By Karen Rouse | WNYC
“At a Freehold, N.J., elementary school, more than 500 students share a vast, open space where bookshelves, whiteboards, storage cubbies and other pieces of furniture are the only boundaries between classrooms.
There are no walls because the building was originally designed in the 1970s to be a smaller Montessori school, Superintendent Rocco Tomazic explained during a recent tour. But now, it’s noisy and crowded, and the district doesn’t have the money to move each of the classes into traditional closed classrooms — the kind with walls, and a lot fewer distractions.”