More than two dozen civil leaders and teachers rallied Monday against a city plan to place a new school in a large Queens Village high school building.
The city wants to trim enrollment at the struggling Martin Van Buren High School by about 500 — which would cause a commensurate loss in classroom space and funding — to open a new, smaller school inside the same Hillside Ave. building.
The city’s Panel for Educational Policy is slated to rubber-stamp the plan in October. The new public school wouldn’t move into the building until 2014.
“We have seen far too many comprehensive high schools experience co-location, resulting in underfunded programs, overcrowding classes and ultimately a spiral of academic decline,” Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Fresh Meadows) said in a statement.
“We will not allow this reckless reorganization to occur,” he said.
Activists believe Martin Van Buren would lose arts and afterschool programs as funding is reduced.
The high school received a C on its last city report card.
Department of Education officials defended the decision.
“Parents in this community are clamoring for, and will continue to demand, more high quality options, and we’re going to keep delivering them,” agency spokesman Devon Puglia said in a statement.
