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Schools

Katrina swells demand for portables

Pasco's challenge: Get 100 of them to house as many as 2,000 students next school year.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published September 22, 2005

Laurie Roberts had her marching orders. As a buyer for fast-growing Pasco County schools, she should be prepared to order as many as 100 portable classrooms for the 2006-07 school year.

Then Hurricane Katrina hit.

A tight construction market got tighter. Almost overnight, costs jumped for building materials and labor, threatening delays in aggressive school building programs designed to keep up with rapid student growth.

And then it occurred to Roberts: What would this mean for Pasco's ability to secure portable classrooms? Demand for the temporary structures soared as Louisiana and Mississippi began searching for ways to house families, students, medical services, emergency operations and other public health programs.

And the need for portables would be even higher in Pasco if seven planned schools weren't finished by the 2006-07 school year.

"We're going to be lucky if we can get any portable classrooms next year," Roberts said. That means Pasco, racing to keep pace with growth, might have to find room for as many as 2,000 students who could have been housed in 100 portables.

Lee County school support director Bill Moore had a similar realization and last week ordered 200 modular classrooms in anticipation of delays building 16 classroom wings for next year.

"How many you order and how many you get are two different things," said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association. "Every portable in the South is headed toward Louisiana and Mississippi."

Florida schools have 20,700 portable classrooms on their campuses this year, according to state Department of Education figures. Despite efforts to try to eliminate the temporary buildings, that number has risen from 15,882 just five years ago.

Rick Bartolotti, senior vice president for California company Modtech Holdings, a leading manufacturer of portable classrooms, said the school districts' post-Katrina fears may be justified.

The Mississippi Department of Education has already requested 400 new portable classrooms from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Numbers are not yet in for Louisiana schools.

The question then becomes one of capacity. Mississippi's order alone equals the total number of classrooms Modtech's Florida operation made in 2003. And the demand is not just for portables. FEMA estimates it will need housing for 200,000 households displaced by the storm.

Since Katrina, Modtech, with 1,395 employees, has started hiring with an aim to increase production by 40 percent at its manufacturing plants in Plant City and Texas. Since August, the publicly traded company has seen its stock value rise 26 percent.

"It's a great time to be a contractor, I guess," said Pasco County schools superintendent Heather Fiorentino. "But it's a bad time to need something done yesterday."

Industry leaders sound confident they can keep up. "At this point, we believe we'll be able to meet the demands in the state of Florida," said Richard Brown, vice president for Mobile Modular, a California distributor.

But hurricane-savvy Florida educators think they know the drill: "As soon as the hurricane hit, I knew from what happened here during Charlie that we needed to get the order in right away," Lee County's Moore said.

Last year, after four hurricanes pummeled Florida, the commercial modular building industry pulled in $5-billion in estimated revenues, a 10 percent increase over the prior year, according to its trade association, the Modular Building Institute. North American production increased 41 percent from 54.8-million square feet in 2003 to 77.3-million square feet in 2004, institute marketing director Steven Williams said.

"As far as the delays go, I honestly just don't know," Williams said. "I can't imagine any of our dealers accepting orders that they can't fill."

Not all school districts are panicking. Cathy Valdes, chief facilities director for Hillsborough County schools, said that while she worries about market pressures affecting the district's plans to build 21 schools in five years, she feels the district's 2,100 leased or owned portables are sufficient to meet facilities needs for the time being. And Pinellas County school spokesman Sterling Ivey said the district's facilities needs are rather minor compared to some of the faster-growing districts in the state.

Meanwhile, Pasco superintendent Fiorentino said every scenario for how to deal with potential construction slowdowns and space shortages is on the table, including creative class scheduling.

"And to be honest with you," Fiorentino said, "we're still trying to get over last year's hurricanes."

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report.

[Last modified September 22, 2005, 01:04:14]