The following statement was made by Democratic
District Leader Costa Constantinides on Department of
Education’s plan to close Long Island City H.S.
The Department of Education’s plan to close Long Island City H.S. is a mistake that will harm our community. Long Island City H.S. is an important Astoria institution that has served generations of Queens families. I am calling on Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott to drop their plan to close Long Island City H.S. and I urge them to consider investing more resources to sustain the recent progress this school has demonstrated.
I care deeply about this issue. I have lived in Astoria my entire life. I’m raising a family in Astoria and want my son to have the same great public schools that I grew up in.
For over ten years now, Mayor Bloomberg has followed the same flawed business model that seeks to “close” schools instead of fixing them. His administration has failed to work with the teachers or the surrounding community to identify ways to fix schools. Instead, he seeks to destroy the very institutions that give stability to a neighborhood. It’s short term thinking like this–and using temporary trailers for classrooms instead of investing in real infrastructure–that is exactly wrong to education.
Every school and community has challenges, but those challenges mean it’s time to roll up our sleeves and work to solve them–not quit and give up. We can’t just shut schools down–we need to work together to improve them.
Long Island City H.S. is making progress and deserves to remain open. This is one of Astoria’s neighborhood high schools. The name Long Island City H.S. means something important to our community, its alumni, its students, its faculty and alumni faculty.
It is time to admit the failures of the Bloomberg Administration’s education policies. We need to stop attacking these kids, these teachers and this school. The students of LIC HS deserve better than this Mayor playing political games with their education. They deserve stability in their education and in their communities. Our children deserve better than this disruptive attempt to shift the blame for failure. Long Island City H.S. needs to stay open.
