It’s social ‘squeezing’

High schools bursting

Looking at the students jammed in halls and stairways at Forest Hills HS last week, one might have assumed the COVID-19 pandemic was something out of a history book.

Photos provided to The Post showed students at the Queen school negotiating packed halls between classes and practically sitting atop one another in a cafeteria.

“There’s no social distancing whatsoever,” said one mom. “New York City is putting Forest Hills High School students’ lives at risk.”

Another parent noted that there were more restrictions for getting into a New York City restaurant than for attending the school.

“We can put 4,000 kids in a building, in a petri dish?” said Shelly Channan, whose son is a Forest Hills junior.

Overcrowding is an issue at several city high schools, including Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, where a parent tweeted a video on Wednesday of a packed hallway.

“This is Fort Hamilton High School yesterday. Even with staggered schedules, it cannot contain its 5,000 student population when the building was built for 3,000,” the parent, Paullette Healy, wrote.

With nearly 4,000 students, Forest Hills HS is running at about 196 percent building capacity, said Adam Bergstein, an English teacher and chapter chairman for the United Federation of Teachers at the school.

“People are wearing masks. Otherwise it’s like nothing has changed from February of 2020 until today,” he said.

He wrote to Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter on the issue on Sept. 8 but has not received a response.

Experts suggested the city could do more to keep students safe in crowded schools, such as making cafeterias offlimits, staggering schedules, or testing more than 10 percent of unvaccinated kids.

The DOE noted students are in halls for just a few minutes and said it was working with larger schools on solutions such as using alternative spaces for lunch.

“We opened our schools safely this year by repurposing interior space, hiring additional staff, staggering student schedules, using outside space and adding increased ventilation and additional air purifiers,” said DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer.