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Forest Hills School Named After Highway Hoping to Shed Moniker

 P.S. 196 was named The Grand Central Parkway School because of its proximity to the highway.
P.S. 196 was named The Grand Central Parkway School because of its proximity to the highway.
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DNAinfo.com/Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska

QUEENS — A Forest Hills elementary school named after the Grand Central Parkway wants to officially change its name to The School with a Heart, a title that the school has already been printing on t-shirts and newsletters.

When P.S. 196, one of the most coveted schools in the neighborhood, opened in 1953, it was named The Grand Central Parkway School because of its proximity to the highway. The city still recognizes that as the official school name.

But the school would prefer to go by it's "true name," The School with a Heart — a name that was first coined in the 1990s by then principal Sylvia Hammer and had been used as its unofficial name ever since, school officials said Monday.

“We decided that it would be great to make [the change] official,” said Catherine Koatz, assistant principal at the school. “It’s a much nicer name.”

Last week, Community Education Council 28 voted unanimously to support the proposal to change the name and now it's up to school chancellor Carmen Farina to approve it, the school said.

“We work closely with school communities to offer support on these issues and the request will be considered when it is received," a spokesman for the Department of Education said in an email.

Last December, the school administration asked its students, parents and teachers to weigh in on the proposal, and "the majority of our community was really excited about it," Koatz said.

If the change is approved, the school hopes to start officially using its new name in the 2015-2016 school year.

“It would be an important milestone for us all to be able to celebrate our true name, which better reflects who we are as a school and community,” Koatz and principal Susan Migliano wrote in a letter to the school community last December.