The $42.2 million expansion and renovation of Buffalo’s City Honors School is on schedule to be completed next summer, and the project is already turning heads in the city’s Fruit Belt section.

But getting dilapidated city-owned housing adjacent to the school torn down has been a much harder task.

Five Buffalo Board of Education members have demanded that the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority demolish or rehabilitate the Woodson Gardens housing complex next to City Honors at 186 E. North St.

Officials of the housing authority did not return calls seeking comment.

In September the authority sent school officials a letter saying demolition of the complex was approved and would begin shortly, according to Board of Education President Ralph Hernandez and board members Christopher Jacobs, Catherine Nugent Panepinto, Lou Petrucci and John Licata.

The letter, they said, was then rescinded, prolonging what has been several years of wrangling over the issue.

“The board is pouring tens of millions of dollars into City Honors, and standing right next to it is a derelict housing complex owned by a city agency,” Petrucci said. “This doesn’t make any sense, particularly in an area adjacent to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.”

“I understand that the wheels of government can move more slowly than the private sector, but three years is ridiculous,” Jacobs added.

The letter from the housing authority applied to two separate two-story structures next to the school, said Joseph P. Giusiana, the school district’s chief operating officer. It was rescinded when it was discovered that an environmental sign-off was required from the federal government, and not just the state.

The housing authority said it expects that sign-off by the end of the month, Giusiana said.

That would clear the way for demolition of the two-story structures, but not a separate row of run-down city-owned housing across the street from the school. Giusiana said efforts will continue to have that housing demolished as well.

The $42.2 million City Honors project includes an Olympic-sized pool, a new gym and locker rooms and an extensive renovation. The school is scheduled to reopen in September.