From the NY Post:Francis Lewis HS in Queens will be the city's most overcrowded when classes start Wednesday -- cramming an astounding 4,700 kids into facilities designed for only 2,572, barely half as many.
The school's efforts to accommodate the crowds border on the comical, but critics aren't laughing.
Hundreds will crowd into eight trailers in the schoolyard and "half-classrooms" -- large rooms divided in two by thin wallboard.
Incredibly, Jamaica HS, a mere two miles away, is 400 students under capacity.
At Francis Lewis, which boasts an 82 percent four-year graduation rate, more than 13,000 kids applied for admission last year.
"The city doesn't want to say no to the parents," Goldstein said, referring to an application process that has kids rank their top 12 preferences for high schools. "It wants to place students where they want to go, because we really are a great school. But this is a cancer. We will reach a breaking point. Eventually, it will affect the quality of the education.
DOE spokesman Will Havemann admitted, "Francis Lewis is certainly too crowded," adding that the city is building nearly 10,000 new high-school seats in Queens to fix just such problems.
And from the Daily News:
The trailers parked in city public-school yards to ease overcrowding are themselves packed with too many students, according to data obtained by the Daily News.
At least 6,400 students attended class in trailers filled beyond capacity, according to the latest available figures from the 2007-08 school year obtained bythe Independent Budget Office (IBO).
Queens had the most trailers overall, with 166 trailers at 59 schools.
So long as we're vibrant and diverse, who cares about this?
40 comments:
Leave it to Crapper to make school overcrowding a racial issue. Bring on the bigotry! I guess we should only allow white kids to live here and go to school, because that would solve the overcrowding problem.
It looks like a 1900s photo of steerage in a boat bound for New York.
How overcrowded can you get before it affects the quality of our public school system?
Mayor Mike seems more concerned with providing adolescent day care and teaching to the test, as is evident in this sardine can environment, than he is with education.
VOTE THE BUM OUT!
Hey - it's great school! My 17-year old nephew goes there and can't make change for a dollar. Social promotion baby. There is no discipline at that place. He's in special ed because no one ever slapped the shit out of him! This kid has no fear of anything and always has the latest cell phone. I don't get it.
Anonymous #1: How did I make this a racial issue?
The point is that tweeding local pols and real estate-dependent local newspapers are so focused on presenting the borough as "vibrant and diverse" that they intentionally overlook or understate issues such as this.
If a kid is having phys ed in a hallway because his gym has been subdivided into classrooms then it doesn't matter what race his classmates are; it's a disservice to all of them.
Ultimately I think it's the parent's fault. Queens NEEDS more schools, particularly high schools. If parents demanded it, it would get done. The problem is this city is full of parents that:
a) couldn't give a sh#@
b) can't speak English
c) couldn't give a sh#@ again.
IG - using aristotalean / syllogistic reasoning:
a) couldn't give a sh#@
b) can't speak English
therefore
c) couldn't give a sh#@ in English.
Crapper, you criticized Queens being "diverse." Diversity in this context refers to racial and ethnic backgrounds. You really didn't understand that?
You complain that schools are overcrowded and you also complain that the city is building new high schools in Queens.
Ms. Italy, way to show everyone that our teachers lead by example in acting and speaking respectably.
Leave it to Crapper to make school overcrowding a racial issue. Bring on the bigotry! I guess we should only allow white kids to live here and go to school, because that would solve the overcrowding problem.
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Maybe we should say nothing and smile vacantly when a member of the politico-development complex says we need another million people and really really important things like bike lanes.
Afterall, their kids don't go to these schools or emergency rooms.
As we have said many many times here, their daughters rum up more on daddy's credit card bill awhoring on Spring Break than most of the parents of these kids make in a month.
THE POINT IS ONLY CRAPPY IS ON THIS ISSUE!
Crapper, you criticized Queens being "diverse." Diversity in this context refers to racial and ethnic backgrounds. You really didn't understand that?
I never criticized Queens for being diverse. You have poor reading comprehension skills.
You complain that schools are overcrowded and you also complain that the city is building new high schools in Queens.
I complained that the City is building a high school on a contaminated site in Maspeth where there are 2 more schools within 4 blocks. I haven't complained about other schools being built in Queens.
You lose.
I think this says more about the quality of New York City's public high schools than about overdevelopment. People come from all over the borough to go to that and other good schools. I knew someone who took 3 buses to go from Howard Beach to Bayside HS because she didn't want to get stuck in the hellhole that is John Adams HS. If all zoned schools provided a decent and safe education, FL and Cardozo wouldn't be busting at the seams. I'm not saying we don't need more schools in Queens, but we could start by improving what we already have.
Forget the diversity crap -- let's just all pray that none of these schools has a fire; these kids will never get out safely!
Anonymous said...
"Ms. Italy, way to show everyone that our teachers lead by example in acting and speaking respectably."
Well the good thing is that I'm NOT speaking to students now am I? And why pick on me? Are you one of those worthless parents I was speaking of?
How do you know you are not speaking to students, Ms. Italy? You are posting on a public website. Are you assuming that no students visit this site? Is your position that it is ok to be crass and use foul language in public as long as you are not addressing the comments to students? Great values there, Ms. Italy.
Crapper - if you did not intend to appear critical of diversity, then you need to learn better writing skills.
Please tell me which new high school construction in Queens you have supported. And your claim that you don't support the new Maspeth school because the site is contaminated is not convincing. That is just a pretense because you don't want the activity in the area.
Sorry pal, the onus is on you to prove that I don't want any more high schools to be built.
So find an instance where I said building a new high school is a bad idea.
Building them is not going to solve the problem anyway. We will always be short of space so long as we continue overdeveloping and overpopulating without planning ahead of time for the growth. We need to turn off the spigot.
Nowhere have I said that being diverse is bad. It's a fact that Queens has been diverse since the 1600s. I grew up with diversity. It's not something new. But why pols and newspapers act like it is and that it's the answer to our problems is a good question.
Sorry pal, the onus is on you to prove that I don't want any more high schools to be built.
So find an instance where I said building a new high school is a bad idea.
Building them is not going to solve the problem anyway. We will always be short of space so long as we continue overdeveloping and overpopulating without planning ahead of time for the growth. We need to turn off the spigot.
Nowhere have I said that being diverse is bad. It's a fact that Queens has been diverse since the 1600s. I grew up with diversity. It's not something new. But why pols and newspapers act like it is and that it's the answer to our problems is a good question.
Miss Italy censored herself. Which is more than I can say for the public school students that congregate in front of my building every morning as they wait for the bus.
Sounds like someone needs to take a laxative.
Crappy - you are good at covering the news, but your opinions are so half-assed that I never can take you seriously.
YOu railed almost every day during the maspeth HS hearings, and now you want new High Schools?
You mention "planning". How do you propose to do it "right"? Do you have any numbers or statistics or methods you would like to share?
You are simply a NIMBY and nothing more.
First you said I hated diversity, then when that argument didn't work you claimed I didn't want new high schools to be built anywhere in Queens. Couldn't find any instances of that, so now according to you, I am a NIMBY.
I am not against a high school in Maspeth. I am against it at the location suggested. I thought using the closed Holy Cross site was a good idea. I also thought somewhere in the western end of Maspeth would also be a better location because it would not be near the other 2 schools. The Northern Blvd/Broadway site was also a good suggestion as there is adequate transportation, which the site on 74th Street does not have. That site is also contaminated. All of this was hashed out months ago on this blog, but apparently you only chose to see what you wanted to see back then as well as now.
Once again, your argument fails miserably.
Your looking at 12,000 @ 70%Latino in that school in 7 years.
More who dont belong here in the first place are having 4+ jackpot babys to work the system.
There will not be enough jobs for 1/2 these people, its impossible
Queens is steamrolling toward serious overpopulation, crime and sure bankrupsy like citys Los Angelos and Puebla Mexico.
Why does this mayor and the Ted Kennedy Dems want this death sentance
I am the one that said you criticize diversity. I am not the one who called you a NIMBY, although I agree with that.
Time for a history lesson for you Crapper. Diversity in this area is relatively new. In the 1960s, Queens was over 90% white, mostly central and western European ancestry. Things slowly changed through the 1970s and it wasn't until the 1980s and 1990s that ethnic diversity became as balanced as it is today.
Your statement that you are not against diversity is a joke. You have criticized every reference to the benefits of being vibrant and diverse more times than you can count.
How can you be so disingenuous?
"Your statement that you are not against diversity is a joke. You have criticized every reference to the benefits of being vibrant and diverse more times than you can count."
