July 15, 1999, Thursday-- Suburban; Pg.  2

TAKE THE ABC TRAIN / SUBWAY STATION PRESCHOOL

By CAROLINA GONZALEZ

Parents dropping off their preschoolers at the Maple Street School will soon arrive with a child in one hand and a MetroCard in the other.

The preschool in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens is moving into a street-level building owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and attached to the Prospect Park station on the D and Q lines.

The 22-year-old private preschool will be the first school to open in a subway station, when construction is completed early next year.

At a ceremonial groundbreaking yesterday, where funders and parents playfully dug into plastic buckets filled with sand, parents said the school's new site will make a world of difference.

"It's a community-based school, but we think it's good if a mother from a community one or two stops down the line can bring her child in," said Kate Groby, coordinator for the parent cooperative that runs the school.

"We have parents from Ditmas Park, and this will make it easier on them," said Kendall Christiansen, chairman of the school's board of trustees.

The school is moving three blocks from the Nostrand Ave. storefront it has occupied for much of the last decade.

But its new site across Flatbush Ave. from Prospect Park puts it a hop, skip and jump from two playgrounds, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Prospect Park Zoo.

The advantages of the new location were underscored by the constant foot traffic out of the train station and along the street, including groups of preschoolers heading to Prospect Park.

The $ 600,000 project was funded with help from Borough President Howard Golden, state Sen. Marty Markowitz, City Councilwoman Una Clarke and the Independence Community Foundation. It will include a gut rehab of the ornate brick building.

The mezzanine of the station also will be expanded to add a

half-story to the building, giving the school's interior a total of 2,800 square feet.

This will be enough to accommodate the existing student body of 23 and allow the school to grow to an anticipated 40 students.

"We needed a larger space," said Martha Haakmat, whose daughter Kaila, 4, attends the school.

"We're at capacity in the other building, and as things are, we've been running the risk of turning people away," said Haakmat, who introduced her younger daughter Georgia, 18 months, as a "future Maple Street student."

The school also will be able to start after-school programs for older kids.  "It'll be a wonderful thing when we're closer to the park and able to see each other when the after-school program starts for the older kids," said Zenobia Mann, whose daughter Safiya, 4, will graduate from the program

next year.

"Child care advocates have been talking to the [Transit Authority] from the top down to get them to help develop child care connected to transit," Christiansen said.

"But we were able to succeed, coming at it from the ground up," said Christiansen, who wrote the proposal that obtained the space for the school.

Beau Everett of the MTA's Real Estate Department said that the agency was impressed with the unusual proposal, and that there was a good fit between the site and the school.

"Considering the amount of space they needed, there aren't as many locations that would be suitable for a school," Everett said.

Everett added that street-level buildings attached to subway stations are rare and usually are found only in Brooklyn and Queens.

"This is a more efficient use of resources like public buildings," project architect Perry Winston said. "And it gives a whole new meaning to living above your station."

Copyright 1999 Daily News, L.P.

Daily News (New York)

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