PS41Q Kindergartners May Temporarily Move To New School Building

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — School officials will vote later this month on a plan to temporarily relocate P.S. 41 Crocheron's kindergarten students to a new building to make way for construction of an addition at the overcrowded Bayside elementary school.

Under the proposal, P.S. 41 Crocheron's kindergartners will be moved out of their classroom trailers and into a new elementary school building slated to open this fall in the former home of St. Robert Bellarmine School at 56-10 214th St., just under two miles away.

The city's School Construction Authority will then start building an addition to the Crocheron school on the site of those trailers, a process that officials say will take three years.

P.S. 41 Crocheron — which is also home to several dozen special education students under the school name P.S. Q993 — is at 135-percent capacity, with an enrollment of 510 students in a space intended for just 378, according to the city's Department of Education.

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"We've kind of maxed out what we can do to make this place the greatest it can be," P.S. 41 Crocheron principal Joe Ferrara said of the need for the addition during a Tuesday hearing on the relocation proposal.

With the Jan. 21 deadline for kindergarten applications approaching, Bayside parents at the Tuesday hearing called on school district officials to provide more information on the relocation proposal, namely on transportation.

"We haven't heard much about this construction project as parents," Joanna Edwards, a mother of three, said during the hearing.

Edwards, who said she has one child who already attends P.S. 41 Crocheron and two younger children, asked what school officials would do to ease kindergartners' transition from their temporary home to Crocheron.

Bayside resident Irene Mikhail, 33, whose son will start kindergarten in the fall, said her biggest question about the relocation proposal is on the logistics of drop-off and pick-up. As a teacher in Glen Oaks, she starts work early.

"I'm just trying to map out my mornings," Mikhail said. "It doesn't sound like it's completely finalized, which makes me a little worried."

The hearing Tuesday at P.S. 41 Crocheron, which drew just over two dozen attendees, was meant more as an outlet for parents to ask questions than for officials to provide them with answers.

District 26 Superintendent Danielle Giunta pledged to provide parents with answers to their questions later this month on an online portal.

The city's School Construction Authority finalized its lease for the new school building in February 2019 and is renovating it for use as a 292-seat elementary school that will be known as Q390, though the construction work won't make it fully accessible, according to the agency; its main entrance on 214th Street will not be accessible but an entrance in the parking lot will.

That school will start taking kindergartners for the 2020-2021 school year and may also offer a preschool program, according to the education department.

When the building addition at P.S. 41 Crocheron is complete, the proposal says, its kindergartners would leave the new elementary school and move back to their former home — this time, not in trailers.

The Panel for Educational Policy will vote on the relocation proposal during a meeting Jan. 29 at 6 p.m. at the Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers in Manhattan.

Parents can submit comments and questions on the proposal by calling 212-374-7621 or emailing D26Proposals@schools.nyc.gov.