By Michèle De Meglio
New details have emerged about plans to alter the structure of a Marine Park elementary school. This fall, P.S. 207 will not vacate its home at 4011 Fillmore Avenue and reopen at the recently-closed St. Thomas Aquinas School, as was reported in last week’s edition of this paper based on information provided by school sources. Instead, P.S. 207 will utilize both buildings. In September, P.S. 207 will relocate its pre-k and kindergarten classes to St. Thomas’ former home at 1501 Hendrickson Street. Also that month, a sixth grade class will join the first- to fifth-graders at P.S. 207’s Fillmore Avenue building. The next year, for the 2007-2008 school year, first-graders will move to St. Thomas and the Fillmore Avenue building will host a seventh grade class. An eighth grade class will be created at the start of the 2008-2009 school year. With these changes, the St. Thomas building will hold P.S. 207’s youngest students and the Fillmore Avenue site will be a full-fledged first to eighth grade school. Parents were informed last spring about the possibility of P.S. 207 offering middle school grades. The city Department of Education (DOE) designed the project with the goal of decreasing overcrowding at nearby junior high schools. Several middle schools in District 22, which covers Mill Basin and Flatbush, are overcrowded, according to DOE data. Located at 2500 Nostrand Avenue, Andries Hudde School is at 128 percent capacity. W. Arthur Cunningham School, 1875 East 17th Street, is at 117.7 percent capacity. Roy H. Mann School, 1420 East 68th Street, is nearly at the brink. The school is at 96.1 percent capacity. On the other hand, Marine Park Junior High School at 1925 Stuart Street, is underutilized, with a capacity of just 75.8 percent. As P.S. 207 increases its student body to include middle school grades, the number of children attending other District 22 junior high schools is expected to decrease, thereby alleviating overcrowding. To many parents, P.S. 207’s foray into middle school grades is welcome because it will allow their children to attend classes in a building close to their homes. However, much to the chagrin of parents, the expansion of P.S. 207 was in jeopardy until recently. The project was given the green light to proceed on February 13 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced which school construction projects would be dropped because of insignificant funding. The money was resting on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) lawsuit, which ordered city schools to receive millions in additional funding each year. The state has not complied with the ruling, which has been appealed by Governor George Pataki. As a result, the DOE was left with only half of the funding necessary to complete the projects outlined in its $13.1 billion capital plan. In turn, 21 projects were chosen to be “delayed indefinitely,” as Bloomberg explained. P.S. 207 avoided this fate because of the relatively low cost of its expansion – less than $7 million. Several of the projects that were dropped were expected to cost upwards of $50 million.
