By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
GREENWICH VILLAGE — A downtown public school did some back-to-school cleaning throwing out desks, chairs, and cabinets on Wednesday, much to the chagrin of neighborhood residents, the New York Post reported.
The Greenwich Village Middle School on Hudson Street threw out more than 50 pieces of furniture in good condition on Wednesday, as neighbors looked on furiously, the paper said.
"It was perfectly good stuff. It should be used and not thrown away,” local business owner Richard Butensky told the Post.
"There were a lot of desks — at least 50 — and those were all destroyed."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Education told the paper that the school had already taken the majority of its furniture to its new location at 26 Broadway. The school is moving, the paper said, because it needs more space.
"Other pieces that were left were not usable," DOE spokeswoman Margie Feinberg wrote in an e-mail to the Post. "All the pieces that were not usable were removed from the school today."
Feinberg told the paper that a portion of the furniture went to P.S. 3, with which Greenwich Village Middle School shares the building.
The school disposed of the furniture amidst the city’s moves to address a $500 million schools budget gap by cutting the budgets for specific schools approximately four percent and eliminating school bus service for 5,000 children.
