Portable classrooms help district cope with growth

Scott Reeder

Monday, Nov. 30, 1998 | 10:58 a.m.

The jet from Nellis Air Force Base roared over the school, leaving the students looking upward in its wake.

"These portables classrooms don't have quite the sound insulation that you would expect from a permanent building," said Billy Chapman, principal of Raul Elizondo Elementary School in North Las Vegas.

Elizondo currently consists entirely of portable buildings. A permanent structure for the school will open in January.

Altogether, 771 portable classrooms are in use throughout the Clark County School District, according to Dusty Dickens, the district's director of demographics, zoning and realty.

"The school district is just growing so fast that we really need to use these classrooms as a way coping with the growth," she said.

During the past seven years, the district has grown at an average annual rate of 7 percent. The district now has about 204,000 students and is expected to grow to about 348,000 during the next 10 years.

Not only do the portables help provide needed learning space, but they also give the district more flexibility during the school year in dealing with growth.

"About 33 percent of our students move from school to school during the school year. Having the portables allows us to have more flexibility in being able to deal with different areas of the district growing at different rates."

She said it is virtually impossible for a student in Clark County schools to avoid having a class in a portable classroom.

Risa Shapiro, a fifth-grade teacher at Cartwright Elementary School, said there is little difference between teaching in a portable classroom and a permanent structure.

"I really don't notice any extra noise at all," she said. "As far as the quality of education the students receive and the resources available to me, there really isn't a difference between portables and other classrooms."

While district officials say portable classrooms are not an obstacle to quality teaching, they do believe permanent classrooms are preferable.

"Ideally, every student would be in a permanent building. That's what the district would like to see," said Fred Smith, contracts and construction manager for the district. "But the reality is that the district is growing so fast that we have to have portable buildings."

Contrary to popular belief, portables are not used to save money, he said.

"Our bond issues have been approved. We have the funding to build the buildings we need. We do a good job of anticipating overall growth. But there are always hot spots that are growing faster than we anticipated. Those are the places where we send the portables," Smith said.

This year, two hot spots of greater than expected growth were in the northwest and southeast parts of the Las Vegas Valley, Dickens said.

That's not to say that these portables do not provide challenges for the district.

In fact, the district has lost 16 portable classrooms to fire during the past 12 years. None of the fires resulted in student injuries and most occurred after school hours, Dickens said.

"I think most of the fires have been caused by vandalism. There has also been problems with students smoking in between them and causing fires," she said.

The district spends about $53,000 for each new portable it purchases.

Not every one thinks this is such a good deal.

"Just take a look at them -- they'll never last," said Sam Cowan, who dropped by Elizondo to pick up his granddaughter Brittni. "This desert heat is awful on them. The boards are already splitting. What's the district going to do with these buildings when they are worn out? Nobody is going to want these old buildings then."

Smith said there is no set lifespan for portables.

"It all depends on how much they they are moved. We move about 100 to 150 a year. There is no reason one of these portables can't last 20 to 25 years. Once a portable becomes pretty worn, our plans call for turning that space into an administrative or a maintenance type facility."

The school district does not have a set budget for purchasing a given number of portable classrooms each year. But during the past five years, the district has spent $5.2 million on 187 portables.

Chapman said he has had good experiences with portable classrooms.

"One thing we have noticed is that if you have a noisy activity, the class on the other side of the wall often can hear it," he said. "These portables could use better sound insulation."

The hollow space under the trailers can resound like a drum beneath stomping little feet.

Another disadvantage to the portables is that they do not have drinking fountains or restrooms, so students must leave their building and walk to another building.

At Elizondo, teachers have coped with this difficulty by having students bring small water bottles to class and replenishing bottles from a big jug they haul to school each day.

"A lot parents are concerned about the neighborhood where the school is," Chapman said. "They don't like the fact that their children have to go outside to go to the bathroom. So we have instituted a buddy system where no child can go to the bathroom alone."

A portion of Elizondo is on the 3900 block of Timberlake Drive in North Las Vegas.

Most portables do not have have running water and sewer hookups because it would make them more difficult to move, Smith said.

"As long as we continue to experience this rapid growth, I think portables are just a fact of life in the district," he said.