By Peter Sorkin
The City Council Tuesday unanimously approved a proposal by the School Construction Authority to build a 704-seat elementary school in the heavily populated neighborhood after a subcommittee held a hearing on the issue Monday.
Construction is scheduled to begin next year on PS 239 at 17-15 Weirfield St., where the school will occupy the former Rockbottom store site. It will serve kindergarten through fifth-grade students and employ as many as 77 teachers and staff. It should be completed by 2003.
Jake Lynn, a City Council spokesman, said the elementary school would relieve overcrowding in School District 24 and create very little additional traffic in the area despite residents' fears to the contrary.
Currently there are six schools in Ridgewood, three of them elementaries.
“They all just agreed that Queens needs an additional elementary school to relieve overcrowding,” Lynn said in a phone interview Tuesday. “This was a good start. A lot of times with new schools there is a lot of contention about parking, but it's a nice agreement, and it will set aside an ample amount of parking spots.”
At a hearing Monday morning in the City Hall Committee Room, Councilman John Sabini (D-Jackson Heights), who chairs the Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses, said the new school was not a panacea but was desperately needed.
School District 24, which covers Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth and Middle Village and parts of Elmhurst, currently operates at 122 percent capacity and most of its schools operate at an average of 25 percent over capacity.
“There really isn't a perfect solution to this problem,” Sabini said. “There certainly has been some opposition, but Board 24 needs this school. We have to make do with what we can.”
The School Construction Authority is also planning various measures to improve traffic flow, including alterations to traffic signal timing and parking regulations near the site. These improvements, however, may do little to appease residents who have objected to the site for months.
At a Community Board 5 meeting in May, many residents expressed concerns about parking and traffic congestion and insisted the neighborhood already was too dangerously crowded for another school.
But Joseph Quinn, acting superintendent of School District 24, has repeatedly said the recent population boom in western Queens has wreaked havoc on the public school system.
According to Quinn's figures, the district will operate at 137 percent of capacity by 2002 and up to 168 percent of capacity in 2007.
At the City Council hearing Monday, Assistant District Superintendent August Saccoccio said the new school will alleviate congestion at PS 81, PS 88 and PS 68.
“[PS] 68 just had an extension put on this year and they're already at 113 percent capacity,” Saccoccio said. “[This school] is much needed. It's a growing area. The school is very well planned and there were a lot of things to take into consideration.”
