When Christine Sewnarine was assessing the exhaustive list of high schools she could apply to as an eighth grader two years ago, she ultimately decided that she wanted to go to Cambria Heights Academy in Hollis, namely for its small class sizes, focus on technology and the sense that she’d get to know her peers and teachers well.
Her hopes for the school have panned out, and Sewnarine, now a sophomore, is quick to extol the virtues of the school that opened the same year she began attending it in 2010. She, and many of her colleagues, say the students and teachers are “like family,” but their tight-knit community is in jeopardy, according to pupils and parents who are irate that the city Department of Education is considering moving the school from its location in a former Catholic school to JHS 72 in Rochdale Village by the beginning of next school year. The academy is in school District 29, and JHS 72 is located in District 28.
“I’m very, very upset,” Sewnarine said. “We started here; why can’t we stay here? We’re family at this school. Don’t ruin that.”
Students were informed last month that the move could occur. A spokeswoman for the DOE said the city has been “discussing the possibility of extending the lease for long-term capacity,” at the Hollis building, located at 188-4 91 St.
The city signed a two-year lease with the Diocese of Queens and Brooklyn — a relatively short time period compared to many of the DOE’s leases that are often, at a minimum, for seven years.
“It costs between $5 million and $10 million to renovate a building like that,” said Rebecca Rawlins, a DOE employee who attended a Parents Advisory Board meeting at Queens Borough Hall last week. “We do need to weigh the cost of holding onto this building when we have another building at 47 percent capacity.”
Parents, including Garfield Clark, who spoke at the same Parents Advisory Board meeting against the move, and pupils said they know of no one, save for the DOE, who wants the school to be moved from their current site to JHS 72 — which, they said, is a middle school not equipped to handle their needs. For example, educators at the school said as many as 125 computers can be online at the same time at Cambria Heights Academy, while only a handful would be able to be online at the same time at the middle school. There is also no computer lab at the middle school, as there is at the academy, educators said.
Access to the Internet is crucial for the school, which focuses on technology, computers and the arts, students said.
“We aim to get students prepared for the digital world,” said Assistant Principal Saby Malary. “We offer online learning, and use computers for many projects. In one class, our students had to make a video about who they are.”
A number of students worried there would be too little space to accommodate both schools in the same building.
“There will be two schools in one middle school, which means we’ll be sharing time schedules,” said Avassa Arjune, who added that her commute time would triple if she had to go to the new site. “How will we split up lunch time and gym? We’ll have to eat lunch really early in the morning.”
Temel Phillips, a freshman and captain of the school’s basketball team, said he is worried the additional commute time, as well as the fact that many of the students and parents feel the neighborhood around JHS 72 is not as safe as their current spot, would deter pupils from participating in after school activities.
“We’re trying to keep the school in a very nice neighborhood,” said Clark, whose son attends the academy. “They’re moving us to a bad area. If they move them to District 28, a lot of parents have suggested they wouldn’t send their children there.”
Clark also pointed out that the academy is only at about half capacity and said there’s more than enough room for the school to essentially double in size.
“With a school that’s performing well, you should put more money into it, not move it and send everything into haywire,” Clark said. “Teachers are here at 8 p.m. doing one-on-one tutoring with a student. It’s like a private school without having to pay for it.”
Dmytro Fedkowskyj, the chair of the Parent Advisory Board and the Queens borough president’s appointee on the city Panel for Educational Policy, criticized the city for signing a short lease while also spending money on work in the school.
“Wait, you only did a two-year lease but spent $150,000 on technology?” Fedkowskyj said. “Something is really wrong here.”
He also noted that intermediate schools “don’t have the amenities that high school students need.”
While Cambria Heights Academy Principal Melissa Menake did not specifically say she was against the move, she did say she wants “to support the parents and our community.”
“We really want to support our students,” Menake said.
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