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Sunnyside Parents Eye City Lot as Possible Site for New Middle School

 Parents are planning a rally Sunday on 48th Street and 37th Avenue, near a lot where they want the city to build a new middle school.
Parents are planning a rally Sunday on 48th Street and 37th Avenue, near a lot where they want the city to build a new middle school.
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Sean McGowan

SUNNYSIDE — Parents who've been pushing for the city to build a middle school in the Sunnyside/Woodside area say they've zeroed in on a potential location: a city-owned lot on 37th Avenue and 48th Street.

The group is hoping to rally the Department of Education to consider the location to accommodate the growing number of young families in the area, where new elementary schools have sprung up but where there's currently only one overcrowded middle school.

"I have a 7-year-old, and I need a place for her to go to school," said mom Deborah McGowan, founder of the Sunnyside Woodside Middle School Project, which has been pushing to get a new middle school built. 

I.S. 125 is currently the only one in the immediate area, and though a 600-seat addition is being built there to replace its trailer classrooms, McGowan and her husband worry it still won't have enough space by the time their daughter hits middle school age.

"What I'm envisioning and seeing right now is that it won't be enough," she said, pointing to the growing number of elementary school-aged kids in the area. 

The city's opened two new elementary schools in the past two years — one in Woodside and another in Sunnyside — to keep up with the growth, and is also building an addition at the overcrowded P.S. 11, where McGowan's daughter is a student.

The roughly 125,000-square-foot lot that her group is eyeing for a new school is located just north of the railroad tracks on 37th Avenue at 48th Street, next to a National Wholesale Liquidators. 

It's owned by the city's Department of Transportation, according to city records, and it appears to be used for storing lampposts and other equipment, McGowan said.

Since it's already owned by the city, it wouldn't require any complicated land sales to build a school there, she explained. And its proximity to the Sunnyside Railyards would be helpful should the mayor's proposal to develop affordable housing on the yards take shape.

"It actually would work really well on so many levels, for both city growth in the future and to meet current needs," McGowan said.

She and other parents are planning to rally next to the Wholesale Liquidators Sunday at 2 p.m. to draw attention to their cause. The event will feature live music and crafts for kids, she said.

"I like our community. I don't want it to get destroyed by a lack of resources," McGowan said. 

The DOE did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.