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‘Portable city’ just fine for elementary school
By MONIQUE FIELDS
© St. Petersburg Times, CLEARWATER -- When the school year begins Wednesday, more than two-thirds of the students at Eisenhower Elementary School will file into portable classrooms. The temporary quarters are necessary because of a massive $5.625-million renovation at the school. For the next seven months, Eisenhower's back yard will be home to 37 portable classrooms that will house more than 600 of the school's 860 students. "We call it "portable city,' " said principal Jean Eubanks. In a few weeks, the corridors between the portables will be named Respect, Responsibility, Honesty and Motivation -- themes in the Commitment to Character curriculum. A fifth will be named Panda, for the school's mascot. In the main building, construction workers will install new walls to close in open classrooms. The school also will get new air conditioning units, lighting, ceilings, counters and carpeting. An added bonus for teachers and students is a new paging system and a program that allows teachers to use their classroom telephones to dial up movie selections from the school's library. The new technology will allow the movie to be piped directly to the classroom, eliminating the need for VCRs in classrooms. The project is scheduled for completion in March 2002. Students will attend class in portables because that was the least disruptive route school administrators could take, Eubanks said. "We were looking at extremely noisy conditions and extremely dusty conditions," she said. "This is a much better and healthy environment for the kids and a much better learning environment because it's quieter." Other schools have weathered similar transitions. Last year, the entire student body at Melrose Elementary School attended class in temporary classrooms. The option trims time from the construction schedule, said Tony Rivas, director of facilities. For example, the project at Melrose was completed in nine months. If the students hadn't been moved out of the school, construction time would have doubled, he said. At Eisenhower, some students will not be moved. The school's pre-kindergarten classes are housed in a separate building as are two kindergarten classes. During construction, students will use the school's library and cafeteria. Built in 1970, Eisenhower reflects the trend in education at the time. Back then, educators were pushing team teaching and many new schools were built with an open floor plan. Classrooms weren't boxed in. Instead, two or more teachers shared an open space and often taught as a team. Teachers now allow students to work in groups. For example, they may be given small pieces of straws and be challenged to make them into a cube for math lessons. Working in groups usually creates a lot of noise. In the open concept, that meant carefully planning when those lessons would occur so that one class wouldn't disrupt another, teachers say. "In a closed classroom, you have more control, less noise," said Karen Festa, a second-grade teacher at Eisenhower. Parents have been supportive of the changes at the school. "As long as they are temporary, I have no problem with them," said Robert Stolz, chair of the School Advisory Committee. Some were concerned students would be targeted by strangers while walking between portables and the main building. They also didn't want children wandering around the school yard while on their way to bathrooms parked outside their classrooms. The solutions: parents will be on duty to survey the grounds, and students will go to the bathrooms in pairs, said Barbara Wright, president of the school's Parent Teacher Association. "It's going to be a challenge because the whole school is in portables, but we're expecting it to work," she said.
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