Maybe they missed the lesson on sharing.
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and top city educrats are refusing to give up two conference rooms in their Tweed Courthouse headquarters to relieve classrooms stuffed with 50 first- and second-graders across the hall.
The same agency that regularly forces schools to make nice and share a limited number of classrooms has insisted it needs the conference rooms more than do the kids at PS 343 — even with seven classes currently jammed into five rooms.
Parents say the setup has left two rooms each serving two classes simultaneously — with makeshift six-foot dividers doing nothing to stem the noise and distractions.
“We’re in a school where there’s no proper gymnasium, cafeteria or playground — so we’re making a lot of sacrifices,” said Eden Lopez, whose son attends first grade. “But what we didn’t agree to sacrifice was their education.”
This is the third year that the school has been temporarily sited at Tweed Courthouse across from City Hall, in anticipation of a new building opening near the South Street Seaport in 2015.
The school has 164 students in kindergarten through second grade.
Parents say they first broached the idea of using the conference rooms in a letter to Fariña in May, but were rebuffed.
When they experienced the noise level in the doubled-up classrooms for themselves for the first time at a recent parents night, they wrote another letter last week calling the DOE’s stance an “embarrassing and cruel irony.”
Parents emphasized that the school needs the two rooms — which they say sits empty most of the day — only until 2:40 p.m. for the next eight months.
The Sept. 29 PTA letter got them a meeting with deputy chancellor Kathleen Grimm, who twice told the group, “I would not hold out a whit of hope,” according to parents.
“They tell us it’s only temporary, but it’s only temporary for them to give up the space — so right back at you,” said Melissa Carol, whose daughter Marly is in first grade.
“I’m worried because the early years of education are pivotal,” added Carol. “It’s a lot to fight off distractions when you’re 6.”
Department of Education spokeswoman Devora Kaye said the rooms in Tweed are needed for staffers who work on supporting the entire school system.
She noted that PS 343 would move next fall into a “state-of-the-art building.”