When students returned last Thursday for the first day of classes at P.S. 254, they had no schoolyard.
Just a week before classes started at the school, also known as the Dag Hammarskjold school, construction crews came in and demolished the entire play area located behind the school between East 18th and East 19th Streets on Avenue Y. The sandbox became completely unusable and the concrete was ripped up leaving the ground ready to be repaved. Since the time that the demolition occurred, there has been little to no activity and construction appears to be at rest — at least for a while.
Signs on the fence state that the park is closed, with none of them listing a date of completion. Our sources tell us that although the construction crew has up to one year to complete the job, work is not expected to extend beyond the end of October. We were also informed that there will be a water fountain and a new sitting area. The original sitting area covered by trees was in disrepair with splintered benches, which are slated to be completely replaced.
When the annex to the original building was built years ago, the elementary students lost some play space to get some more classroom space. This latest construction starting a week before school, means that students will have recess indoors for the entire Fall 2009 season, as well as possibly into the Spring. Once the construction is done, though, there will be a major change: the schoolyard will be locked after school hours. Our source said that the schoolyard is not NYC Parks property and it is supposed to be closed after school hours.
Readers, do you have children who attend P.S. 254? If so, write in and let us know what they have to say about recess indoors. For those of you who like to play handball and basketball in the playground when school is closed and during the summers, let us know what you think about the planned policy of locking out locals at dusk.
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Wait what? I thought Bloomberg started a program to use City School Yard space as “Park Space” in off hours to provide more places for kids to play and be safe. What happened to that?
They did the same thing to the school yard at PS 207 in MP.
Ps 179 (Kensington School) had no outdoor recess the entire school year due to construction.
They are also doing school yard construction at PS 209 at Coney Island Avenue & Avenue Z.
I miss the sandbox that was there. Hadn’t been used since forever, but I liked that it was still there. It looks like it could have been a wading pool when it was originally constructed.
ps 225 on brighton 13th is a was turned into a school parking lot and has never been fixed for anything they also took down the basketball hoop 15 years ago and never put it up again. its interesting the lot is filled with at least 100 cars all these people can drive to work have a spot to put their cars but no place for kids to play outside. i will take a pictures and send them over. actually if you know where brighton 13th and oceanview ave is on a map you can zoom in with the map on this screen and see it perfectly except the lot in the picture is half full.
They were supposed to stop that practice, but PS225 isn’t the only school where that continued. Of course the teachers were complaining that there wasn’t adequate parking.
When I went to school many of the teachers lived in the neighborhood.
IMO Teachers shouldn’t be driving to school in NYC. They should however be given a free metrocard as a perk and the option of hopping on any school buses that pass through their area to their school.
Here’s a picture of what I believe to have been sandbox at one time. Sandboxes were decided to be a health hazard for children in the seventies. So all were stripped of sand.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanne001/3924534940/
A lot of the schools have empty space these days. Maybe we should make teachers live on the upper floors.
Seriously, I think teachers should live in the community that they teach in if possible. Helps them to relate to the kids better.
But short of that, maybe they should be encouraged to take public transportation if the school has no legitimate parking area.
I agree, in theory. However….if we made teachers live in the communities they teach….the whole thing might backfire. You know what areas i’m talking about. Those “bad” neighborhoods nobody wants to drive through.
No “Good” teachers would ever be willing to live in those places.
Arthur: That could actually be a good thing. It may force the city to do be more proactive in recruiting teachers in those areas, which would result in better quality of life for many people there, and provide teachers who will be more likely to connect with those students. I don’t think too many teachers from Port Jefferson, Long Island, would get any respect from a kid in Brownsville or East NY. Nor would they be able to really communicate with them. Not that one person is better or worse than the other, but different backgrounds mean different standards of communication.
Just an off-the-cuff thought. I don’t think NYC would ever be able to do this.
Interesting, according to a article I just read, there are NYC playgrounds that still have active sandboxes.
Maybe we need to encourage people who have grown up in those neighborhoods to stay there and consider teaching as a career. That’s not something impossible to achieve.
Except that, anyone with any sort of intelligence whatsover leaves those neighborhoods. They run and dont look back. A FEW, a rare few that make it out there sometimes come back to be charitable and give back but its very very few.
I do suppose that in many places we are past the time where residents see much value in where they live. Getting people to stay in some neighborhood s would require much more than merely providing a career in the community. BUt there have been projects, such as in places like East New York, that are beginning to bear some fruit. So we shall see whether we can actually see a wider plan which include such notions as community based teachers.
My 6th grade teacher lived down the block from me. Sometimes we would walk home together and talk.
Why couldn’t they do this work during the summer, when school is out? Who knows! I leave very close to the school, and I am glad the yard will closed after hours. We always had problems with people of all ages hanging out there at all hours into the night, making a lot of noise, drinking, and doing mischief. There was always broken glass there and other litter every morning. There was also a number of house rubberies on that block that involved people observing houses from the yard. I don’t know how they are going to stop people from entering the playground though.
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