On Sunday, The Post revealed the deplorable conditions at PS 9, a public school for disabled kids in Queens, and City Councilman Robert Holden’s (D-Queens) crusade to fix it. Here, he explains how the DOE has ignored the problem.

One year and three months have passed since I walked into PS 9, The Walter Reed School, in Maspeth, Queens, for the first time, and I am still sick to my stomach today.

I’m sick of the Department of Education overlooking the students with physical and mental impairments at this District 75 school. I’m sick of the School Construction Authority pouring millions into a 116-year-old building rather than creating a new facility for these vulnerable children. I’m sick of being given the runaround whenever I speak to these city agencies and City Hall.

PS 9 is by far the worst educational building in my council district. The city has already spent more than $14 million on improvements to the school, but the upgrades are nothing more than a mask to cover up this inadequate facility, which has no elevators and is not accessible for students with special needs.

The renovated library and new technology equipment might cause you to miss the peeling paint falling off the walls in the background. The lone renovated bathroom might make you forget that there is only one bathroom per floor that boys and girls have to share, and tattered changing tables stand in front of urinals.

The upgraded gym and exercise equipment cloud the fact that they share a cramped space in the basement with the woefully inadequate kitchen and cafeteria, where a bouncing ball could careen into a child.

Nothing the city can do to improve PS 9 will change the fact that the building is located in an industrial zone. On any given day, the roads around the school are lined with box trucks and tractor trailers. While loading or unloading, the trucks block traffic for minutes at a time and their diesel engines billow exhaust into the air. An upgraded schoolyard will distract you from the children breathing in this pollution while they are outside playing.

We expect school buses to drop off children in this environment? What happens when the buses get blocked in by the trucks and children are stuck there with no air conditioning?

To me, this all sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. But we know how the DOE has fared in special-education lawsuits in recent years. According to city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office, the city paid $303 million in lawsuits brought by parents of special-education students during fiscal year 2018, an 8% increase over the previous year. The 2018 payouts were 185% higher than what the city paid out four years prior.

The bottom line is that the city is wasting money and missing out on an incredible opportunity to create a new, state-of-the-art facility as the headquarters of District 75 in Queens. I have provided the DOE and SCA with excellent locations in Glendale and Woodside for a school, and they deserve consideration.

On Staten Island, one of its largest District 75 schools is currently taking that route. The Hungerford School will move into a brand-new facility in the 2021-2022 school year, complete with elevators on all floors, wheelchair ramps, Braille signage in every room and hearing loops that allow hearing-impaired students to connect their hearing aids or cochlear implants to a sound system.

Shouldn’t we be striving to provide that level of accommodation to all of our special-needs students in this city? Instead, the students of PS 9 are relegated to an industrial zone that is not conducive to learning, in a building that is not nearly up to 21st-century standards.

I will never be satisfied with more investments in this building. You can polish the brass on the Titanic, but it’s still going to sink.