5 Schools Will Have Portables Installed

To accommodate an anticipated jump in student enrollment this fall, the Magnolia School District plans to use 14 portable classrooms as a stopgap measure.

“Depending on how enrollment goes, that [installing portable classrooms] may only get us through to next year,” Supt. Paul S. Mercier said Monday. Mercier said that the number of students has been growing by about 3% to 5% in recent years, thus making free classroom space difficult to find.

Along with using portable classrooms, district officials are working to ease growth problems by reopening the former Juliette Low Elementary School, which served as a training facility for the Rams football team before the franchise moved to St. Louis.

Mercier, who hopes to reopen Low Elementary by the fall of 1997, said a district architect is currently working with an architect for the Rams to develop plans for restoring the site to a school campus.

The district estimates that renovations will cost between $1.1 million and $1.4 million.

As for the portable classrooms, Mercier said they are scheduled to be installed this summer at Walt Disney, Esther L. Walter, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Lord Baden-Powell and Dr. Peter Marshall elementary schools. It costs about $40,000 to install one of the portable units.

Mercier added that the district will have a better estimate of student enrollment for the 1996-97 school year when kindergarten registration figures are tallied in early June. The current enrollment is about 6,000 students.