I have consistently objected to the use of those hackneyed phrases to describe Queens. ONCE AGAIN, and hopefully for the last time, they are used by politicians and newspapers to promote the borough as some kind of happy land in order to divert attention from real issues. No one really cares if the area they live in is "vibrant" and "diverse" - especially not immigrants. They care about being healthy, safe, having good schools, good transportation and good quality of life just like people born in America do.
The entire COUNTRY is becoming more vibrant and diverse because of changing immigration patterns, so I fail to see why continually hyping the vibrancy and diversity of Queens is so important or why it is necessary to point out what the percentages of each group in the borough are.
We all live in the same borough - big deal! Most of the groups here live in seclusion and rarely interact. From the Irish of the Rockaways to the Colombians of Jackson Heights, everyone pretty much keeps to themselves within their ethnic cliques. It makes crimes harder to solve and makes it more difficult to teach kids in schools. But let's not dwell on that - we're vibrant and diverse!
And whenever a megadevelopment is planned, you can be sure that "creating a vibrant community" will be used as a reason to do it. But check out the megadevelopment projects proposed by the city or state and you'll see just the opposite happened - from Battery Park City to Metrotech.
So go ahead and continue to use those words with aplomb. I'll continue to criticize it and stick to the issues that are having a detrimental affect on Queens. I guess you missed the instances when I railed against developers abusing and killing illegal immigrants. Or when I wrote about how landlords are getting away with hurting low income tenants - mostly minorities.
How about that white landlord of the College Point mansion who has denied her tenants basic services for years?
No, no, let's just criticize the Crapper for objecting to vibrant and diverse without understanding the reasoning behind it.
Knee-jerk liberalism at its finest.
Considering the word "vibrancy" basically just means "bustling", you have to wonder why the knee-jerkers take offense to your objection of the phrase, Crappy.
Someone needs to buy them a good dictionary.
Yes, the word is used to promote overdevelopment. But not everyone wants vibrancy on their block. Some would prefer to live someplace quiet and relaxed.
They object because their gig is up and they have been exposed as tweeding hacks.
So are the knee-jerkers (great term) implying that immigrants prefer to live in noisy neighborhoods or are noisy by nature and therefore objection to the term vibrant is somehow racist? I don't get it.
Knee-jerkers always accuse others of racism. It doesn't matter if it is or not, if there is an immigrant or a person of color somehow involved, an allegation of racism has to make an appearance.
To quote Crapper, as long as we're vibrant and diverse, who cares about overcrowding, fire safety issues, kids not getting a real education, class size, etc.?
Once again - we're vibrant! and diverse!
Let's allow more unchecked immigration, which fuels overcrowded schools, dangerous living situations, crime and terrorism to our country. After all, if we object, we'll be called racist and a bunch of meaningless statistics will be thrown at us about how white Queens was in the 1960s. Forget about how I went to Newtown High School with all races in the late 1950s. I must have been dreaming. Interesting, quality of life was much better back then, before the tired phrases vibrant and diverse became Queens political doctrine.
Crappy, you are obviously a bigot because you don't want to give children the wonderful opportunity to get cancer.
My niece nearly endured toxic hell at the Long Island City High School plagued with the same problem. Apparently one school with poisoned children isn't enough. We have to give everyone the opportunity.
I have to laugh at some of these comments. If the school were 100% white as you claim the Queens Crap crew prefers it to be, would it then be ok to have 4,700 kids in a facility designed for only 2,572? No. So why is it ok for the mixed race group of kids to be subject to this? I would say this is MUCH more racist than criticizing the use of "vibrant and diverse."
Tweeder thinking: "Quick, let's throw accusations of racism out there to change the subject! Someone has seen through our bullshit!"
As a teacher at FLHS, I can safely say that the overcrowding is CRIMINAL. I have freshmen who have Per 6 through Per.14, which ends at 6:48 PM. Would you want your 14 or 15 year old daughter taking 2 or 3 busses with commuting adults at that hour? You can't believe how horribly these good kids get treated by the DOE. Other area high schools, such as Bayside or Cardozo, are just not that overcrowded. Bayside has 9 periods a day, Cardozo 10. Why does Francis Lewis have 14 periods? Is the DOE targeting us for eventual failure?
Forget about how I went to Newtown High School with all races in the late 1950s. I must have been dreaming. Interesting, quality of life was much better back then, before the tired phrases vibrant and diverse became Queens political doctrine.
