Upper Classes

Faced with overcrowded classrooms and limited land, the Madrona Elementary School figured there was no place to go but up.

So instead of scattering low-riding module classrooms around its shrinking playing field, the school opted to stack them.

The double-decker structures will have tiled roofs, balconies, elevators and stairs and will be covered in stucco, a far cry from the dreary modular classrooms that dot many campuses.

Officials hope the 12 new classrooms won’t be recognizable as portables.

“It will be all plastered up,” said Ken Koch, construction supervisor for the Conejo Valley Unified School District. “They won’t look like modular classrooms at all.”

That fits well with Principal George Coyle’s vision of the school.

“We didn’t want to put these all over the grounds and make it look like a modular village,” he said.

The school’s 10 portable classrooms are already eating up much of the green playing field.

Stacking classrooms is becoming increasingly popular as overcrowding increases, class sizes are reduced and land availability shrinks. Schools up and down the state are doing it and in Ventura County, Moorpark and Oak Park schools have already doubled up.

Portable classrooms became popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Proposition 13 killed school districts’ ability to tax property for new construction. The ban was lifted, but the modular classrooms remained popular as a cheap alternative to permanent construction. And in the wake of the state’s recent class-size reduction mandate, demand for the buildings remains high.

Many Ventura County school districts have taken advantage of state cash that allows them to assign no more than 19 students to kindergarten through third-grade classrooms and 36 for higher grades. That has sparked a local rush to hire more teachers and create new classrooms.

Dylan Payte, an inspector from the state architect’s office, was in Thousand Oaks on Friday to ensure all safety procedures were followed. He said the structures had been inspected and passed stringent earthquake safety requirements.

“This is as safe as it gets,” he said as the 100-foot-tall crane swung a 17,000-pound classroom over his head.

The school, which houses kindergarten through sixth grade, has grown as more residential tracts have gone up around it. It has about 765 students, and Coyle expects enrollment to increase.

The project, which began about a year ago, cost approximately $2 million, said Sean Corrigan, director of planning and facilities for the school district. The project’s site superintendent, Fernando Cruz, said the stacking would be completed Friday but the whole project probably would take several months.

Darlene Maurer, a fifth-grade teacher, gathered with other instructors in a corner to watch the operation.

“I’m looking at my new classroom,” she said as the building slowly took shape.

Fifth-grader Chris Lamoreaux, 10, watched his new classroom glide through the air. He said he was eager to get into it, because his current classroom is far from other fifth-graders.

“I like it, because it’s new,” he said.

Exactly when teachers and students will move into the new classrooms is unknown, but they hope it will be this school year.

Maurer plans to enlist the help of parents and students in the move.

“I’ll tell the children to bring their wagons,” she said.