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Schools

Local School Leaders Talk Up Metropolitan Campus

New school went against trend to serve Forest Hills, but was it worth it?

At Thursday's District 28 Community Education Council meeting, most parents in an audience of over fifty people expressed confusion and frustration over zoning, school closings, new school openings, and which of the several city agencies are accountable to different construction project requests.

The School Construction Authority presented an $11.3 billion projection for the next five years in construction projects for the district, and hoped to receive an additional $4.4 billion to support a rising student population in the area.

Monica Gutierrez, SCA's presenter, told the audience that "closing Catholic schools [in the area] are causing an influx in the public schools," and that the school district needed to be ready for it.

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She also drew attention to the construciton of a new building addition at , which should be ready for students next year.

But most of the energy in the room turned to the new Queens Metropolitan High School application process, and to local rumors that PS 40 in District 29 could be shut down after this year.

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Now that every incoming high school freshman in New York City must go through an application process that determines what school they will attend, more and more of New York's schools are getting rid of zoning, a policy that gives priority to certain students based on geographic proximity to a school in the admission process.

Today, most of the city's high schools, and an increasing number of elementary and middle schools, would be classified as "magnet schools."

The creation of last year went against the trend, drawing a new zone specific to the school that includes parts of District 28 and 24.

Recently, local political leaders and up the number of Forest Hills students attending the Metropolitan Educational Campus so that the out-of-fashion zoning didn't go to waste.

The new school guarantees acceptance to any student residing in the zone if they put Queens Metropolitan High as their first choice in the application. Queens residents who do not live in the school's zone will get second priority to any remaining spots, followed by the rest of New York City, according the school's principal, Marcy Levy-Maguire.

On the eve of the application deadline, Levy-Maguire made a last pitch for the school, detailing the school's curriculum structure, facilities, and activities. Queens Metropolitan uses a structure called "cohorts," in which students remain in a group through their classes until the middle of eleventh grade. Levy-Maguire conceded that the school's class sizes are very large, often above 30, but the cohorts are designed to ensure more individual attention to students.

Levy-Maguire boasted of the school's commitment to making sure its students graduate, and now operating well below capacity with just its first ninth grade class, Queens Metropolitan has ninth graders taking physics with a first-year load of eighteen credits, well above NYC public school standards. "Ninth grade we look at as our foundational year to get students where they want to be," Levy-Maguire said.

The CEC also enjoyed a moment of celebration, when several parents of a recently refurbished PS 182 came to thank the council for their help on the project.

"It took 23 years to do this. Finally I'm not here to get frustrated. Thank you from the bottom of my heart," a mother from PS 182 said. She also had advice to those worried about PS 40. "Be as loud as you can," she said.

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