Press

Today, students, teachers, school administrators and members of the school's PTA joined Council Member Ben Kallos to cut the ribbon on a new $600,000 hydroponics lab. P.S. 183 won the discretionary funds from Council Member Ben Kallos to build the lab during Participatory Budgeting in 2017 with 1,514 votes.

Students, teachers, New York Power Authority (NYPA) and NY Sun Works staff, local elected officials and DOE representatives gear up for an exciting ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of The Highbridge Green School’s hydroponic greenhouse classroom. NY Sun Works has opened almost 40 new hydroponic science labs this year, bringing their total to 139 Greenhouse Classrooms across New York City.

After a full day of school a few weeks ago, 12-year-old Rose Quigley donned gloves and quickly picked bunches of fresh lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, mint and oregano. But she didn't have to leave her school in Brooklyn, N.Y., or even go outdoors to do it.

What started in October with one tray of basil has grown into a hydroponics greenhouse, now ripe with fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, basil and parsley. Staff and students at PS 349 in Jamaica, Queens, gathered at a ribbon-cutting event on April 9 to celebrate the successful first year of their hydroponics lab and thank those who supported the project.

A new science classroom is nourishing young minds and the environment. At Saint Saviour in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the all-girls Catholic high school unveils its hydroponic lab. “It’s an environmentally friendly way to farm without taking up much space and bringing fruits and vegetables to kitchens in urban areas all year round,” said Deirdre Moran. She is a junior at the high school and excited to learn in the lab.

The seeds of a sustainable future have been planted at P.S. 84 – Steinway in Astoria, where Councilman Costa Constantinides helped opened a new hydroponic science lab on Jan. 14. “Environmental changes are increasingly making science a component of every industry, so we must make sure our leaders of tomorrow get the hands-on experience now to solve problems of the future,” said Constantinides.

Students, parents, faculty and community members of Emerson Middle School pitched in to get their urban gardens ready for the season, in honor of Earth Day. The school is celebrating the fourth year of their indoor hydroponics lab where more than 500 pounds of produce are grown every year for students to enjoy.

Sarai had never tried mint before. But the fifth grade student recently had the chance to sample the herb directly from her own garden. Specifically, her class’ hydroponic garden. Sarai, together with other Northern Manhattan school children at P.S. 28 – Wright Brothers School on 155th Street, are growing greens and vegetables in their own classroom.

After muddling through with limited resources for nearly 3 years, students and teachers alike celebrated the opening of a new Green STEM Lab at P.S. 34 in Greenpoint this morning. Excited elementary students gave tours through the bright green vines of peas, tomatoes and cucumbers, which climbed from hydroponic Dutch bucket systems, soundtracked by the trickle of recycling water running down through tower gardens and across nutrient trays, feeding leafy basil, rainbow chard and kohlrabi.

Students at Astoria‘s P.S. 122 will grow their own vegetables in class with the help of two hydroponic science labs that will also serve to teach students about agriculture, biology, technology and sustainability. Councilman Costa Constantinides allocated $160,000 through discretionary funding to help build the labs in an elementary and middle school class at P.S. 122. In a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Dec. 8, the classroom labs, constructed by New York Sun Works, were unveiled.

Tribeca resident Shakira Provasoli was treated to a once-in-a-lifetime field trip to the White House last week, where the public-school teacher was honored with the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators in recognition of a ground breaking curriculum she developed to support her uptown school’s greenhouse learning center.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been very busy, but not too busy to make time to meet the fifth graders who wrote to him asking him to find solutions to the universal challenge of climate change. Today, Mr. Ban will talk to them about what the UN is doing to tackle this issue, and what they can do themselves to clean up our planet and ensure the well-being of generations to come.