Portable Classrooms

Four portable classrooms will ease overcrowding at George Fox Middle School next fall, and the transfer of some of its students will be delayed until countywide redistricting, as a result of votes yesterday by the Anne Arundel County school board.The Pasadena middle school was built for 844 students, but fall enrollment is projected at 1,041.The portable classrooms are among 20 included in the school system's budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Ralph Luther, acting assistant superintendent for support services, said each classroom should cost between $37,000 and $50,000.

Sometimes, the same old solutions are inadequate for stubborn problems. New directions must be found. So it is with overcrowding in the Baltimore County Public School system. The county has too few bricks-and-mortar schools for the number of students attending. The problem is chronic and unlikely to improve - projections show county public school attendance rising in the years to come. Exacerbating the problem is the troubled economy, which is forcing parents to switch from private to public schools to save tuition costs.

The Howard County school board began grappling with redistricting elementary and middle school students last night but spent most of the meeting evaluating which schools should receive portable classrooms to relieve overcrowding.The board's work session was the first of several this month to decide which students will be reassigned to existing and new elementary and middle schools.The boundary lines for high school students will not be changed until 1996, when two new secondary schools are scheduled to open.

The Western School of Technology and Environmental Science in Catonsville is scheduled to reopen Friday after an early-morning fire Thursday damaged two portable classrooms and the roof of the high school's main building, school officials said. Staff worked Thursday to prepare the building for reopening and ensure that it would be safe for students, school system spokesman Mychael Dickerson said. Firefighters responded to the school in the 100 block of Kenwood Avenue about 2:34 a.m. Thursday for reports of a possible fire and found one portable classroom engulfed in flames, with the fire spreading to a second portable classroom, according to the Baltimore County Fire Department.

Portable classrooms are the trailer parks of the school world -- getting no respect and giving back just as little aesthetic pleasure.But those clusters of portables don't bother some teachers and students, who find them downright cozy on the inside."

The Anne Arundel County school system is exploring options to avoid installing more than 100 portable classrooms to house all the children who will attend county schools by 2007 because of all-day kindergarten and other early childhood programs. To meet state mandates, the school system planned to add 35 portable classrooms this year at 18 schools. But school officials now estimate they will need 74 additional classrooms at 26 schools over the next two years. Kindergartners would not be housed in the portable classrooms.

On the Top 10 list of the most crowded public schools in the county this fall, William Paca-Old Post Road and Prospect Mill elementaries will hold the No. 1 and No. 2 slots.Those two schools will open the school year Sept. 3 with more portable classrooms than any of the other 44 public schools.William Paca-Old Post Road, which will have 10 relocatable classrooms, is expected to have 1,497 students enrolled -- 297 above capacity.Six of the portable classrooms needed at William Paca-Old PostRoad are already in place because they were used last year.

Stung by criticism that they had neither an accounting of their portable classrooms nor a policy for their use, and that at least one-third were not needed, county school officials have inventoried the portables and are proposing their first policy for where the classrooms will be placed.The inventory shows that nearly all 129 portables are in full-time use, most of them as classrooms.The proposed policy lists six criteria for determining whether a school is eligible for a portable classroom.

Parents of students who attend Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County are outraged at the condition of portable classrooms that are to be used during the coming academic year. "A lot of parents are saying they don't want their children to be in them," said Van Ross, a member of the Woodlawn PTSA, who visited the school with about a half-dozen other parents to inspect the classrooms. "School officials say, `Oh, we aren't going to leave them like this,'" said Ross. "But we don't believe them."

Prompted by air quality concerns and complaints from parents, Hampstead Elementary School has closed four portable classrooms until Monday while cleaning crews scrub walls, floors, ceilings and desks. The school has shifted the fifth-graders into other spaces in the main school building. An indoor air study was conducted last month by an independent research company after a problem with portables at Mount Airy Middle School last fall prompted a countywide inspection of that type of classroom.

When I gave blood about 10 days ago, my blood pressure was surprisingly low (for me) at 90/60. But a few things have gotten my blood boiling in the last few days, particularly as I read them on the pages of The Aegis. I think what's got me most riled up is all the complaining by some Harford County Public Schools teachers about their lack of raises in recent years. We can't keep going like this," Ryan Burbey, chair of the English Department at Aberdeen Middle School, told members of the Harford County Board of Education at their meeting Monday night.

