Alumni Of Shuttered P.S. 248 Celebrate In Shadow Of Alma Mater — At L&B Spumoni Gardens [Photos]
In 1981, the MTA purchased their alma mater from the city for $1, but for the alumni of Gravesend’s P.S. 248, the memories and nostalgia live on.
For the third year in a row, the former students of the elementary school once located at 2125 West 13th Street — which dates back to the 1930s and has since been transformed into an MTA training facility — met at L&B Spumoni Gardens Saturday, August 15, to reminisce about the good old days.
The reunion’s organizers chose the iconic pizza shop because it is located in the shadow of their old school grounds and it reminds them of their elementary school years.
“The school had amazing teachers who cared,” said Joseph Mooski, Class of 1980, who coordinated the event. “It was a pretty big school, but everything looked big when you were small.”
Mooski, who was in the P.S. 248’s last graduating class, recalled the push from families to save the school from closure in its final years.
“The parents were more involved in the school and the PTA and we had many rallies to save our school,” he said. “For a few years there were always threats of the school shutting down, until they finally decided to shut it for good in 1981, because they said that they didn’t have enough students and the MTA needed a place to train workers.”
Some of the alumni who attended Mooski’s event graduated from sixth grade in the 1940s. It is a relatively small group that meets at the pizzeria, but every year the reunion grows. A Facebook alumni group Mooski started in 2010 to find old classmates has swelled to more than 390 members of all ages, from across the United States.
“They all share their great memories of the school, and the different teachers they had, and it’s a great time down memory lane,” said Mooski.
Checkout the photos of this year’s event below:
Correction [August 18, 11pm]: A previous version of this story stated that the P.S. 248 building dates back to 1901. In fact, it was built in the early 1930s (Thanks, Joseph Ditta, for the correction and the primary sources).
