CEC 24 President Nick Comaianni, standing, addresses the crowd gathered at Monday night’s meeting. Phil Corso
A community hearing on rezoning Corona schools drew a hefty crowd as parents and administrators heard the city’s plans to build a new school in the neighborhood.
Advocates have long been calling for a permanent fix to the notorious overcrowding within District 24, and members of the Community Education Council joined them Monday in hearing the Education Department’s proposal to create a zone for a new elementary school on 43rd Avenue that would open for the 2015-2016 school year. The plan received little to no opposition at PS 19 on Roosevelt Avenue with all school and community voices united behind the same cause.
“Rezoning has been a big problem everywhere, throughout the entire city,” said Nick Comaianni, CEC 24 president. “This must be our seventh one in District 24 alone.”
Comaianni and the council – a parent organization that advises on schools in Corona, Glendale, Elmhurst, Maspeth, Middle Village and Ridgewood – will ultimately be responsible for approving the zoning changes, which should come to a final vote at the body’s May 27 meeting, the president said. But first, he said members would be collecting community feedback and assessing the ultimate impact on the Corona community.
Emily Ades of the city Department of District Planning outlined the rezoning plan during the CEC 24 meeting. Phil Corso
Emily Ades of the city Department of District Planning outlined the rezoning plan, which would redraw zoning lines for PS 307, PS 16, PS 19, and PS 13 and, city officials argued, therefore reduce the need to overflow students into other schools outside the neighborhood. This new building in Corona was expected to be home to nearly 600 students by the time it reaches its full capacity in the year 2017, the DOE said.
The change would only affect incoming kindergarten students – or anyone new to city schools – as of 2015 and allow current students to remain at their schools, Ades said. The city would also be taking sibling priority into account on a case-by-case basis to ensure family members stay together, as determined by CEC 24, Ades said.
And, because of the increasing number of residents living within the various zones in the greater Corona community, Ades said enrollment at PS 307, PS 16, PS 19, and PS 13 was not expected to change. The rezoning will, however, decrease zone sizes, and therefore lower the number of students placed on kindergarten waitlists, she said.
PS 19 Principal Genie Calibar said one of her school’s top concerns was to ensure the city addresses the nearly 500 kids who use portable trailers as classrooms, which sit in a makeshift schoolyard behind the building along Roosevelt Avenue.
“They cannot stay there forever,” she said of the students, who trek back and forth between the outdoor trailers, no matter what the weather brings. “We are grateful to have been taken into consideration but this is a problem that has been growing for many years.”
Comaianni said he and the council were well aware of the trailer concerns, and getting the students out of them was one of the ultimate goals. Rezoning and reducing overcrowding and class sizes, he said, was a major step in that direction.
“When the parents have no opposition, we have no opposition,” Comaianni said. “I didn’t hear one person opposed to the plan, aside from the trailers. And they’re right. We have been trying to get rid of the trailers for a long time, but the population there keeps on growing. Every time we build a school, it just fills up and the seats remain the same.”
The city projected that rezoning would reduce the kindergarten class size at PS 19 from 413 currently to anywhere between 350 and 360 by the time it is complete. Similar dips between 20 or more seats were projected for several other schools in the nearby zones, the city said.
By Phil Corso
