Diana Schlesinger, Director of the Greene Hill School, says the furniture and supplies that a Manhattan school tossed with the trash will save her small private school thousands of dollars.
Schlesinger's husband, Robert Nassau, who works in Greenwich Village, saw the goods were piled onto the sidewalk outside the building shared by the Greenwich Village Middle School and P.S. 3. He immediately spoke with a school official.
"I asked him, Iis this furniture being thrown away?' and he said, 'Yes, the trucks are coming in half an hour,'" Nassau said. "So I got on the phone and tried to find someone to save what we could."
Before moving to their new location, the middle school decided to toss out some of their furniture and equipment, including a box of clarinets.
The things that Robert Nassau was able to obtain from outside P.S. 3 is spread over several rooms at the Greene Hill School, and he says it represents less than half of what was left on the street.
Greenwich Village Middle School administrators did not comment, but the New York Department of Education said, "A better effort should have been made to find other schools that could have used the furniture, or in the absence of that, a charitable organization that might have benefited from its donation. Moving forward, we will work with our schools to help them do this if they cannot on their own."
As for Greene Hill School, Schlesinger is just happy to get the unexpected donations.
"I'm thrilled that we were able to benefit, you know, from it and the materials will certainly get good use here," said Schlesinger.
