The city is moving forward with its plan to move half of the 400 students from an annex into Richmond Hill High School’s main building despite parents and educators opposed to the proposal. File Photo
The city Panel for Educational Policy approved the Education Department’s controversial proposal to reform Richmond Hill High School’s usage of an annex that administrators argued has helped alleviate overcrowding there.
Panel members met at Taft Educational Campus in the Bronx Tuesday night for the group’s monthly meeting, giving a seal of approval to a measure that would move nearly half of the 400 students from an annex back into the main building in order to make room for a new public high school known as Epic High School North. The approval came despite wide opposition from parents and educators, who stood up earlier this month to convince the PEP to side with them.
Cheryl Rose, co-president of the Richmond Hill High School Parent Teacher Association, was one of the leaders in the opposition movement and bashed the city over the proposal at a meeting earlier this month in Queens. She argued that moving 200 students into the main building would affect the safety and comfort within the learning environment, leaving the students stranded.
The city’s original proposal was to move all of the students from the annex just blocks away, which first opened to alleviate overcrowding in the school, into the main building at 89-30 114 St. for the 2014-2015 school year. But parents and educators’ protests went far enough to force the DOE to revise its plan, sending roughly half of the students to the building instead, the city said.
Vishnu Mahadeo, president of the school’s Parent Teacher Association, argued that sending half the kids back into the building would force them to implement multiple schedules, phasing them in throughout the day to alleviate overcrowded classrooms. A system like that, he argued, was a failed experiment the school had tried once before without results.
By Phil Corso
