Posted on: Sunday, February 9, 2003

EDITORIAL
School 'portables' are a fact of budget life

Anyone who has visited a public school campus recently knows that so-called "portable" or "temporary" classrooms are anything but.

Once these relatively (and we used that word advisedly) cheap structures are built, they seem to put down roots. Somehow a use is always found for them, and they stay on.

Fully aware of this phenomenon, residents and community leaders in Mililani are complaining that plans for a new elementary school now under construction in Mililani Mauka include temporary or portable classrooms.

They argue that if the new school opens its doors with temporary classrooms, more appropriate permanent buildings may never be constructed.

They may be right.

But the school system faces a terrible dilemma. There simply isn't the money to build all the permanent school facilities everyone wants right now. There are big repair and maintenance projects on older buildings that are less learning-compatible than new portables.

And while the Mililani Mauka school will be brand new, there are campuses elsewhere that have been using portables — often not even air-conditioned — for years.

Where should the priority go?

Another reason for using portables is that the school system knows that the long-term population at this school will be considerably lower than it will be during the first few years of this new subdivision. At first, it is primarily young families with lots of school-aged children.

Over time, a community matures and the demand for elementary school places reaches a somewhat more modest steady pace.

The permanent school to be built there is planned for that "mature" long-term use, not overbuilt to accommodate the short-term bulge.

In an ideal world, every classroom would be a state-of-the-art, permanent facility. Unhappily, we live in a real, not an ideal, world.

If the demand for school space at Mililani Mauka remains high, however, the school system owes the community permanent, full-scale classrooms.

The portables offer a way out of a temporary jam, but they are not, and should not, be a permanent solution.