Temporary Mistake
I was dismayed to read that the San Diego school board trustees have voted to acquire at least 20 more portable classrooms. These shabby, third-rate facilities are already overused throughout our school system, and our children deserve much better.
A portable classroom bears about as much resemblance to a real classroom as a portable toilet does to the bathroom in your home. It is a flimsy, inadequately sized, poorly heated, poorly ventilated, dark and cheerless place. The floor squeaks and the roof leaks. Designed as a stop-gap measure to deal with overcrowding, it is now ubiquitously deployed throughout the system. Some portables have not been moved from their “temporary” sites in 10 years.
How can the school board justify acquiring more of these execrable shanties instead of making permanent improvements to existing structures or refurbishing and reopening abandoned schools? The board is wasting taxpayers’ money and depriving the students of decent classrooms.
JEFFREY A. MANSFIELD
San Diego
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