The Walls Are Growing Taller in Tweed Courthouse Classrooms

New, taller dividers in a Peck Slip School second grade classroom in Tweed Courthouse. Officials say that an additional structure can be built on them to make the partition even taller.

How high is high enough?

Responding to the cries of Peck Slip School parents [1] concerned over the noisy learning conditions in rooms shared by two classes in Tweed Courthouse, Department of Education officials have replaced six-foot room dividers with heavier, sound absorbing 10-foot ones. And with 15-foot ceilings in the grand rooms, they say they might be able to build up still higher.

But that hasn't silenced the complaints of some parents, nor of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who continue their call to solve the problem by having adjacent rooms turned into classrooms.

"This week they made an attempt to rectify it. That didn't work," Silver told his School Overcrowding Task Force last Thursday, adding, "We are going to have to find a better way."

The Peck Slip School is in its third and last year of temporary quarters in Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street before moving to its new school near the Seaport. One of the Tweed rooms that parents have their eyes on is a former classroom that schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña had turned into a center for professional development. The other is a chancellor’s conference room. Fariña has so far declined to give up on either one, though Silver offered her the large conference room in his own office as an option.

"They didn't like that idea," Silver said glumly.

But DOE officials, including Peck Slip School Principal, Maggie Siena, say the new barriers are dampening the sound in the rooms. The dividers carve up the 2,300-square-foot rooms into three sections, two of which are classroom spaces. The third section is office space used by a special education teacher and a teacher mentor.

"It has been helpful. It's not like all of a sudden like we’re in a silent space," Siena told the Silver task force, adding that the classes—two second grades and two first grades—"tend to be very calm, in many ways calmer than rooms that are single because there is the sense of awareness."

Siena said the two teachers in each room are making an effort to do the same activities simultaneously and independent reading often takes place at the same time or when the other class is out of the room.

In the meantime, plans are afoot to build the barriers higher, though they are restricted from going to the ceiling because of landmarks and city code constraints.

"We are committed to looking at baffling material that goes on top of that wall as best we can without disrupting the ventilation, the lighting and some of the other issues," said Richard Bocchicchio, borough director for the DOE's office of space planning.  "We have our contractor looking into options for that right away."

But Paul Hovitz, co-chair of Community Board 1's Youth and Education Committee, held fast to a call for separate classroom space in one of the nearby rooms.

“Why has Chancellor Fariña, who is an educator, dug her heels in and said we must have these rooms here, which are right adjacent to the classrooms?" Hovitz said. "If I were the parent of a first or second grader I would not want to make the best of a situation, I would want the best situation to be provided for them."