BP to give green to Queens schools for new hydroponics labs

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards is set to announce funding for nine hydroponics labs across the borough. Photo via Queens Borough President Donovan Richards/Twitter 

By Ryan Schwach

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards is set to announce he’s allotting $2.3 million for hydroponics labs in nine schools across the borough during his State of the Borough speech on Friday, the Eagle has learned.

The funding will be part of Richards’ Fiscal Year 2025 budget, and will hopefully promote a better understanding of agriculture and healthy eating in Queens schools.

The labs, which use a “mineral-based nutrient solution to nourish plants in a soil-less environment,” according to the Mamie Fay School in Ditmars, will allow Queens students to get hands-on experience with basic farming systems.

The nine new hydroponics labs will go to The Louis F. Simeone School and The Tommie L. Agee Educational Campus in Elmhurst, The Gwendoline N. Alleyne School and PS 277Q in Woodside, The Lynn Gross Discovery School, in Forest Hills, Queens Metropolitan High School in Woodhaven, The Clarence E. Witherspoon School in Jamaica, The Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Astoria and JHS 226 Virgil I. Grissom in Ozone Park, Richards’ office exclusively told the Eagle.

So far as BP, Richards has funded 13 other school hydroponics labs in the borough.

“A well rounded education involves much more than the usual school subjects,” Richards said in an April tweet following the opening of a lab at Richmond Hill High School. “Hydroponics labs…teach science, sustainability, agriculture and community. They are an education in life.”

In recent months, Richards has cut the ribbon at a hydroponics lab at the Scholars’ Academy in Rockaway.

In that same April tweet, Richards called for hydroponic labs in all New York City Public Schools.

“We need more living classrooms like this, specifically one in every school in this borough,” he said.

According to New York Sun Works, putting a hydroponic lab in every New York City public school will cost around $238 million — less than 1 percent of the Department of Education’s $37.5 billion budget.

Richards is set to announce the funding on Friday, April 12 when he gives his State of the Borough address at the Queens Theater in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.