New Cardozo High School annex aims to relieve overcrowding
/
Local lawmakers and officials from the School Construction Authority broke ground on a new annex at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside. Photo courtesy of SCA.
By Jonathan Sperling
Officials from the New York City School Construction Authority broke ground Thursday on what will eventually become a 795-seat annex for Benjamin N. Cardozo in Bayside, hoping to alleviate at least some of Queens’ chronic school overcrowding. The school is currently at 149 percent capacity.
The three-story building will be fully ADA accessible, air-conditioned and include 25 classrooms for students in grades 9-12 and two special education classrooms. For school staff, the annex will feature a teacher’s workroom and supervisory offices on each floor.
Construction for the annex, which is expected to be completed in September 2022, initially began in August 2019 after a $47.8 million contract was awarded to the Brooklyn-based Arnell Construction Corp.
More than 3,700 students were enrolled at Benjamin N. Cardozo in the 2016-2017 school year, according to data from the New York State Department of Education, making it among the most populous in Queens. Three of the four most overcrowded school districts in the city are located in Queens: District 24, 25 and 26, the latter of which is where Benjamin N. Cardozo is located, according to a 2018 City Council report.
Those three districts were all at or above 115 percent capacity during the 2014-2015 school year. Two other Queens school districts ― 28 and 30 — were over 100 percent capacity, according to the report.
But Eastern Queens isn’t the only area facing chronic school overcrowding. A report released by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in July stated that 17 of the 19 elementary and middle schools located in Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and North Corona are overcrowded and operating beyond capacity, with four schools operating at 145 percent. Schools in Sunnyside and Astoria, two of some of the borough’s fastest growing neighborhoods, also face overcrowding, according to the Council’s report.
School overcrowding severely impacts students in several ways, such as by forcing staggered meal times, leading to students eating lunch before 10 a.m. in some schools. And even though overcrowding is a boroughwide issue, immigrant communities are disproportionately affected, according to a 2015 Make the Road New York report. In Jackson Heights, for example, immigrants account for 60 percent of the population.
Lorraine Grillo, the head of the School Construction Authority, told the Eagle earlier this year that 17,700 seats have been created in Queens schools since 2015, and that 1,600 were set to be created during the 2019-2020 school year.
The annex at Benjamin N. Cardozo will serve as more than just a place to fit students, however. Amenities include a STEM Lab, robotics lab, mock courtroom, media center and production room, three locker rooms, bicycle storage and a shower and changing room. Additionally, as part of SCA’s Public Art for Public Schools program, an artist will be commissioned to create site-specific artwork that will appear in the lobby of the new annex.
Area Councilmember Barry Grodenchik said that Benjamin N. Cardozo students have “suffered with overcrowding for decades.”
“Today’s groundbreaking is a watershed win for the school and its students; with the new state-of-the-art annex, one of New York City’s best public high schools is about to get even better,” Grodenchik said.
