Portable Classrooms are Gross

My opinion: I doubt these double-wide trailers are as nice as the Board of Ed member and school facilities managers say there are.

Rep: Take students out of 'substandard' portable classrooms
By Donna Porstner Staff Writer

STAMFORD - The chairwoman of the Board of Representatives' Education Committee says 500 students ought to be removed from "substandard" portable classrooms before the Board of Education closes an elementary school.

"We talk about equity and equality, and if you start with an environment that's not good to learn, you are one step behind," said Rep. Pauline Rauh, D-6.

The Board of Education plans to close an elementary school when the new interdistrict magnet school opens in 2009. Declining enrollment and limited funding have been cited as reasons.

Many of the 28 modular classrooms in city grammar schools do not have running water, making bathroom visits a "field trip" and messes difficult to clean, said Rauh, a former school administrator who represents downtown.

"The life of elementary school children is their hands are being washed all the time," she told three school board members who attended one of her committee's meetings at the Government Center Thursday night.

It was the second time in four months Rauh implored school board members to consider the long-term needs of students in the modular units before closing a building.

"I think you are right when you say we haven't discussed that in-depth, but what's the alternative?" said James Rubino, who chairs the Board of Education's Facilities Committee.

Rauh suggested keeping all 12 elementary schools and dispersing preschool classes run by Childcare Learning Centers Inc. into neighborhood schools
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across the city. The nonprofit company has been discussed as a potential tenant of a school building that would be vacated.

Parents of 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds might be reluctant to send their children across town, so preschool classes in neighborhood schools may be ideal, she said.

Rauh said she fears the Board of Education will close a school only to come back a few years later and seek a large capital appropriation to replace the portables classrooms. The oldest units are 18 years old.

While some portable classrooms had three-to-five-year lifespans when they were purchased, School Facilities Manager Al Barbarotta said the district has extended their useful lives by installing new roofs and making other repairs.

"Most of the teachers like them," Barbarotta said. "We don't get very many complaints about them at my level."

The school board's Redistricting Committee decided in February to continue counting the space provided by modular classrooms as it considers where to send students in years ahead.

Rubino said it wouldn't make sense, financially, to disperse preschool classes throughout the city.

"I think it's economies of scale," he said in an interview after the meeting. "If CLC is looking for a place to house 400 kids, it's more economical to put them all in one place.

CLC runs subsidized preschool and daycare programs for nearly 1,100 children at 17 sites. CLC officials have said they are seeking a central location to consolidate their 15 satellite operations.

Monica Hoherchak, another school board member, said in interview after Thursday's meeting that CLC officials have told them clients don't mind driving to a central campus.

Board of Education President Richard Freedman did not attend the meeting but said in an interview Friday that there is no reason to discontinue using the portables.

"In many cases - if not most cases - they are the nicest classrooms in the building, so this whole issue of equity - it's just not the case," he said.

Demolishing portable classrooms and redistributing those students to other buildings would be more disruptive and unpopular than closing one building, Freedman said.

"It's like any other piece of real estate: If you maintain and keep it in working condition, it should last a long time," he said.

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