Schools Rush to Provide Rooms for Small Classes

With school starting in just two weeks, officials are scrambling to find enough portable classrooms to take advantage of state incentives to limit classes to 20 students.

Across the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, where class sizes are being reduced in kindergarten, first and second grade, the rush is on to beat the Sept. 5 deadline.

The district has ordered 16 portable units: nine to be divided into two classrooms each and seven to be converted into four each, for a total of 46 new classrooms.

“We’re doing the best we can to house the children,” said Mary Lou Smith, facilities planner for the school district. “It’s not business as usual.”

Half of the portables that the district needs have already been delivered, and the rest are on the way, district officials said.

“We’re trying to work on priorities to see which schools are more crowded,” Smith said.

The modular buildings are typified by two units that recently arrived at Lake Forest Elementary School, with a total of 1,560 square feet that can be split in two or three rooms. Each of the units, which can be assembled in a day, has three large windows, two doors, carpeting, heating and air conditioning.

Companies that make, sell or lease portable units have seen their business boom since the state offered earlier this summer to pay school districts $650 for each primary student enrolled in a class of no more than 20 pupils per teacher.

Bill Walters, president of Long Beach-based Action, said his company, which rents out mobile office units, has delivered portable classrooms to 11 Saddleback Valley campuses.

Action has also had calls from the Capistrano, Orange and Anaheim unified school districts, Walters said. Most officials are interested in leasing units with the option to buy later, he said.

Business is usually brisk in August, he said, but this year may set a record.

“It’s been hectic and very busy,” Walters said. “We’re working 12 hours a day, six days a week.”