Controversial Bayside School Plan Opposed By City Council Winner

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — Bayside’s possibly soon-to-be City Council Member, Tony Avella, came out in opposition to a controversial neighborhood school plan, and a nearby playground.

The proposed 572-seat primary school in Bay Terrace was nixed by Community Board 7 in June, with locals citing limited parking, pedestrian safety, and neighborhood crowding as reasons to not move forward with the plan. Avella, the winner of Bayside’s democratic city council primary, agrees, identifying similar concerns in a recent petition that he authored, which opposes the plan.

Avella said that he doesn’t support building the school or an adjacent playground because they are “proposed for the wrong location, without real community input, to be located on a narrow street, creating a traffic nightmare, and being rushed through for approval at the end of a political term.”

In addition to those concerns, in his petition — which has garnered just over 100 signatures — Avella said he opposes the possible school site because it is near another public school, and is a historic landfill which might include “possible underground contaminants.”

As for the adjacent playground, which was approved in the 2022 budget as a $20 million project, Avella said its location on a one-way-street is “dangerous” because it could cause traffic and become a “potential late-night hangout.”

He also said it is used informally by the Bay Terrace Country Club as a pool club parking lot, and is near a sewage pumping station.

“The adjoining proposal for a new playground across the street seems to have been made solely to bolster the argument for the school, providing a few parking spots and a playground for the school children,” Avella said.

“I applaud the inclusion of $20 million in the city budget for construction of this playground, but not its location,” he added, instead suggesting that the playground be built at the nearby Little Bay Park.”

The School Construction Authority (SCA) — which oversees the planning and building of the city's public schools — proposed the Bay Terrace school plan in June, amid overcrowding in northeastern Queens' public schools.

The site is one of four locations in the district that the SCA is considering in order to meet the area's growing demand for more primary school seats — Community School District 25, where the proposed school would be located, is expected to see a 41.5 percent increase in students by 2026, compared to those enrolled during the 2018-2019 academic year, according to SCA data cited by the Queens Chronicle.

When Community Board 7 voted against the school, Kevin Ortiz, SCA communications and external affairs manager, said that the group is "disappointed” in the decision.

"District 25 schools are overcrowded, and there is clearly a need for new school capacity, particularly in this sub-district. We'll continue to work with stakeholders and our partners at DOE to provide the seats and resources our students need and deserve," he wrote in a statement to Patch.

Despite several years of discussions about public school overcrowding in the district, proposals for new schools have historically not been met with enthusiasm.

In 2015, a proposal to build a new high school in Bayside was met with so much community opposition that the SCA eventually withdrew their plan, even though the district's schools were operating at an average of about 40 percent over capacity at the time, according to officials.

Although the Community Board voted against the Bay Terrace school, that decision is not binding.

An SCA spokesperson told Patch on Aug. 5 that the group is still in "our statutory public review process for this potential future school" which can take "several months."