June 23, 2017 By Jason Cohen
Elected officials broke ground on a new elementary school in Jackson Heights Thursday.
The school, to be called Q398, will be located at 69-01 34th Ave. and is in School District 30, one of the most overcrowded districts in the city, according to Councilman Danny Dromm (D- Jackson Heights).
The school is scheduled to open in September 2019, and will cater to 476 students.
“My hope is this school will alleviate overcrowding in other schools,” Dromm said.
The school will be five stories tall and contain four pre-k rooms, three kindergarten rooms, 15 rooms for grades one through five, two special education classrooms, a reading resource room, one speech resource room, an art classroom, one music classroom, one science resource room, a gym, a library, a guidance room, a nurse’s office, an administration suite, a teachers’ and aides work room, a parent room, a cafeteria, a staff lunch/ conference room and a kitchen complex.
It will also feature a rooftop garden, an early childhood playground and a playground for older students.
The site was previously used by White Castle as its regional headquarters. The company shut it down and then Dromm came to the conclusion it would be a good location for a school.
He contacted the School Construction Authority and its president Lorraine Grillo agreed.
Community Board 3 and the City Council both signed off on having a school at that location in 2015. Demolition began in the spring of 2016 and ended spring 2017.
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