Say goodbye to Long Island City H.S. And bid a fond farewell to William Cullen Bryant H.S.
As part of the city’s plan to close and reopen 24 schools citywide, the two local schools will swap their original names for new monikers, beginning in September.
Long Island City H.S., located at 14th Street and Broadway, will fade into history in September when it reopens as the “Global Scholars Academy of Long Island City”.
Bryant H.S., at 48-70 31st Ave. in Astoria will become a memory when it reopens as “The Academy of Humanities Applied Sciences at the William Cullen Bryant Campus”.
The two schools graduated generations of local students – some of whom are not pleased by the changes.
“Long Island City H.S. will always be ‘LIC’ to those of us who graduated from the school,” Vincent Augusta said. Augusta, 53, said the name change “is an unnecessary act on the part of an administration that refuses to take the blame for its mistakes”.
Augusta said the name change would not make students “learn more, learn more quickly, or perform better in exams”.
“This whole thing is ridiculous,” he said. “How much is it going to cost the city, and its taxpayers, to make these unnecessary name changes?”
George L. Stamatiades a graduate of the Bryant H.S. class of 1959, said he is pleased the original name has been incorporated into Bryants’ new moniker.
“But the change of name does not make a better school,” Stamatiades said. “The city had to know these schools were failing two years ago,” he said.
“Why didn’t they fix them when they first realized they were in trouble? The problems didn’t happen overnight,” he said.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced the name changes on May 9, despite recent legal challenges filed by the teachers’ and principals’ unions on the legality of the closures.
—Liz Goff
