New School to be Built in Yonkers
It will replace a former housing complex.
A new school will be coming to Yonkers very soon.
Early last week, Yonkers city officials announced that a new Pre-K through 8th-grade school will be built at the former Mulford Gardens housing complex, adjacent to Grant Park.
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Social media posts from the City of Yonkers say that the complex will boast tons of amazing features, including an auditorium, full gym, library, music and art rooms, medical offices, and even a pool accessible to the surrounding neighborhood. The building will be modeled after the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Community School, which opened this past September.
The new addition will be built on the old Mulford Gardens housing complex, which closed due to a combination of factors including deterioration, high crime rates, and a city-wide plan to revitalize the area with new, improved affordable housing, according to the New York Times.
While some may be thrilled about the new addition, many are questioning the development, claiming that repairs to current schools are needed more.
“Well, I was just thinking that maybe they should fix up the school that closed up the street instead of building another one,” one woman told News 12 about the new school.
According to the outlet, the superintendent said they don’t know how much the project will cost just yet, but added that funding for it was pre-approved through the Yonkers Joint Schools Construction Board.
The new building comes just as Yonkers recovers from low enrollment. According to Lohud, around 100 students who registered for the year were still awaiting classroom placement and were late to register, doing so just days before classes started.
“The process can take a long time because many of these children have individual educational plans for special needs, so when these families come in to get registered, they have to bring all the proper documentation,” said Akeem Jamal, spokesperson for Yonkers Public Schools. “These are also families who are brand new to Yonkers and many of them do not speak English.”
Low enrollment is not new to Yonkers. In the 2023-2024 year, the Yonkers City District had a total of just over 22 thousand students enroll at public schools, 90 percent of which were a minority and 52 percent of which were economically disadvantaged.
“Yonkers is proudly taking the lead in accommodating the evolving needs required to educate a 21st-century student,” Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano told New York Family. “The new school at Grant Park joins our growing efforts to update and rebuild the aging infrastructure of some of our schools. The community school model provides recreational and medical resources to not only the students but for the surrounding neighborhood.”
The announcement comes just short of one year after the opening of the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Community School. The $80 million dollar facility was the first public school built in Yonkers in 20 years, complete with an auditorium,
“Yonkers has a really high Latino population; being able to offer a dual language experience is really important to our kids in our community; it’s part of their culture, part of their identity,” Superintendent of Yonkers Public Schools, Anibal Soler Jr. told News12 when the new school first opened.
According to the Yonkers official website, nearly 25 percent of Yonkers’ residents are aged 18 or less, and is one of the most diverse cities in New York State and the region, with 31 percent of residents foreign-born, 46 percent of households speaking a foreign language and a school district comprised of students hailing from 100 different cultures and nationalities.
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