Unexpected enrollment bursts and a state law mandating full-day kindergarten mean that more Montgomery County students will spend time in portable classrooms this fall, even at some recently constructed schools.
Kensington Parkwood Elementary underwent a major expansion and reopened its doors in 2005. This fall, it will have at least four of the trailer classrooms long maligned by parents concerned about health risks.
Clarksburg High School and nearby Little Bennett Elementary were newly built for the 2006 school year. This year, the senior high will have four trailers, and the elementary will have six.
In total, 12 schools built or renovated in the past 10 years will have at least 68 trailers this fall, up from 53 trailers in 2008-09, according to district records. Four elementary schools accounting for 27 trailers are all in the district’s Silver Spring area, which has experienced rapid population growth in recent years.
“It isn’t that difficult to project enrollment for a school in a built-out middle-class community,” said Bruce Crispell, the district’s director of long-range planning. “But in many parts of the county, things are happening that aren’t that simple.”
Crispell said that in the district’s less affluent regions, more families with children are moving in, and oftentimes two families live in one home. And in wealthier areas like Bethesda and Chevy Chase, enrollment is rising because families hit by the economic downturn are taking their students out of private school.
A year-to-year increase in the county’s birth rate since the mid-1990s has meant successively more kindergarten students at the same time a 2002 state law has required schools to provide full-day class, as opposed to the traditional half-day. Schools planned or constructed before 2002 didn’t prepare for its littlest students demanding twice as much space.
The countywide PTA issued a resolution last spring urging school officials to attend to ongoing health and safety issues associated with the trailers, including water and pest infiltration, mold growth, and high levels of carbon monoxide.
Despite slight cuts to the district’s maintenance budget for the coming year, Superintendent Jerry Weast addressed the group’s concerns, writing in a letter that all newly leased trailers will meet greener requirements, and that new employees will be trained in how to keep all of them clean.
