Proposed Sunset Park Elementary School Gets Unanimous Community Backing

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — At a Wednesday meeting, parents, educators, community members and elected officials overwhelmingly backed the city's plan to build a new 300-seat elementary school at 4525 8th Ave., the site of a shuttered Ctown supermarket.

The school would serve students of District 15, where rampant overcrowding has been an issue for decades, according to locals. District 15 includes Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Gowanus, Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill.

Wednesday's meeting was hosted by Community Board 12, which represents the 8th Avenue site, and the School Construction Authority (SCA), which is in charge of building new schools.

The school construction proposal is currently undergoing a public comment process that will last through Feb. 26. Those wishing the comment can email thoughts to sites@nycsca.org, or mail comments to: New York School Construction Authority, 30-30 Thomson Ave., Long Island City, NY 11101, Attention: Ross J. Holden.

Tamar Smith, who handles external affairs for the SCA, said the comment period will be followed by an environmental review, which must be conducted to ensure the site is suitable for a school. At that point, design and construction can take place. Assuming everything goes as planned, it will still likely be approximately three years before the school can open its doors, she said.

Maria Roca, a member of local group Make Space for Quality Schools in Sunset Park, praised the proposal, saying that "we have failed our children for decades" by allowing overcrowding to persist.

Melissa Hart, an assistant principal at Sunset Park's P.S. 169, spoke of the impact overcrowding, and a resulting lack of space, have on the special needs students she works with.

"Our physical therapist works with children in a cold hallway," Hart said. The school's speech therapist works with five children at once, while social workers struggle to find "any nook and cranny" where they can have private conversations with parents.

Kindergarten teacher Jamie Fidler said that because of a lack of space in the cafeteria, her students are slotted to each lunch at 10 a.m., while a third kindergarten teacher noted that his "kids get gym once or twice a week," and "don't ever go outside" because there's no room for recess periods.

"We need the seats, we need the space," Hart said, before another P.S. 169 teacher presented the SCA with 767 petition signatures she had collected this week in support of the proposal.

The petition signatures presented

The school needs of one District 15 community impacts adjacent neighborhoods as well, Superintendent Anita Skop said. For example, in Sunset Park, students, many of them children of immigrants, are bused out of the neighborhood to other schools at 7 a.m., sometimes separating them from their siblings.

"We are running out of space to overflow kids to," Skop said, adding that the 8th Avenue school "is profoundly necessary."

Sunset Park Councilman Carlos Menchaca spoke in favor of the plan, as did a staffer for Sunset Park Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez. The CB 12 committee in charge of the meeting also voted to support it.

According to an SCA estimate distributed at the meeting (embedded below), the population of pre-K to fifth grade students in District 15 will continue growing in the coming years, hitting 21,841 by the 2021-2022 school year. The agency estimates that District 15 needs to create 7,546 new school seats to reduce current overcrowding and keep up with demand. Besides the Ctown site, the SCA says its currently investigating eight other area sites it believes have the potential to host new schools.

Considering the district's need, one CB 12 member asked why the school, which is projected to be about three stories, couldn't be taller so as to accommodate more than 300 kids. Smith, the SCA staffer, said the agency doesn't like to construct schools taller than a few stories because they're difficult for young children to navigate, while Skop noted that they're also harder to evacuate in an emergency.

Skop said that while the new school will definitely be an elementary school, it hasn't been decided if it will also be home to pre-K kids. Skop added that she's hoping the district will be able to construct a new pre-K center for young learners.

Asked if the process of finding new sites for schools is moving quickly enough, Skop said, "I think the city is moving as quickly as it can."

Pictured at top: the Ctown at 4525 8th Ave. Image via Google Maps.