Short-Term Permanence : School Districts Are Learning That Portable Classrooms Are a Not-So-Temporary Solution

Belying their name, thousands of portable classrooms meant to be short-term solutions to school overcrowding are still sitting where they were installed as long as 30 years ago, and school officials say many of the boxy bungalows have become eyesores.

“We look at these things as being temporary, and they’re not,” said Robert W. Balen, a trustee for the Santa Ana Unified School District, which has more than 400 portables.

“They’re permanent,” he said, and some of them are “pretty ugly buildings.”

Facing the reality of decreasing funds and rapidly growing enrollment, the Santa Ana school district, Orange County’s largest, has launched a beautification campaign to spruce up portables that are not expected to be replaced any time soon.

Officials say the detailed guidelines could create a model for other fast-growing school districts such as Anaheim City and Capistrano Unified, which together have about 550 portables and plan to add more.

“Sometimes there’s nothing more permanent than relocatable buildings,” said Dave Doomey, assistant superintendent for facilities planning at Capistrano Unified. “You’re talking about tremendous growth and not enough money to fund all the needs.”

In Santa Ana, the school board expects to spend more than $80,000 this year to fence in, paint and landscape portables that in many cases have been chipped, patched and touched up with various shades of beige.

Blueprints show a model group of four portables enclosed on three sides with fencing decorated with climbing vines such as bougainvillea. The bungalows also may have borders of flower and herb beds that students would maintain as class projects.

At other campuses, fencing and landscaping will be done as space permits.

Officials emphasized that not all of the guidelines are mandatory. For example, special touches such as murals by students might be added at the discretion of individual schools.

Other school districts that depend on portables to relieve overcrowding say that beautifying them has been done routinely over the years. In Garden Grove Unified, for example, portables are painted to match the respective school colors, spokesman Alan Trudell said.

Saddleback Valley Unified School District officials say that their portables, typically prefabricated wooden buildings about the size of a single classroom, are held to the same maintenance standards as permanent buildings.

“We treat them as if they were a regular classroom,” spokeswoman Elaine Carter said. “When you walk into a portable classroom, it’s the same visual effect as if you walked into any other classroom.”

In rapidly growing, cash-strapped districts such as Santa Ana and Anaheim City, however, “cost is always an issue,” said Maria-Elena Romero, assistant superintendent of business for the Anaheim City School District.

In the past two or three years, the district has spent about $7,500 on landscaping such as hawthorn and azaleas to beautify the campuses, including portables, Romero said, but “there’s always something else that could be done to make [the portables] look better.”

In Santa Ana, Balen said, the issue is broader than simply maintaining buildings. Some of the district’s portable classrooms had become so rundown that they were a blight on the community.

He was inspired to push for the beautification campaign earlier this year after driving past Washington Elementary School and seeing just how dilapidated its portable classrooms had become.

When campuses deteriorate, he said, “we’re not being good neighbors.”