UPDATE: Former Staten Island Catholic school to house up to 300 adult migrants ‘in coming days’

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A petition against a possible migrant shelter at the former St. John Villa Academy in Arrochar is circulating online, but city officials have yet to make any information publicly available.

The Change.org petition had garnered 766 online signatures by late Monday afternoon after the person who started the petition, Jasmine Cira, posted it on the website Saturday. Most of those signatures, 641, came Monday.

“By signing this petition, we stand together as a community to protect the educational environment of our children and ensure that St. John Villa Academy High School remains dedicated to its intended purpose,” Cira, who did not list contact information on the website, wrote in the petition’s description. “Together, let’s find alternative solutions that prioritize the well-being of both our students and those in need.”

Rumors have long circulated about the site’s possible use as a shelter for migrants, and a source told the Advance/SILive.com that preparations are planned to quickly make the site suitable for a shelter.

But city officials have yet to make an official announcement about the location controlled by the School Construction Authority (SCA), which referenced an inquiry to City Hall.

Regarding the Villa site at 57 Cleveland Pl., a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams repeated his administration’s oft-used line that all options are on the table as the city works to deal with an influx of more than 100,000 migrant to the five boroughs since April of last year.

City Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island), who first brought news of a possible shelter at a former assisted living facility in Midland Beach to the public’s attention, said he’d yet to hear anything from officials about plans at the Villa site.

The Sisters of St. John the Baptist sold the former Villa campus to the city in 2018 for $20 million with plans to eventually turn it into a public school campus. Carr raised concerns about the timeline for that idea with the possibility of migrant housing.

“The Administration has consistently told me over the last several months that Villa has not been selected as a shelter site, and the idea that it could be up for consideration is absurd and unacceptable. Villa was purchased by the City to remain an education campus, potentially the borough’s first dedicated Gifted and Talented school, and that’s what it should be,” Carr said. “The School Construction Authority has been doing environmental assessment work in advance of any future capital improvements to make it ready for students down the road, and any changes to its usage would impede their progress and could set these plans back dramatically.”

The influx of migrants, nearly 60,000 of whom remain in the city’s care, has prompted officials to set up emergency shelters around the five boroughs, including 13 massive humanitarian emergency relief and response centers.

On Staten Island, emergency shelters have been set up at several hotels and inside the Stapleton site of the former Richard H. Hungerford School on Tompkins Avenue.

Other sites around the Island have been rumored, including Villa, the Midland Beach assisted living facility, and at Fort Wadsworth. All have been met with outcry and protests from locals and elected officials.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday that the federal government had arranged for migrants to be housed at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field. She said the city would set up another humanitarian emergency relief and response center with housing available for 2,000 migrants.

“After months of negotiations, the Biden Administration has provided us with a tentative contract that would allow New York to utilize Floyd Bennett Field as a shelter for asylum seekers,” she said. “Ultimately the path out of this crisis is granting work authorization immediately, so these individuals can move out of shelter and into independent living arrangements. This site will be critical in the interim for the City of New York to provide humanitarian aid, as we work collectively to get people on the path to asylum seeker status and legal work.”

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