Turkish Elementary, Amity School To Open In Sunnyside This Fall : Queens Chronicle

Last year, in a sweep of Catholic school consolidation in Brooklyn and Queens, the Queen of Angels Catholic School in Sunnyside closed.

Community members lamented declining enrollment in boroughs that once were, with large Irish- and Italian-American communities, solidly Catholic.

But the Queen of Angels School (41-12 44th St, Sunnyside NY 11104) will once again have elementary school children running through its halls when the Turkish American Multicultural Education Foundation opens the Queens Amity School in its place this September. "It’s 99 percent sure," said Zafer Akman, the 27-year-old director of TAMEF. The organization is still negotiating the lease with the diocese, but is hoping to come to an agreement to open the private school in the next few days.

What this article gets wrong is the area remains solidly Catholic with many new Catholic residents from Mexico, the Carribean, Central and South America, and the Philippines.

The support of these immigrants for religious education is weak relative to the support among recent immigrants from Islamic countries, so Catholic schools are closing and Islamic schools are opening even though numerically, there are still far more Catholic children in the area than Muslim children.