Forest Hills School Expansions To Debut With New Academic Year

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Two Forest Hills elementary schools will have a fresh look when students show up for the first day of class next Thursday.

P.S. 303 and P.S. 144 are debuting additions that will add hundreds of new seats to each school, part of the School Construction Authority's $1.9 billion effort to add thousands of seats to Queens' notoriously overcrowded public schools by 2020.

With its $66 million addition, P.S. 303 will start serving fourth- and fifth-grade students for the first time, QNS.com reported. Capacity will expand by 484 seats, according to the School Construction Authority.

The air-conditioned, accessible facility will contain sixteen classrooms, three special education classrooms, a reading/speech resource room, a science resource room, classrooms for art and music, a gym-auditorium, a library, a medical suite, a kitchen and student cafeteria, an administrative room and a parent room.

The original school building will get six new classrooms.

P.S. 144's $52 million expansion will add 590 new seats, according to the School Construction Authority.

The new building adds four pre-K classrooms, eight kindergarten classrooms, 10 standard classrooms, two special education classrooms, a science resource room, a kitchen and student cafeteria and an administrative suite.

In the main P.S. 144 building, the city has added two art classrooms, one standard classroom, a project room, an exercise room, a conference room and a parent room.

Both schools are in the city's 28th school district, one of the most overcrowded in the entire city, according to a City Council report last year.

The School Construction Authority plans to add 2,432 new seats in Queens next year and 3,902 seats in 2021, spokesperson Kevin Ortiz said.