City breaks ground on new $77M Staten Island school – SILive.com

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- New York City officials broke ground Tuesday on a new $77 million four-story school building that will serve students on the North Shore.

The new building, which will be named PS 70, will be located in Stapleton on property that was previously occupied by an unused moving and storage warehouse. Located at 357 Targee St., the school is expected to provide 773 elementary school seats when it opens for the 2022-2023 school year.

School Construction Authority (SCA) President and CEO Lorraine Grillo was joined by Councilwoman Debi Rose, Department of Education (DOE) officials and community members to officially kick off construction of the state-of-the-art school building that will address overcrowding in District 31 and a projected population growth in the area.

Construction began in July after a $77 million contract was awarded to the Leon D. Dematteis Construction Corporation.

We are here to celebrate the groundbreaking of our new school from the foundation up, said Rose. For those of you who have been on the North Shore for decades, I ask -- when was last time you saw a new school on the North Shore? And this school will accommodate 773 students. That is huge. This will be a massive infusion of classroom space, more than weve seen on the North Shore in years. It will help alleviate our overcrowding. Thats a big problem in the North Shore schools, and it will give our students a better opportunity to learn with the amenities and the resources that they need.

A rendering of the new PS 70 school building in Stapleton that is slated to open for the 2022-2023 school year. (Courtesy/SCA)

The new building will be air-conditioned and fully accessible to serve the specialized needs of all students, including 96 District 75 students.

District 75 includes school sites throughout the city that provide special education services to students with disabilities.

This new school building will include everything we expect in a world class educational facility, and were proud to bring this state-of-the-art space to the students and families here on Staten Island, said Grillo. Today, we see another example of how government agencies, families, community members and elected officials can get together to provide our students with the technology, facilities and resources they need to succeed.

The new school will contain four pre-K classrooms, four kindergarten classrooms, 20 standard classrooms (grades 1-5), reading and speech resource rooms, three district special education classrooms, eight District 75 classrooms and rooms for physical and occupation therapy.

Other amenities include: a computer classroom; art classrooms; gymnasium; playground; full kitchen complex; library; guidance and medical suites; science resource room; music room; exercise room; administrative suite; conference room; teacher work room, and a parent and community room.

PS 70, Stapleton, is a four-story state-of-the-art school building slated to open for the 2022-2023 school year. (Staten Island Advance/Annalise Knudson)

Our children thrive in state-of-the-art school facilities, and this new school building will include all the amenities we expect in a world-class educational facility, said Richard A. Carranza, city schools chancellor, in a statement. Thank you to our partners at SCA and to the Staten Island community for helping us provide our students with 21st-century learning spaces. This is equity and excellence in action.

As part of the SCAs Public Art for Public Schools program, the school will also have permanent public artwork. The artist selected for the commission, Daniel Agdag, will be creating a site-specific piece for the school lobby.

While the school is on tap to be named PS 70 when it opens to students, members from the Staten Island chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attended the groundbreaking to encourage others to sign a petition to name PS 70 after Rose.

PS 70, Stapleton, is a four-story state-of-the-art school building slated to open for the 2022-2023 school year. (Staten Island Advance/Annalise Knudson)

FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.