New elementary school to open in Bensonhurst

Official says PS 768 will take burden off nearby crowded schools

September 11, 2014 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The city is renovating this former Our Lady of Guadalupe School building on 15th Avenue for use as a public school.

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The Bensonhurst-Dyker Heights area, a swatch of southwest Brooklyn that large numbers of families with young children and been flocking to in recent years, is getting a new school.

The Department of Education (DOE) is renting a two-story building on 15th Avenue in Bensonhurst from the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and is currently renovating the site for use as an early childhood school (for kindergarten and first grade students) to open in September of 2015, officials said.

The new school, to be called P.S. 768, is located at 7301 15th Ave., the former site of Our Lady of Guadalupe School. Our Lady of Guadalupe, or OLG as it’s known to local residents, formerly occupied two buildings. It will still maintain a school out of its main building on 73rd Street.

Laurie Windsor, president of the District 20 Community Education Council (CEC), said P.S. 768 will serve as an annex to P.S. 112, an elementary school located two blocks away, at 7115 15th Ave. P.S. 112 has become overcrowded in recent years, according to Windsor. “The younger grades will go into the new building,” she told the Brooklyn Eagle in a recent interview.

Students will move to P.S. 112 when they enter the upper elementary grades, Windsor said. “P.S. 112 will be a split site school,” Windsor said.

P.S. 112 draws its student body from Dyker Heights as well as Bensonhurst.

The DOE issued a brief statement to the Eagle on the plans. “We have leased the building and we are renovating. We have been in ongoing communication with the community,” the statement read.

As part of the community notification effort, signs with the headline “What’s going on here?” have been posted around the outside of the P.S. 768 site announcing the construction of the new school.

To prepare for the opening of the new school, the CEC met Sept. 10 to discuss a school rezoning plan that would pave the way for kindergarten and first grade children who in the past would have gone to P.S. 112 to attend P.S. 768 instead.

The CEC is also mulling rezoning another school, P.S. 176, at 1225 Bay Ridge Ave. in Dyker Heights, and having some of the children zoned for that school move over to P.S. 768 and P.S. 112.

The overcrowding situation at P.S. 176 is worse than at P.S. 112, according to Windsor.

“P.S. 176 is extremely overcrowded and the problem of overcrowding is getting progressively worse. We need to do something,” Windsor said.

The school, built for 808 students, had an enrollment of 1,414 youngsters last semester, Windsor said. “They have nine kindergarten classes over there,” she said.

When asked why the public schools in the Bensonhurst-Dyker Heights area are so crowded, Windsor said there are a number of factors behind the jump in enrollment.

“We have seen a large number of immigrants moving into our neighborhood. But that’s not the only reason. It’s not just immigrants moving in. A lot of people are coming. Our neighborhood is considered a desirable place to live in. People want to live here and raise their children here,” she said.