P.S. 144 new addition ribbon cutting ceremony (School Construction Authority)
Dec. 19, 2019 By Allie Griffin
City officials held a ceremonial ribbon cutting today to mark the nearly 600 new seats that were added to P.S. 144 in Forest Hills this school year.
Members of the New York City School Construction Authority (SCA), the Department of Education (DOE), elected officials and the school community turned out to celebrate the opening of a $52 million addition at the 69-20 Juno St. school.
The nearly 600 seats at P.S. 144 are part of the 2,100 new seats that were built in Queens for the 2019-2020 school in Queens.
“This addition to P.S. 144 is a great boon to the Forest Hills community and to the school’s 934 students,” Queens Borough President Melinda Katz said. “This 590-seat addition is a state-of-the-art center of learning and development that has eased student overcrowding.”
The P.S. 144 addition contains four pre-kindergarten classrooms, eight kindergarten classrooms, ten standard classrooms, two district special education classrooms, one reading/speech resource room and one science resource room.
It also holds a kitchen, student cafeteria and administrative suite and is fully air-conditioned and accessible. Construction of the addition began in July 2017.
The elementary school’s main building was also upgraded with the creation of a standard classroom, three reading/speech resource rooms, two art classrooms, a project room, an exercise room, a staff lunch/conference room and a parent room.
The SCA also completed a 484-seat addition at nearby P.S. 303, located at 108-55 69th Ave. The addition is air-conditioned, fully accessible and serves students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade with the creation of 16 standard classrooms, three district special education classrooms and one reading/speech resource room. Additional classrooms were also added to the main building.
“This beautiful new addition at P.S. 144 along with the addition at P.S. 303 has resulted in more than 1,000 much-needed new school seats to reduce overcrowding in District 28,” said Lorraine Grillo, President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York City School Construction Authority. “I would like to thank all of our elected officials and other stakeholders for their support of our 2015-2019 Capital Plan, which is bringing more than 12,800 seats to our most overcrowded districts in Queens.”
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