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I graduated from there a few years ago. I went there for their good pre-engineering program. If you keep your head down, its a decent school.
That being said, i pretty much was the white population.
I even had one teacher refer to me as "the token blonde"
For what it's worth.
Yesterday, the day after Labor Day, I was talking to a client of mine who is of US-born African-American ancestry. She told me she's taking a week off to go to her homestead in North Carolina next week and expressed relief at finally getting "some peace". Why? Because, she told me, that since June her Caribbean neighbors have been practicing with bongos, congas, and steel drums for their participaton in the annual West Indian Day Parade. She has not had a moment of quiet at night since this rehearsing has been going on until 3:30AM. She called the cops countless times and they did nothing. She suspected they were being "paid-off to look the other way.
I pity my fellow black citizens of US ancestry for being railroaded by all this "diversity".
I went to Flushing High School in 2003 when I was 16. I had so many holes (when a class is not filled due to overcrowding and human error) in my program that I automatically made fail classes.
For example. I was taking earth science and they never gave me earth science lab. If you don't do the lab you fail.
Teachers didn't give a fuck, the counselors never helped to fix my program and I was forced to drop out.
BACHELORS DEGREE IN AERONAUTICAL ENIGEERING BABY. FUCK YOU FLUSHING AND FUCK YOU FLUSHING HIGH SCHOOL
well we can all thank mayor bloomturd and his staff for all the over crowding. what they should of focused on was getting rid of the middle schools. keep children in their communities. schools: k-8 and high schools. private schools do it and seems to work. they keep looking into other communities for the over crowding issues making more school buses on the road and children traveling, which cost the city more money.
The bottom line is because they are multi-ethnic, working class, the people of Queens are short changed by the preservation community that ignores 'em, their politicans that bullshits 'em, and the media that looks down on 'em.
Saying 'diverse' doesn't bring the cops, saying 'vibrant' doesn't build a hospital, saying 'thriving' doesn't give their kids a school.
At what point do people see their is no future for them in the current state of affairs and the revolt begin?
Fact is, the article clipping doesn't mention vibrancy or diversity, but Crappy once again drags those terms into the discussion. Crappy is diversity-baiting, if not diverse-averse.
"I pity my fellow black citizens of US ancestry for being railroaded by all this "diversity"."
Black citizens of US ancestry? Are they a breed akin to your drunken fantasy Solutreans? Black citizens of the US are all of African ancestry... it could not be any other way.
"Fact is, the article clipping doesn't mention vibrancy or diversity, but Crappy once again drags those terms into the discussion. Crappy is diversity-baiting, if not diverse-averse."
You really just don't get it. Bringing it up was a dig at the pols and lame newspapers that focus on making Queens more "vibrant and diverse" as if that is a panacea for these problems. They don't address the fact that rampant overdevelopment and unchecked immigration causes their own set of problems, like school overcrowding.
Last time I'm going to explain it.
USE WHATEVER GLOWING ADJECTIVES YOU WANT; FRANCIS LEWIS HIGH SCHOOL IS CRIMINALLY OVERCROWDED. THERE IS A STRONG MIDDLE AND WORKING CLASS IN FRESH MEADOWS THAT'S AGAIN BEING SCREWED BY BLOOMBERG AND HIS HIT SQUAD. THE SCHOOL IS BEING TARGETED BY THE DOE.
VOTE FOR TONY AVELLA FOR MAYOR AND NORM SIEGEL FOR PUBLIC ADVOCATE.
WE NEED A CHANGE NOW!!!
"Black citizens of the US are all of African ancestry... it could not be any other way."
Same goes for white citizens of the US. Your point is?
The key to the efficient working of democracy is an enlightened citizenry.
That's why our public school system was implemented...to provide each citizen with enough smarts come voting time...so that he or she can decide their own fate.
The other side of the coin is...
the basis of totalitarianism is to keep the populace dumb and uninformed.
What kind of smarts can grow in an overly overcrowded classroom speaking 20 or so different languages?
As someone so brilliantly pointed out on this blogsite awhile back...
MUSHROOMS!
Feed 'em shit and keep 'em in the dark"!
It's what the Queens clubhouse prefers...dumb voters.
Anonymous Numbnuts. There are native-born (of US ancestry) black citizens and there are foreign-born black citizens (such as West Indians). Gabeesh?
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