After the city decided to postpone a vote on a proposal to bus hundreds of kindergarten students from PS 11 in Woodside to a building on the opposite side of the district in Astoria, parents, educational leaders, and elected officials are urging the new mayoral administration to work with them to craft a more suitable plan.
“It makes no sense,” said Martin Connolly, who has a son currently in kindergarten at the school and will have another son going into kindergarten next school year. “The way [the city Department of Education] handled this is disgraceful. In a school of 1,300 kids, you’re talking about 20 percent of the school being bussed out of the area to the furthest side of District 30.”
In an attempt to address the serious overcrowding problems that have long plagued the school at 54-25 Skillman Ave., the city is adding 300 seats in an annex at PS 11 in a construction project slated to begin in the summer of 2014. But, because the city has to remove a little more than a couple hundred seats at PS 211 in order to build the annex, about 230 kindergarten students are expected to be bussed about 2.5 miles to PS 171 in Astoria every day for class.
The city Panel for Educational Policy has to greenlight this plan before it can move forward, and the PEP has delayed its vote on the matter until at least the February meeting – relieving parents and others who are asking that the DOE consider placing the kindergarten students at the closer PS 313 in Sunnyside.
“There’s no perfect solution here,” said Isaac Carmignani, the chairman of the Community Education Council District 30 zoning committee. “We have to get new seats, but we’d love to find a way to reduce the bussing. The school 313 is closer and would potentially have the seats. We requested we get those seats instead of bussing to the west side of the district.”
Dmytro Fedkowskyj, the Queens borough president’s former appointee on the PEP, too encouraged the city to rethink its plan.
“While the proposal calls for the removal of trailers in exchange for a mini-building, which nobody can argue shouldn’t happen, it also proposes to displace the youngest students from PS 11 for two to three years,” Fedkowskyj said. “Since this business has been tabled for now, I’m hopeful the new administration will engage CEC 30 and concerned parents and fine tune the proposal. This proactive approach could ease the anxiety of parents and build back much needed trust with the school community.”
U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx), state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) and Assembly members Catherine Nolan (D-Ridgewood) and Marge Markey (D-Maspeth) this week penned a letter to City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña urging the DOE to reconsider.
“While the expansion of P.S. 11 in Woodside is a necessary investment in our children’s education, we need to ensure that its construction is as least disruptive as possible to our families,” Crowley said in a prepared statement.
Markey stressed similar points.
“A three-mile bus ride at rush hour is no way for children to begin their first year in school,” Markey said in the same statement. “The entire school community is delighted that the DOE is finally moving forward with this long-awaited construction, but there must be a better alternative location for these kindergartners.”
By Anna Gustafson
