Queens Students Look North For Better Education At Overcrowded Schools

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — Natalia Urbaez, 17, wakes up most mornings at 5:30 a.m. so she can down breakfast, catch two different buses and land behind her school desk at exactly 8:40 a.m.

Urbaez's mom, Shirley Aubin, says her daughter faces yet another hurdle between the front doors of Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows and her classroom.

“It’s so packed you can’t even see feet,” Aubin, co-president of Queens High School Presidents’ Council, told Patch. “The norm is either go to where you need to go before the bell rings or after.”

In a nearby northern Queens school, Ronald Britt Jr., 16, also navigates a lengthy commute from Rosedale and the crowded hallways of Bayside High School.

He also must obey a strict shift system that demands students time their entry and exit into his overcrowded school by the minute.

“I don't want to imagine what it's like going to school with more students,” the junior told Patch. “The hallways are crowded and classrooms have like 30 or 35 students."

These two teens are among a slew of Southern Queens students who face long commutes north to Bayside where they'll spend the day in overcrowded schools that have resorted to shift systems and annex classrooms to accommodate them.

Their parents say it's worth the hassle to send their children to public schools with high testing scores— often rejected by Bayside's more affluent families — and out of the less prestigious institutions that are closer to home and have seats to spare.

Students at Bayside High School, Francis Lewis High School, and Benjamin Cardozo High School test higher in Regents Exam compared to schools citywide, according to 2019 data from the DOE.

While the average score in Jamaica and South Ozone Park high schools was 68.9 in 2019, Bayside, Cardozo, and Francis Lewis averaged a score of 72.4.

But overcrowding has become a mounting problem in Bayside's public schools and despite the city's best efforts to add more seats and build new spaces, parents say they're not keeping up with demand.

“The traffic in the hallway is like you taking the subway at a train station in rush hour,” said Aubin.

How do Southern Queens schools rank in comparison to Bayside?

Bayside also offers Career and Technical Education (CTE) Programs that can help students gain exposure to career options in fields ranging from education to health care before graduation.

This was a major draw for Ronald Britt Sr., also a parent member on the School Leadership Team at Bayside High School.

“Bayside is already overcrowded and it has been like that for years,” the parent told Patch. “These schools are highly desirable."

That's why Britt and other members of the School Leadership Team want to cap CTE seats, establish a seat number for 9th grade students in the upcoming school year and prioritize student entries for those who live in the zone.

As of mid-March, the DOE has not responded to the resolution, but data suggests local Bayside students might not choose to take those seats.

“If a student is applying to the zoned program, most of the time they don't want to be there,” Britt Sr. said. “These kids are going to Bronx Science, they are going to parochial or private schools or non-denominational schools.”

Overcrowding In Bayside

Bayside's overcrowding rates are well above the citywide and borough numbers, Education Department data show.

The city measures crowding by capacity, and while Queens' average is 100 percent, Bayside High School stands at 130 percent, Francis Lewis stands at 157 percent and Benjamin N. Cardozo High School stands at 101 percent, city records show.

Each individual school has its own way of accommodating the daily onslaught of students.

Bayside High School demands students time their daily schedule by the minute. The first shift of students enters the school at 7:11 a.m. and the last leaves at 3:13 p.m.

Meanwhile, Cardozo has built multiple annexes because, as School Construction Authority Lorraine Grillo put it, “Cardozo is one of several schools built in eastern Queens in the 1960s that are now bursting at the seams."

Cardozo broke ground in 2019 on a 795-seat annex, which is expected to open in September 2023.
Francis Lewis also installed an annex in September 2022 to help with some of the congestion.

Natalia's mom said it added about 500 seats to the facility, “but we needed 1,000 to relieve the overcrowding.”

Plans For The Future

New York City has promised Albany its classrooms will maintain 100 percent capacity by 2028.
An Education Department spokesperson told Patch the city plans to add 1,350 new high school seats to District 26, just south of Bayside, and a total of 4,500 new seats to Queens.

The spokesperson noted it will not add more seats to Bayside High School.

“New York City Public Schools has five years to comply with state class size caps, and we will meet all the milestones under the law,” the spokesperson said. "We are addressing the overcrowding in Queens high schools."

Aubin, the Francis Lewis High School parent, said she is working with the DOE and Queens high school superintendents to better market what Southern Queens schools have to offer.

August Martin High School and Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School in Jamaica, for example also offer CTE programs.

“Queens South has a lot of high schools that are good,” Aubin said. “People are holding on to old reputations.”