Portable Classrooms Here to Stay : Education: State’s burgeoning student population makes them necessary. Teachers say they often are as good as permanent structures.

At Fremont High School in South-Central Los Angeles, 15 beige trailers fresh from the factory have swallowed up the faculty parking lot, forcing teachers to park doubled up in the few remaining spaces.

Soon, these newly installed portable classrooms at the edge of campus will house 500 overflow students--nearly 25% of the enrollment. Another 150,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District attend class in similar bungalows scattered across 600 different school sites.

In the past, school districts resorted to portables as a temporary solution to periodic bulges in student enrollments, but with record-breaking student enrollments and dwindling state revenues for new construction, these structures are emerging as today’s permanent classrooms.

For a growing number of children attending school in Southern California’s overburdened public education system, yesterday’s sprawling campuses have given way to school in a box.

“A lot of schools throughout the state are going crazy buying these portable classrooms because they’re economic, rapid in delivery and easily installed,” said Stephen Walters, a consultant for Los Angeles Unified, the second largest school district in the nation. “L.A. is growing at the rate of 15,000 students a year so you have to have somewhere to put all these kids.”

The portables, also known as bungalows, offer many of the same advantages of a permanent classroom: Many are air conditioned and all but a few are equipped with public address systems and fire alarms, among other safety features.

“They have worked very well for our schools,” said Pat Zoller, assistant director for facilities at San Diego Unified School District, where 30% of the classroom space is portable.

In San Diego as in other areas, many of the portables are concentrated in inner-city schools, which generally have experienced the most growth. Few complaints have been raised at those schools. In fact, in some cases teachers prefer the newer portable schoolrooms to older classrooms that are often in need of repair.

Cynthia Kampf, a fifth grade teacher at Oxnard Elementary School, said: “We have much more storage, we have carpet and it’s bigger than the permanent room I was in. When you think of being put in a portable you think of just four walls stuck together, but it is definitely a classroom with everything you need and more.”

Supporters of the portables maintain that students in these classrooms perform as well academically as their counterparts in permanent buildings.

However, even supporters agree that portable classrooms have a downside. Some have labeled the classrooms “substandard” and complain that they are too noisy, and too far from bathrooms and recess areas.

Although the bungalows increase school capacity, growing enrollments bring more students into already-crowded common areas such as school cafeterias, restrooms and libraries.

“We have to run as many as four different lunch periods to get all the kids through the cafeteria,” said Norm Brekke, superintendent of elementary schools in Oxnard, where 82 portables have been placed on 16 campuses. “In some instances, we start serving lunch as early as a quarter to 11 in the morning.

“You have to be careful that you don’t exceed the physical facility of the permanent campus,” Brekke said. “That’s the trap because you quickly run out of the other space.”

Some campuses do not have enough surrounding land to add portables, because state guidelines require schools to maintain a certain amount of playground space per student. Some schools, particularly those in the inner-city that are often built on less land, are unable to comply with the space guidelines.

But despite complaints from some parents and teachers, school district officials have few options.

According to statistics from the state Department of Finance, public school enrollment statewide is expected to top 7 million by 2000, an increase of nearly 50% over current enrollment figures.

In Riverside County, the fastest growing area in the state, the student population is expected to double by 2000. The Corona-Norco School District recently converted six schools to year-round schedules and will open two more schools this fall. But there is still not enough room. The district, which is increasing at the rate of 2,000 students each year, also leases 210 portable classrooms at a cost of $1 million annually.

As a result of the rapid growth--due largely to higher birth rates and increased immigration from both within and outside of the United States--school officials are facing their most serious shortage of classroom space since the postwar baby boom, according to William Rukeyser, a spokesman for State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who has scheduled a Tuesday news conference to discuss school overcrowding. While new schools are being built, construction has not kept pace with enrollments.

“There is such growth that the state would have to build 22 classrooms every single day of the year, including weekends and holidays, to keep up with the enrollment,” Rukeyser said.

State officials face a $1-billion backlog in funding applications from local school districts because they do not have the money to grant the requests. Therefore, many districts are turning to portable classrooms and year-round schedules in what has become an all-too-common juggling act designed to maintain class sizes within reasonable limits.

“There is a crisis in our schools,” said Mike Vail, senior director of facilities at the Santa Ana Unified School District in Orange County. “No matter how aggressively we pursue this, there won’t be enough classrooms out there for these children. Children will be attending schools in substandard facilities.”

In Orange County, school officials expect enrollments to top 390,000 this fall. By 2000, that number will jump to 546,000 students, an increase of 40%.

At Santa Ana Unified, the county’s most populous district, construction workers have placed 500 portable classrooms--the equivalent of 20 elementary schools--on playgrounds and parking lots throughout the district to keep up with the numbers.

But even with the portables, Santa Ana Unified will come up short on space due to an additional 22,000 students expected to enroll in public schools over the next decade. Consequently, the district soon will be forced to convert many of its elementary schools to year-round schedules--a course already adopted by school districts in San Diego, Los Angeles, Ventura and Riverside Counties.

Until more funds become available, administrators say, there is little else that can be done to provide space for the growing number of students.

“Aesthetically, we’d all like for our kids to have the little red brick schoolhouses that we went to,” said Julie Hill, PTA president at 3rd Street Elementary School in Los Angeles. “We’d all like to be driving Rolls-Royces too if we had that option, but failing that you make do.”