Posted: Mar 08 2012 at 6:44pm | Views: 20477
Parents at Parkchester's P.S. 119 fear more displaced children when new middle school is added to neighborhood.
When Harold Flores went to Parkchester's Public School 119 in the early 1990s, he was shuttled to a nearby school, rain or shine, to eat lunch and attend gym class.
Two decades later, PS 119 children in colorful coats, hats and mittens were being herded Wednesday across Watson Ave. to Junior High School 125’s cafeteria and classrooms.
“Imagine from then to now, still having this problem,” said Lourdes Flores, Harold’s mother, now the parent coordinator at PS 119 in Parkchester. “We didn’t have space at that time, and now the community has grown a lot.”
Now, the Department of Education is proposing to put a new middle school inside JHS125, and parents fear that their children will be displaced and bused out of their neighborhood.
“Now you want to bring in a new middle school?” asked Luis Sepulveda, a community activist. “Where are you going to place students? You see kids herded like sheep from one school to the next school.”
More than 1,000 kids attend PS 119, which has a capacity for 500 students. One hundred students learn in portable classrooms, and JHS125 serves as an overflow site, providing space for 400 PS 119 students.
Sepulveda has been organizing parents throughout the month to prepare them for the DOE’s public hearing Thursday.
On Tuesday night, about 30 concerned parents met at Community Board 9’s office on Turnbull Ave. Everything was translated to Spanish and Bengali, for the large Bangladeshi population.
They plan to rally at the meeting, carrying protest signs.
“I like the bathroom sign idea,” said Sepulveda to a parent who made a poster highlighting that the school has only two bathrooms - one for girls and one for boys - to serve more than 400 students.
The rally and public hearing, which starts at 6 p.m., will be held at JHS 125 at 1111 Pugsley Ave.
According to the DOE, it plans to reduce enrollment at JHS 125 by about 300 students over a three-year period "to help improve student performance" at the struggling school, which received a "C" grade on its most recent progress report. This will ensure that, as the new middle school moves in, there will be no net increase in students, according to the agency.
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