Pre-K opens at Shalom Aleichem Houses

Contractors are putting the final touches on a new pre-K school they have been working on for months at the Shalom Aleichem Houses on Sedgwick Avenue, but local residents claim they have never been notified by the Education Department about the new school opening in their neighborhood next month.

The Education Department denies the accusation. Its pre-K offices “welcomed potential families with open houses and tours, and the DOE has worked to make families and the communities aware of this option.”

Seats in the Rose Hill pre-K school at 3605 Sedgwick Ave. “were available as part of the Round 1 and Round 2 pre-K admissions process, and offers were made according to admissions priorities,” the department added in an emailed statement. Priority was given to District 10 students, the statement read, although an Education Department spokesman declined to specify how many of the school’s 36 seats went to children from the neighborhood.

Joelle Lynch, who lives on nearby Cannon Place, is one of the parents whose children will be attending Rose Hill. But she said she learned about the school nearly by accident, after seeing its name among scores of pre-K schools on an Education Department list.

“I applied for the second round of applications … and they still had open seats,” she said.

By late August, renovations at the school’s space had been nearly completed. One of the new classrooms sports a large bright orange stripe on the wall and floor, in a splash of color among the wood-colored tables, chairs, and a play kitchen. In the other of the school’s two classrooms, a wall has been decorated with bright yellow-gold stripe, and a flat-screen monitor, cubbies to hang coats and other play furniture are already in place.

The Education Department is required to notify local community boards when it builds a new school, but not when it leases an existing space, Community Board 8 chair Daniel Padernacht said. CB8 did not receive any notifications about the Rose Hill school, he said.

At Shalom Aleichem Houses, some of the residents talked to the workers, learned about the school and spread the word. Others simply assumed that another office was opening up in the building.

“I did not know there was going to be any school here,” said a resident of Shalom Aleichem Houses, Coaubio Tavarez. He had seen workers at the site, but thought “it looked like a doctor’s office. That is what I thought it was,” he said.

Another resident, Kathleen Dunlea, said residents learned about the school by word-of-mouth.

“It’s a regular Peyton Place here. You know everybody here. Everybody knows,” she said.

You talk to a construction guy. You talk to somebody that’s the lawyer here, the real estate agent here.”

The Education Department has allocated more than $4 million for the school, according to a 2016 report by the city’s School Construction Authority. Rose Hill Pre-K is part of Mayor de Blasio’s push to make free, full-day pre-K schools available for each of the city’s more than 73,000 families with 4-year-old children.

Rose Hill does not give preference to low-income families, according to the www.insideschools.org website, which monitors the city’s schools.