Anthony DelMundo/for New York Daily News
Parents are opposing a plan to co-locate a new technical-themed high school inside Long Island City High School. The city tried to close the school last year due to the its low graduation rate and flagging student performance, but the closure was blocked by court order and a new principal was appointed.
An angry parents group is asking the city not to put a new technical school inside of a Queens high school that is struggling to turn itself around.
Members of a northwestern Queens Community Education Council wrote to the city this week suggesting it would be more economically prudent to incorporate the technical training program into the existing Long Island City High School.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Isaac Carmignani, a member of the Council . “It’s additional resources that could go into (Long Island City High School.)”
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The influential Panel for Educational Policy is expected to vote on the issue in October, but the Council has asked the city to delay the vote until December.
The city tried to close Long Island City High School last year due to the school’s low graduation rate and flagging student performance, but the closure was blocked by court order and a new principal was appointed.
“We are not opposed to a new program if it were part of the school,” said Long Island City’s teacher union rep Ken Achiron, who fears the plan could lead to friction amid a battle for resources and space.
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“We’ve worked so hard to rebuild this school, and they’re pulling the rug out from us,” he said.
City Education officials told the Daily News that the school is slated to lose about 400 of its roughly 3,000 students to create space in the building. The new school, which would be completely autonomous, would open in the 2014-2015 school year.
Under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership, the city has closed down many of its mammoth high schools, replacing them with smaller, more specialized schools that share the big buildings.
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The city has also been reducing the enrollment at some of the schools it attempted to close, and using the extra space to locate new schools — as it now plans to do at Long Island City.
“Our track record creating new career and technical education schools is historic,” said DOE spokesman Devon Puglia. “Students flock to them, parents clamor for them and this area needs one. ”
But Ka-Trina Harris, 39, whose son will a sophomore at Long Island City next year, said a co-location would short-change the students.
“I don’t think there’s going to be enough space,” she said. “It’s not fair to our children that are trying to learn.”
