyn.

Earlier this month, several local elected officials wrote a letter to the DOE in support of the cause.

"Parents in western Queens are rightly concerned about our lack of class seats," State Sen. Michael Gianaris said in a statement. "Our neighborhoods are growing and DOE must do more to ensure infrastructure keeps up."

Though the DOE is planning to build a 600-seat addition at the crowded I.S. 125, to open in 2017, McGowan says it will be used to accommodate kids that are currently taught in trailer classrooms there.

He's concerned that extra seats at the school ultimately won't be enough. Though I.S. 125 is located in District 24, it's a popular middle school choice for children attending P.S. 11, P.S. 152 and P.S. 151 in neighboring District 30, he says, and it will likely draw students from the two new elementary schools in the area as well.

The next closest middle schools are I.S. 10 in Astoria and P.S. 230 in Jackson Heights, though McGowan says many parents consider them too far of a commute from Sunnyside and Woodside.

According to the DOE, there are 12 public middle schools in District 30. The city is planning to add more than 1900 new school seats in the district in the next several years — including 1,000 seats in a new P.S./I.S. school, though its exact location has not been selected yet.

"We have committed to building over 1,900 new seats in District 30 alone, and we will continue to listen to families in the district — and across the city — to help address their needs," a DOE spokesman said.