16 DECEMBER 28, 2017 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
2017 Year in Review
MAY – JUNE
May
POLS ALARMED AFTER
IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL
SVISITS MASPETH SCHOOL taff members at P.S. 58 in Maspeth
“did the right thing” by turning back
an immigration offi cial who showed
up there on May 11 looking for a fourthgrade
student, Queens Borough President
Melinda Katz said. Amid the Trump administration’s
ongoing eff orts to deport
illegal immigrants, some saw this as an
extraneous attempt to deport the student’s
parents. Eric Phillips, a spokesperson for
Mayor Bill de Blasio, said that the P.S. 58
offi cials did the right thing in turning
the ICE agent away. U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services told NY1 that it had
sent two representatives to P.S. 58 merely to
verify the fourth-grader’s information for
an “immigration benefi t request.”
MAYOR TOUTS PROGRESS OF
MQUEENS BLVD. MAKEOVER ayor Bill de Blasio visited Elmhurst
on May 16 to announce
the third phase of the Queens
Boulevard redesign that started in
Photo courtesy of Mayoral Photography Offiffi ce/Ed Reed
2015. Community Board 6, which
encompasses
Rego Park and Forest Hills, voted to
approve the third phase of the project that
spans from Eliot Avenue to Yellowstone
Boulevard. The plan looks similar to the already
implemented redesign in Woodside
and Elmhurst. The Department of Transportation
(DOT) announced it would install
a protected bicycle lane and pedestrian
path, median extensions, stop controlled
slip lanes and expanded pedestrian space
along the 1.3 miles of the boulevard.
June
RIDGEWOOD SCHOOL
GETTING A NEW GYMNASIUM
After visiting with children playing
soccer in the tiny, hot, auditorium — which
doubles as the school’s gymnasium — at P.S.
81 on June 5, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced
that the Ridgewood elementary school will
be receiving major upgrades. De Blasio said
the school on Cypress Avenue off Bleecker
Street will be getting a brand-new gym and
air conditioning in every room, and that
every elementary school in the city will
get similar upgrades. “My pledge is that
by September 2021, every single school
in New York City will have a modern, full
phys. ed. capacity for our children,” de
Blasio announced inside P.S. 81’s library.
“And we are creating a curriculum that
actually brings the modern fi rst to health
and wellbeing into how we teach phys. ed.”
MIDDLE VILLAGE
CHARTER SCHOOL
APPEALS TO STAY
OPEN
Students and parents
from the Middle Village
Preparatory (MVP) charter
school that is under threat
of closure rallied outside
the Queens County Court
in Jamaica on June 13. The
rally, part of an effort to get
the Diocese of Brooklyn and
Queens to drop the lawsuit
against Christ the King High
School (CTK) and its board
of trustees, was held just before
oral arguments in the
case were set to begin. The
diocese says it doesn’t want
to force the closure or relocation
of MVP, but wants the
trustees to recognize the retainer
it agreed to with the
diocese more than 40 years
ago regarding the use of the
Christ the King property.
The trustees argue that the
retainer had been allowed
to expire, and the diocese
no longer could dictate how
the trustees could use the
school grounds. As 2017
draws to a close, MVP is still
open, but the legal battle
continues.