Members of the New York City School Construction Authority (SCA), Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson and students and faculty from James Monroe Campus joined together on Tuesday to celebrate the reopening of the school's newly renovated swimming pool.

An event speaker shared their excitement about the pool's new look during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The pool has been closed since 2019.

The high school campus pool is one of three pool openings that were celebrated, along with the Samuel J. Tilden Educational Campus in Brooklyn and the George Washington Educational Campus in Manhattan.

The Monroe swimming pool underwent major renovations as part of a $10.1 million New York City School Construction Authority project.

"Swimming pools are essential school amenities that support physical education, recreation, and critical water safety instruction for students across the five boroughs," said Nina Kubota, president and CEO of the SCA.

Mamadou Faye, a senior on the Monroe high school swim team, shared how his first dip in the pool felt.

"It was amazing, honestly. It's better than any other of the pools I've seen during my time swimming. It looks amazing. Everything is well done. I don't know how they got this together, but it's just amazing. I'm not gonna lie," Faye exclaimed.

Faye also commented on how the swim team will now be able to practice in their own school, as opposed to traveling roughly 30 minutes away to Parkchester for rehearsals.

The swimming pool means more to people in the community.

Eddie Oyola, the assistant swim coach at the James Monroe Campus, shared that it exposes teens to a new activity or outlet, possibly keeping them off the streets like it did when he was a teen.

"Aquatics brings a lot of opportunities. Everybody just thinks it's lifeguarding. But it's more than that. It's accountability. Accountability is one of the big things. You got to show up on time. You got to practice five days a week. Those are things that kept me off the street because I didn't want to disappoint anybody, and I really loved what I was doing. So that's what saved me because aquatics just kept me stable. And it gave me something to do, something to focus on in the future," said Oyola.

The three projects total more than $55 million combined in investments to improve aquatic facilities for New York City students.