Temporary Classrooms Are Bad For the Environment, and Worse For Kids

tcd004 (134130) writes "You've always suspected those trailer-type portable classrooms are no good, right? It turns out you're right. Analysis of prefabricated classrooms in Washington shows the structures often don't allow for proper ventilation, leading to terrible air quality for kids. Students in temporary classrooms have higher rates of absenteeism than those in standard classrooms. And the energy-inefficient structures often become permanent, sucking on school energy bills for decades, and requiring more upkeep than permanent classrooms. What's needed are new designs for healthy, sustainable temporary classrooms."

Comments

Flawed?

[Anonymous Coward]

> What's needed are new designs for healthy, sustainable temporary classrooms.

No. What's needed are more permanent classrooms.

Re:Flawed?

[Agares]

I was thinking the same thing. Also the problems we have with our education system is the reason why my future kids (got one on the way) will be either home schooled or sent to a very good private school.

Re:Flawed?

[Trepidity]

You'd almost think the humans who came up with the idea of "buildings", durable structures intended to last for a significant period of time while sheltering their occupants from the elements, were on to something.

Re:Flawed?

[MightyYar]

Yes, but if land is at a premium, then sometimes you need to relocate while the new structure is built. My district is replacing every single school in the system one at a time, and so they need to use trailers for the students who are currently having their school rebuilt. No one thinks this is ideal, but no one has suggested a better idea, either.

Re:Flawed?

[The Grim Reefer]

> What's needed are new designs for healthy, sustainable temporary classrooms.

No. What's needed are more permanent classrooms.

What's needed is better planning to begin with. By the time the "analysis" is done for schools, and road for that matter a ridiculous amount of time will have passed. Then to get approval it has to go through years of bureaucracy. So you end up with a study that projected the next 20 years. But by the time all of the federal, state and local governments get done it goes to the bidding stage By the time the actual building is finished it's already 10 to 15 years past the original analysis. And usually the people in the planning stage took the most optimistic numbers. So you end up with a school that is just about right by the time it is ready. Then it's overcrowded in 1-2 years, with another 20+ year of usability expected.

Re:Flawed?

[jellomizer]

The problem that a lot of schools have is the population per area changes over time.

For example.
1960's City has a lot of kids. They go to school graduate then move out of City A because their parents who lived there made the City too expensive to grow up in.
1980's Suburb has a lot of kids, They go to school and graduate then move out of the Suburb because their parents have made the suburb too expensive to grow up in.
2000's SubRural "more remote suburbs" schools are finding they are getting an influx of students from the parents people who have moved out of the expensive suburbs. The City prices have gone down... However the quality of life sucks there so the big schools of the 1960's are getting more vacent and run down. And the 1980 suburb schools are showing a decline as well.

So we are having schools that needs a lot of money to maintain that are getting more empty. Temporary classrooms are the key to meet education demand having without a multi-million dollar attachment that will be obsolete in a few years.

Now if you want permanent classrooms, we need to work on a way where property prices just don't go up, for the communities, as people who get older acquire more wealth thus make an ageing community that is too expensive for the younger generation who is starting out.

Re:Flawed?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like someone who has no idea how things are done.

I've participated in my local school district's planning process. They hire a demographer to project growth patterns and plan accordingly. They're currently planning to put a bond proposal on the November ballot that, if passed, would have kids in newly built schools in 3 years, which is about as fast as they can be designed and built. The demographer projects growth as far out as possible, but you know what? It's not an exact science. There are x number of undeveloped lots in the school district. (This is the primary driver of student growth.) When will they be built on? No one knows. Will they be single family houses or apartment complexes? No one knows. I have no idea how it could be remotely possible to predict student growth more than 3-4 years out.

Then, there's the question of the voters. When the district decides it needs new buildings, it has to go to the voters to get permission to borrow money to build new buildings. If the voters don't pass a bond election, the district has to do things like rent portable buildings.

"Years of bureaucracy" and "study that projected the next 20 years" is not at all the reality in my experience. (Which is admittedly small.)

The federal and state governments, to the best of my knowledge, have zero input into local districts' growth plans.

Bidding that takes place 10 to 15 years past the original analysis? Geez, in what school district do you live? That's certainly not the case in my district in north Texas.

Using the most optimistic numbers? Again, not in my district. They use not only conservative numbers for growth, but for tax revenue projections as well. We project a 5% property valuation for year 1 after the bond is passed, a 3% increase in valuation for year 2, and 0% increase for years 3 and on.

So, I wonder, Grim Reefer: are you speaking from knowledge, or are you pulling "facts" out of your ass?

Re:Flawed?

[cdrudge]

I bet the old ones aren't even that old.

You'd probably bet wrong in a many of cases.

My local school district is the largest in Indiana and hasn't built a new school since 1976. There's 62 buildings owned by the district, with 51 of them being schools and the average age is 54 years old. Almost all of the buildings were built during rapid population growth to educate the baby boomer generation. In the 60+ years since then the population has continued to grow but physical classroom sizes have remained the same. You can't easily make each classroom larger.

More kids, new technology, heating/cooling demands increased, funds dwindling while other expenses rising have led to many schools to become inadequate. Environmental conditions when they were built were also different with less understanding (or maybe just less caring) of proper air ventilation and air quality, building material, etc make older schools pale in comparison to a modern building. And if eventually a school does get a major remodeling or expansion, due to the time that many were built there are huge expenses due to asbestos and other hazardous building materials requiring proper remediation.

