Bayside High enrollment number just a misunderstanding

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Department of Education is calling it a misunderstanding regarding next fall’s enrollment at Bayside High School.

Edward Tan and Jaya Sarkar, officers with the Bayside High School PTA, recently sent an email to the Chronicle saying the school is bracing for more than 1,000 new students in the fall, “to clear space for new schools co-locating at the downsizing Flushing and Martin Van Buren high schools.”

But the DOE says that number is based on the incoming freshman class, estimated at 900 students, which is actually down from the current freshman class of 1,005 students.

Whew!

Packin' them in at Bayside High

Received in my inbox:

The DOE is not responding to parent demands that it not further overcrowd Bayside High School, a school that already has 1,000 more students than it was built to house.

The DOE is planning to overcrowd the already packed popular Queens high school that services students from all parts of Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn to clear space for new schools co-locating at the downsizing Flushing and Martin Van Buren High Schools - schools that do accommodate far fewer students - according to Bayside PTA Co-President Edward Tang.

Bayside High School, rated "A" by the DOE for three years in a row, is bracing for over 1,000 new students this Fall, expected to bring its enrollment to over 3,600 - 170% of the building's capacity.

"Bayside is a victim of its own success and of the DOE's unresponsiveness to this community," said Alex Lee, a Bayside parent and member of the Citywide Council on High Schools. “The school received 14,000 applications due to the great results it produces for families and now the DOE wants to bury it to accommodate Bloomberg's leftover plans to downsize Van Buren and Flushing. The school already has students from all parts of Queens as well as the Bronx and Brooklyn!"

"If this goes through, Bayside would be second only to Forest Hills High School's in percent overcrowded while more than half of Queens’ high schools operate below 100% capacity," echoed Bayside parent Judy Rossman.

“Here’s the thing, overcrowding is not good for students or administrators. It forces a school to reduce support services, increase class sizes, and reduce safety measures. We have reached out to the Chancellor and our local elected officials demanding that no more than 750 new students be admitted. We will still be way overcrowded but not as bad as the DOE is planning," added parent Jaya Sarkar.

"No response from the DOE to the parents has been forthcoming. Our position is logical. We will not stand idly by if the Chancellor turns a blind eye to our situation and undermines the very success that we have worked so hard to achieve. Increasing Bayside’s enrollment to over 170% capacity is not logical and would not be a good decision for quality education or for our children’s futures.”

Bad sign is gone from Bayside High

From the Queens Chronicle:

It took four years but the unpopular LED electronic display sign at Bayside High School has been taken down.

When it was erected in 2009, residents who live near the school called it an eyesore that beamed into their homes at night and was a potential traffic hazard.

It is estimated the sign cost $37,000 with funds raised by students in 2006. It took three years to get permits and the proper approvals from the city.

One of those complaining was then-Community Board 11 member Ed Braunstein, who is now the area’s assemblyman, and whose parents live near the Corporal Kennedy Street school.

He was elated about the development when contacted by the Queens Chronicle last week. “I did notice it was gone,” Braunstein said. “I’m glad it’s gone.”

The assemblyman said he spoke to the principal, Michael Athy, last winter about the display board and was told the school was trying to sell it. Athy confirmed the offending display is now at another school.

In an email, he said, “It has been moved to another high school where apparently they will not have issues with its installation.”

Bayside High School gets new crappers

From the Times Ledger:

New porcelain thrones have been sitting well with administrators at Bayside High School, where a new city initiative has helped save energy one flush at a time.

The school installed 102 new toilets to serve its more than 3,200 students in August and has saved roughly 3 gallons per flush ever since, according to school engineer Richard Fricione. In these new toilets, a straight path allows the water to drain directly out of the bowl instead of following its predecessors’ more twisty tubes.

“We have been monitoring our water usage all year and have seen it gone down quite a bit,” Fricione said of the new 1.2-gallon toilets, which replaced older equipment that used 4.5 gallons per flush.

The city tapped Bayside as well as Hillcrest HS in Jamaica to participate in its pilot program that aims to conserve water with new low-flow toilets, according to the city Department of Environmental Protection. By the program’s completion in five years, a DEP spokesman said 500 city schools will have received 40,000 new energy-saving toilets with the goal of draining their water usage by 70 percent, saving roughly 4 million gallons per day.

The $31 million city initiative also preps for something greater, when the Delaware Aqueduct is temporarily shut down in 2020 for repairs. The aqueduct has supplied the city with more than half of its public water and its closure will demand that administrators find alternative sources while it is repaired, the DEP said.

When a locally zoned school isn't local

From the Queens Tribune:

Not even a full semester has passed, and Forest Hills’ Metropolitan Avenue Campus has garnered a touch of negative attention.

Neighborhood leaders are concerned over enrollment numbers at the $158 million education facility’s high school, which they say do not meet promises that at least half of the kids would be from Forest Hills.

The locally-zoned school’s first 250-freshmen class was originally slated to be split evenly between kids from Districts 24 and 28. But according to Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz (D-Forest Hills), a lack of outreach and apprehension has left the school’s first class with a glut of Glendale students, while Forest Hills kids make up less than half of the overall student body.

“I was disappointed in the amount of kids that came from Forest Hills,” Koslowitz said. “It was supposed to be 125-125. It wasn’t like that at all.”

The Dept. of Education did not respond to requests for comment and Koslowitz said they refuse to provide exact figures about the class’s makeup.

The school’s freshman class is also significantly higher than the originally planned 250. After murmurs about empty seats in the school’s newly-constructed building, the DOE bumped up enrollment, eventually expanding it for local kids and, according to some, kids across the entire borough. According to Koslowitz, the additional students increased the school’s pioneer class to close to 400 – a figure the DOE was not available to confirm.

Koslowitz said a large chunk of potential Forest Hills students were instead slotted for other local schools due to an application snafu. Kids and parents were given the option of ranking their preferred high schools, and Koslowitz believes many students and parents opted to put the Metro Campus second.

You mean DOE and SCA lied in order to get this built? How utterly shocking!

Kids flee schools on closure list

From the Daily News:

Overcowding in some of Queens' large, generalized high schools appears to be up this fall - and the culprit could be the borough's high number of struggling schools.

Parents are pulling students out of schools that the city and state have identified as failing, local leaders and parents said. And those students are now exacerbating overcrowding in nearby high schools, they said.

City officials were quick to point out that there was no data to support this claim.

Let's not use common sense, but instead rely on "data".