Woodside Public Schools Part of NYC's Most Overcrowded School Districts

An unfortunate fact about Queens is that it contains some of the most overcrowded schools in the city, with districts 24 and 30 leading the pack. Since Woodside public schools straddle both these districts, they too suffer from severe overcrowding.

According to a 2009 policy report by the Office of the NYC Comptroller called, "Underprepared for Overcrowding-NYC Dept. of Education School Construction 2008-2017", primary schools within District 24 were at 118% capacity while primary/middle schools there were at 116% capacity. District 24 also had 797 students per cluster room, the most of any city district, and surpassing more than five times the DOE target of 145 students per cluster room. Meanwhile in District 30, the report indicates that its primary schools were at 103% capacity while its primary/middle schools were at 102% capacity.

When you combine the total deficit of seats within the communities of Woodside, Jackson Heights, and Sunnyside the number comes out to be 1,580.Within Woodside itself the report states that PS 12 for example, is so overcrowded that some students wind up getting bused to another site.

Temporary Classroom Units (TCU), mini-schools and annexes, which include the trailers often found outside schools, continue to be used to house students.While the city has recently approved the construction of new schools for District 24, none of these buildings will be located within Woodside at this time.

Overcrowded schools lead to a number of problems for parents, students, teachers and administrators including the following:

1. Oftentimes these schools' art/music rooms, gyms, cafeterias and libraries have to be converted into classrooms in order to accommodate every student.
2. Many students wind up getting served lunch as early as 10 AM. This causes them to become hungry later in the day, thereby leading to difficulties in concentrating on classwork.
3. A shortage of bathrooms leads to kids having to wait in long lines just to use them. Many students thus decide to either skip lunch or wait until they go home in order to keep from having to use school restrooms.
4. Teacher shortages within these schools have compounded the problem, leading to teachers having to rush from classroom to classroom with large carts of materials on hand.

While it is hoped that construction can help ease this problem, the current projects planned will not be enough to solve it. Queens Chronicle reports that while the city has estimated that more than 4,300 seats are needed in District 24 for example, current capacity projects will only lead to filling just over 2,600 seats.

As was mentioned earlier Woodside, along with other nearby Queens communities Jackson Heights and Maspeth, are currently not slated to receive new schools. This means that overcrowded schools will continue to indefinitely remain the norm within these communities.