Baltimore Fire Department officials were investigating a small fire that damaged the interior of a portable classroom at Carver Vocational Technical High School yesterday afternoon. Members of the school's track team had left the building moments earlier after changing out of their uniforms, a spokesman said, and no injuries were reported. Reported at 5:45 p.m., the fire broke out in a one-story, vinyl-covered, 10-classroom portable building near the rear of the school in the 2200 block of Presstman St. It was brought under control in less than 30 minutes by firefighters with about 10 pieces of fire apparatus, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, the spokesman.

Though Anne Arundel County school officials have met the mandate to provide all-day kindergarten, they struggled to find additional space for their youngest students. Along the way, the number of portable classrooms more than doubled. Now Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell and the school board are working to reverse that trend - and are seeking to put all students in a school under the same roof. The county school board recently approved design plans for construction at five elementary schools - Broadneck, Central, Crofton Woods, Hilltop and Windsor Farm - that would create more classroom space and eliminate the need for portable or relocatable classrooms.

Fairer MAIF rules could curb costs Eileen Ambrose's column "Auto insurance bound to rise" (May 5) suggests a number of ways to weather the rising cost of auto insurance during this economic downturn. She does not mention, however, another answer to the problem - an easy legislative step Maryland can take to make auto insurance more fair for all residents. One key to keeping premiums low across the board is reducing the number of uninsured drivers on our roadways. Uninsured drivers cause property damage and injury and cause all of our insurance premiums to increase.

Several dozen residents turned out at a Baltimore County Council budget hearing last night to support raises for police and teachers and to oppose portable classrooms and building expansions as a solution to crowded schools. Amid tough financial times and cuts in state aid, County Executive James T. Smith Jr. has proposed a lean 2009 budget that avoids tax increases. Cost-of-living raises for most county employees, including teachers, are not included in Smith's $2.58 billion operating budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins in July.

In a corner of her room at Manor View Elementary on Fort Meade, kindergarten teacher Laura Hobbs neatly arranged a little kitchen set, dolls, a small bed and play-food. She likes watching her students pretend, but she worries they'll be strapped for play time given the long list of academic requirements for the school year that begins this week. She has only nine months to get her 5- and 6-year-olds to identify the sequential property of numbers using the calendar, learn the alphabet, recognize letter sounds, learn how to sort by color and number, and learn to share and play nice with one another.

Prompted by air quality concerns and complaints from parents, Hampstead Elementary School has closed four portable classrooms until Monday while cleaning crews scrub walls, floors, ceilings and desks. The school has shifted fifth-graders into other spaces in the main school building. An indoor air study was conducted last month by an independent research company after a problem with portables at Mount Airy Middle School last fall prompted a countywide inspection of that type of classroom.

They call it the trailer park. Neighbors complain that the clusters of aluminum buildings around schools are eyesores. Parents scream and yell that they don't want their kids getting a second-class education in portable classrooms. And some teachers complain about the occasional leaks, and the rain and snow and mud that students inevitably track in when the weather is bad. Parents and elected officials have long complained about portables -- trailers, really -- viewing them as a nasty byproduct of suburban sprawl and crowded schools.

Parents may soon find out whether nearly 200 rising fifth-graders from Hampstead and Manchester elementaries will be relocated in the fall to a cluster of portable classrooms at North Carroll Middle School. While many parents may have thought the question was settled when board members recently rejected a modified proposal to move the children, that was not the case. To ease crowded conditions, Superintendent Charles I. Ecker has proposed moving all of next fall's fifth-graders from Manchester and about half of the fifth-graders from Hampstead to portable classrooms at North Carroll Middle.

GAMBER Developer offers money for portable classrooms The developer of a proposed 20-home subdivision in southern Carroll County offered $100,000 yesterday for portable classrooms to help ease crowding at the elementary school that would serve new residents. County Commissioner Julia Walsh Gouge, liaison to the planning commission, criticized the offer, saying, "Portables are only a temporary solution. We need bricks and mortar. If you are really interested in putting houses here, help us build schools.