Portable classrooms are now a new normal throughout Ellensburg School District elementary schools and the middle school. Each elementary school and the middle school has three portables, each with two classrooms. Mount Stuart Elementary School has an additional modular building that houses four classrooms.
The district has no plans to purchase new portables, but it will relocate three portables now in place at the middle school. Morgan’s portables were installed in 2012 and 2013 when the older parts of the school were closed. The school is now undergoing a remodel and reconstruction project.
At the end of 2017, when construction at Morgan Middle School begins on the west side of the school, one portable will be relocated to Mount Stuart. The other two will be moved to Valley View once the remodeling is complete in 2018.
“We have a need, and we’re keeping up with that need up until about 2018,” said District Business Manager Farley Walker. “It looks like after that we’re not going to be able to do much, and class sizes will go up at that point.”
He said that the district could probably maintain the status quo for a year or two after 2018, if trends continue. But it could be a problem for the district if enrollment numbers continue to rise.
“If anything else hits we aren’t going to be able to do much about it until a new elementary comes online,” Walker said.
Lincoln is currently maxed out on the number of portables it can have because of the building’s small footprint. A $233,280 portable relocation project for two portables was included in next year’s school district budget. When Mount Stuart received its newest portable in 2014, the infrastructure for another portable was set into place to speed up the process of adding the next portable to the grounds.
Walker points out that the number of students currently in portables is enough to fill another elementary school. At the start of 2018, after the movement of the three portables at Morgan to the elementary schools, there will be 28 portable classrooms in use at elementary schools in the district. With an assumption of 21 students per classroom, that’s 588 students, or enough students to fill another elementary school.
