A recently disabled Queens principal has been relegated to her school’s basement — because officials still haven’t installed a wheelchair lift despite her months of pleading for one.
Joann Barbeosch, of PS 94 in Littleneck, has been working since the summer out of a cramped, unventilated basement storeroom, parents and administrators complain.
“Her sense is, they’re putting it off and putting it off and hoping the problem will somehow go away,” complained parent Matthew Saliba.
“She’s the captain of the ship that’s working out of the boiler room.”
Last school year, back problems left Barbeosch reliant on a wheelchair to get around. Now, she’s effectively barred from her own first-floor office, and from visiting any classrooms or attending auditorium events
The Department of Education responded to a request for comment by hurriedly claiming that a lift has been ordered, that work will begin in January, and that everyone at the school has been made aware of that.
“That’s absolutely not true,” countered one DOE staffer familiar with Barbeosch’s predicament.
“No one was told about this,” the staffer said.
“First they said it might take four months, then it became five months,” the staffer said. “We have nothing approved.”
Barbeosch did not return phone calls seeking comment. But parents described her in glowing terms as a hands-on principal whose first-floor office door had always been open.
Children were constantly stopping in to read to her from their stories, or to collect birthday lollipops and compliments for work well done, parents said.
Now she’s consigned to a small, windowless room that, since it’s near the cafeteria kitchen, smells inescapably of french fries.
“She’s been pleading with us, saying she investigated it herself and a lift would be a quick and easy installation,” said another DOE staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“She doesn’t complain. She just makes the best of everything. But this is really getting to her,” the staffer added. “This is her life. Her life is school. Watching kids learn, and just being there.”
Parent Gia Bonavita, who has two children in the school, said her kids no longer come home with stories of getting congratulations from the principal for good grades and other accomplishments.
“My kids were always popping in there to tell her, ‘I got an A,’ or, ‘My tooth fell out,’ or, ‘I’m the lead in the play,’ ” Bonavita said.
“She knows the majority of the kids by their first name, and what they like,” Bonavita said.
“Her office was at the top of the stairs and her door was always open. We’d say, ‘Sorry to bother you,’ and she’d always say, ‘Come right in.’ ”
“Not having her be present in our day to day, she feels it, we feel it, and the children feel it,” Bonavita said.