Queens High School of Teaching

The Queens High School of Teaching, Liberal Arts and the Sciences is a public high school in Glen Oaks, New York located on the Frank A. Padavan Campus, a sprawling 32acre landscaped campus, which contains QHST and two other neighboring 'kindergarten-8th' grade schools: P.S./I.S. 266 and P.S./I.S. 208. It is one of the only schools in New York City that has a campus, which is the largest public school campus ever built in the United States. The campus—originally named the Glen Oaks Campus—was renamed in 2008 in honor of a state senator who at the time was running for re-election.Its three Small Learning Communities are named "Emerson," "Freire," and "Montessori." The school opened in Fall 2003. It currently serves grades 9-12 under principal Eric Contreras. The original principal was Nigel Pugh.History and originThe school was originally planned as a year-round school with short vacations throughout the year, but this plan was later dismissed, and the school now adheres to a standard academic schedule.The original plan was to enroll 300 freshmen and gradually accept more students each year. Months before its opening 60 sophomores were admitted as well. At this time Principal Nigel Pugh separated the school into three "small learning communities" (SLCs) to simulate the experience of attending a smaller school.The campus was originally the site of an extension of Creedmore mental hospital to which the school has no affiliation. During the 2009-2010 school year, the last few buildings were torn down for a not yet started sports field.Small Learning CommunitiesEach SLC has its own teachers and students in each community mostly attend classes only within their small learning community. Some classes – e.g. art, music, Spanish culture, Spanish - are "cross-community" meaning that students from different communities attend the same class. Montessori and Emerson were the two biggest communities, having few seniors and an average number of juniors, sophomores, and freshmen, while Freire only had juniors, sophomores and freshmen. But this changed as the class of '07 has seniors for all its communities.