‘Instant Schools’ Accommodate Flood of New Students Across California

To children like Benjamin Jacobsen and Jeff Otter, an “instant school” has become as routine as instant orange juice or instant soup.

Their elementary school of 200 students was hit by a wave of 500 additional children from families moving into a new subdivision in this Sacramento suburb.

Like others scattered throughout the state, Kirchgater elementary in the Elk Grove Unified School District is mostly a patchwork of temporary classrooms supplied by the state.

The portable metal-frame structures, sheathed in wood in an attempt to disguise them as permanent buildings, are intended to serve as a stopgap while districts seek local and state money to build permanent schools.

“It’s really crowded,” said 12-year-old Jeff, climbing on his bicycle recently as a stream of children flowed, babbling and swirling, toward buses for home.

His pal, Benjamin, added, “It’s easier to get mad at someone now because there’s so many people.”

Classrooms get warm at times due to the large number of students, and lunches cool off because it takes so long to serve everyone, they said, but quickly added that they feel it is a great school.

Schools such as Kirchgater are mushrooming like boom towns of the 1849 Gold Rush in many areas of California because of increasing student enrollment in public elementary schools.

Enrollment has grown from 4 million to 4.3 million in the last five years and is expected to continue increasing by perhaps 120,000 annually for the next five years, said Jan Agee, a state Education Department spokeswoman.

In Riverside County, for instance, Hemet Unified School District is putting up an elementary school composed entirely of portable buildings in time to house 330 students in the fall. The Elk Grove district was forced to obtain 58 portable classrooms last year alone.

“The concept of instant schools is becoming very common,” said Lyle Smoot, assistant chief of the state allocation office, which provides aid to schools.

The office has rented about 2,000 state-owned portables in recent years to about 300 of the state’s 1,030 school districts and 58 county education offices, Smoot said. About 700 of the state’s school districts are growing to some degree, he added.

By contrast, unneeded schools sit vacant in some of the fewer than 100 districts statewide with declining enrollments, Smoot said.

District officials have found the job of dealing with swift enrollment increases tougher since Proposition 13 in 1978 limited property taxes, leaving schools more dependent on other revenue sources.

Schools clobbered by influxes of children automatically receive more money from the state to teach students, but not extra funds to house them. Since many districts have no immediate way to increase classroom space, they must turn to emergency state aid.

District officials seeking portable classrooms have to document the shortage of space in which to teach children. If the state Allocation Board agrees that the district genuinely needs help, the state hauls temporary classrooms and furnishings in on trucks and sets them up at no cost to the district. In turn, the district pays $2,000 rent annually per portable.

The state gets money to buy and furnish about 400 new portables each year in an annual allocation of $15 million from the lease of offshore oil tracts and $4 million from the rental of existing portables.

Degree of Need

Since there are requests for about 800 portables a year, the state tries to give new temporary classrooms to districts with the greatest need, Smoot said.

Some districts contract directly with private companies to install portables, sometimes erecting temporary facilities at previously unoccupied sites, he said. Often districts contract for the portable schools on a lease-purchase arrangement.

“The portable classrooms are primarily intended as a stopgap emergency measure because it takes awhile to get new schools built,” said Dwayne Brooks, state Education Department planning division director. “But you look at a lot of the schools and the portables become permanent.”

Portables have become so accepted that a new state law requires 30% of classroom space in new permanent schools be portable to assure flexibility in case enrollment drops, Brooks said.

“Some of the portables are very nice. They don’t look like portables, for instance, and with air conditioning and carpet, they can be good learning environments,” he said.

To build permanent expansions or whole new schools, districts often seek money from school construction bond issues approved on statewide ballots. Voters passed an $800-million bond issue last November, of which only about $50 million has been spent.

Money Allocated

The state allocates the bond money for construction, then leases the classrooms to the district at a low rate. In return, extra money the district receives from other sources, such as local bond issues, must go to the state to pay off the cost of the new buildings.

Districts sometimes try to set up funding sources closer to home, such as local bond measures or property tax assessment increases, which require a two-thirds vote to pass.

Recent state law also has given district governing boards authority to impose developer fees on new construction. Legislators say refinements in the law, and other changes in the way schools finance construction, are likely as they continue to wrestle with the problem.

In Elk Grove, where elementary and high school student enrollment has nearly doubled to 18,230 in a decade, voters on April 28 approved a $40-million bond measure, said district spokesman Hal Stemmler. The proposal had failed to win the necessary two-thirds vote just last year.

The district, which also will draw on funds from state and local sources, plans to spend a total of $282 million over the next decade on expanding its existing schools and building 21 new ones, Stemmler said.

Student Influx

In the meantime, the district has been growing at the rate of 100 students a month, forcing officials to obtain 58 portables last year alone, he said.

In Hemet, the district has added 80 portable classrooms in the last four years to handle an enrollment that has climbed about 3% annually to about 10,000, said planning director Mike Bailey.

The annual increase is expected to rise to 5% in the next few years and perhaps 10% to 20% in five years, Bailey said.

The district is using state bond money in its construction program, under which it already is building three permanent schools, putting two others out to bid, and submitting six more for state approval.

The district is using all of its funds from local developer fees to contract with private companies for construction of the all-portable school, which should be finished by September, Bailey said.

“My dubious honor when I came on board was to have a school built in nine months,” he said. “We’re going to do it, but it’s going to be a long summer.”