Last night at a meeting hosted by the Gantry Parents Association, President Jimmy Van Bramer made the announcement that a new school will be built in LIC. It will be a freestanding school ((not embedded/attached to an apartment building)) located in Parcel F of Hunters Point South. Parcel F is located at the southern end of HPS, near Newtown Creek. The expected opening is 2020-2021 and it is being built with the flexibility to service grades K-8 with a final determination made closer to opening based on the needs at that time.
In the meantime, the DOE/SCA (School Construction Authority) are in the midst of negotiations to find a temporary location for more pre-k & K seats for September 2016, and it has been “essentially sited” per Lorraine Grillo, President of the SCA, who also attended.
Despite these announcements, the fate of PS78 vis-a-vis truncation is still unknown, but both JVB and Kathy Nolan, who was also at the meeting, made it clear that they are pulling all the strings/favors they can down at City Hall to keep it as is.
In addition, a second school will be built in LIC, and a formal announcement will be made regarding that exact location and other details in a matter of weeks.
This should come as some pretty good news for parents, but as the politicians reminded all those in attendance “keep on pressing.” With that in mind, now that the exact location has been determined for the school in Hunters Point, it’s time to continue the fight for a community center with a swimming pool in Hunters Point South, Phase 2 (aka The TF Cornerstone project). As was promised in the original planning for Queenswest (see footnote 8).
But we’ll save that for another time, because school’s off for President’s Week and I’m getting out of this cold and heading to Waikiki. Aloha!
Leave a Reply