"Outlawing Portables"
by Robert Gliemmo and Roger Suggs, Triple A Modular

Earlier this year, in his State of the Union Address, President Clinton spoke of a need to replace old and dilapidated schools. At about the same time, Alabama Governor Don Siegelman outlawed additional portable classrooms, except in emergency situations. As a result, many school districts received numerous inquiries from parents and the media about modular classrooms and overcrowding.

The commercial modular industry shares a commitment to education and supports dedication to eliminating sub-standard facilities for school children. With the explosive and quickly-changing population shifts of our communities; with limited budget resources and the desire to not raise taxes; with the growing need for specialized classroom space; and the hope to see students attend schools in their own neighborhoods, school systems are often caught between the proverbial "rock and a hard place" when trying to justify their utilization of relocatable classrooms.

To help clarify the portables issue, several important points follow which can help school systems respond to questions and concerns.

Relocatable classrooms were first introduced in the U.S. in the mid 1940's. When people refer to relocatable classrooms as "trailers," they are generally remembering earlier and lower quality modular units. In the past few years, technical advancements have enabled the classrooms to be built as single rooms or multi-story buildings with concrete floors, brick exteriors, restroom facilities, complete plumbing, air conditioning, electric and heating. All of these facilities are built in accordance with federal, state, and local building codes.

Relocatable classrooms can be as functional and aesthetic as a school wants them to be, and can include many options that older classrooms do not have, such as computer and video cabling, restrooms, and alarm systems. Also, relocatable class-rooms may contain 600 sq. ft. to more than 11,000 sq. ft. of class space, all under one complex roof system.

The single greatest advantage in using relocatable classrooms is that they give school systems a variety of options. With expanding populations, it is increasingly difficult to project where growth will occur and whether or not an area's population will increase or decline.

Often times, schools are forced to add another section of a grade during the week of registration for students in early Fall. It's simply not possible to always predict growth spurts. When that growth can be projected, it may be financially prohibitive or logistically impossible to build a new classroom in time to accommodate the students. If demographics shift or if the need for a relocatable classroom at one location disappears, the classroom can be easily moved to a location with a more critical space need.

To ensure student safety, low maintenance, and longevity, the commercial modular industry stresses safety, code compliance, value engineering, and aesthetics in the design of relocatable classrooms. Sometimes, with conventional stick-built construction, a school system may use old specifications to design their classrooms. They may also accept a low bid, in turn getting a poorly designed building. While you can also get inexpensive relocatable classrooms, safety, code compliance, value, and aesthetics are always priorities with modular buildings. Enhancing and strengthening design specifications and considering the references of a particular seller of the relocatable classrooms leads to more functional and safer buildings for school children.

Budgetary restraints are almost always a high consideration for school systems. As taxpayers become less and less inclined to pay for massive building programs, educators have to look at other financial options. Depending on the design specifications, functional, code compliant, relocatable classrooms generally cost between $15,000 and $25,000. Adding on just one conventionally built classroom to an already-existing building can easily cost more than $100,000.

Cost-saving by using relocatable classrooms is not strictly limited to the building itself. By utilizing modular classrooms, many school systems are able to accommodate shifts in population, without having to bus students to other parts of town, making transportation savings significant.

Enacting laws that prohibit local school systems from making their own decisions on relocatable classrooms, without providing the billions of dollars it would take to build thousands of new classrooms and schools, amounts to just another unfunded mandate. As any local school board member will tell you, it is those unfunded mandates that are crippling school systems, forcing local taxpayers to abandon their priorities of what schools really should be.

Copyright © Modular Building Institute, September 1999.