With older building it's sometimes (often?) easier, cheaper in the long run to build and operate, and better to raze what you have and rebuild from scratch for significant expansion or remodeling then try to fix a building past it's normal usable lifetime.

Re:Flawed?

[PongStroid]

Define old. At my son's school, across the street from our house we had a classroom in a portable. And not just *any* portable: Built in 1941 for the army, and installed at the school in 1943 to temporarily help with overcrowding in the regular classrooms. Our neighbor, who is 95, lived here when it was installed and her kids (who are now great grandparents!) attended class in it. My son, now 13, also enjoyed this classroom. This "temporary" portable, literally spitting distance from the Hayward fault, wasn't even anchored to the ground - elevated by four feet of stacked blocks of wood . Even crazier... the thing was riddled with asbestos tiles, and had a mold problem. The portable went away last year - 70 years after it was installed. I'd like to think that the paperwork I submitted to the city and state to have the portable declared a historical landmark worthy of preservation had something to do with it.

Re:Flawed?

[sumdumass]

Its not really vacations and stuff, it is trust and poor stewardship.

An example, about two decades ago the local schools asked for a levy citing infrastructure nerds and specifically the hvac system at one middle school. About two years later, they put a bond issue on the ballot for a new hvac system. Some people asked questions and found that 90% of the levy went to administration salaries and benifits and the bond was actually tied to fixing the out dated hvac at ths school. Now schools in my area get a lot of fubding from property taxes so as property values increase, minus a bit of lag in the assesment, their funding increases. But they put another levy on the ballot a few years ago and the prople overwhelmingly rejected it. This happened for about 10 years strait then one of the directors retired and was replaced. The levy finally passed- it appeared that the money was going to the schools.But what they did was primarily soak teacher salaries which i don't have too much a problem with but the gave them raises highr than what the levy would cover. So they picked a school snd dropped most of the maintinence on it. In about 10 years, the parents started complaining about the school. The board put yet another levy on the ballot claiming the school wasn't fit so the needed to expand other schools. They even got kids to hold signs saying "kids matter" just down from all the polling offices. The levy passed and to date, it has been the last one

What they did with the nw levy was repair the condemmed school and make offices there that still arent used with a good portion being turned into a rec center for district teachers. It turns out that because of demographics shifts, the school easily fit into the other 5 elementary schools and money wasn't really needed.

Now of course when you ask ceertain people, they will paint that all rosie with built in excuses but it is factually correct. This also happened in a disrict right next to another that got busted altering NCLBA or ACES test scores in order to get federal money and the administrator had to be removed because she refused to step down even after federal charges where filed against her.

No, it isn't always about you spending yoyr money, it is also trusting that your money is needed and being spent properly on the kids.property values go up, funding does too.

Re:Flawed?

[sumdumass]

One of the problems with additions is similar to these trailers.

As demographics shift, you might need more room for 3-5 years then it could be too much space then need it again a decaid later. What ends up happening is that maintinence costs stay the same but the money comming in changes with the number of students and more gets allocated to yhe infrastructure instead of teaching.

Of course this could be aleviated if infrastucture costs came from a separate funding source or they could lease out the unused portions.

Re:Flawed?

[MightyYar]

Yes, I believe that study was for high schools.

I went to a K-8 with a total of about 80 students and received an excellent education, especially given that it was a public school. That said, the social shock was a bit much when I went to the regional high school.

My kids currently attend a K-4 with perhaps 400 students. I'd say that is about the limit. Sometimes even a little too big, as some grade end up splitting into 4 classes to keep the per-class size low.

You are right about the walking. It's amazing how many of the "walking" parents are involved compared to the bussed students. I think it is because we all see each other every morning so it is easy to recruit each other. Unfortunately it is probably economic as well - the property values are probably higher in the neighborhood around the school, so walking might be kind of an elitist thing.

Re:Flawed?

[Darinbob]

Budgets are a complicated thing and this is where it all gets messed up. School income is very low to start with so there really is not enough money to go around to all the parts that need some. Then you tack on a school board that very often does exactly what the superintendent asks them to do. Principals usually make far far less than what you describe, although school administrator salaries can be pretty high (many principals started their career as actual teachers, many even double as part time teacher/principal). A key is to get people on the board who are going to hold the system accountable, who put the students as the most important thing in the system, and who utterly reject politics. Problem is that people who don't like politics usually don't want to run for office.

Re:Flawed?

[Darinbob]

I think often they assume that a new school will be built as the town expands. However as time goes on the political desire to do so vanishes plus the money needed for a new school is not available. Ie in California we have this nasty thing called proposition 13 which utterly gutted local property tax revenues, which were the primary funding source for schools. Schools ran on a shoestring budget even before this happened, and were seriously in trouble afterwords. Then as the population grows it was generally from lower income people except in some key areas, so larger populations but without a larger school budget to compensate. And that's all assuming a well run and nonpolitical budget process.

Right now the emphasis is on smaller classrooms and good teachers, which means issues about temporary classrooms has not been on the radar at all. On the contrary the temporary classrooms were seen as the economical solution to get the good results that everyone is asking for.

In School Retention

[mdsolar]

My kids' school finally got to an enrollment where classes won't be held in trailers. But, the trailers will still be used. The school district is thinking that expulsion and suspension do more harm than good when students are left unsupervised, so they are switching to more in school retention. The trailers are going to be used for that.

Re:In School Retention

[ganjadude]

-Slashdot has the Anonymous Coward feature which means libtards can show their real racist tendencies.

the irony....

Terrible ventilation v. heat exhaustion

[JJJJust]

When I was in high school and they were adding on and renovating, everybody wanted as many classes in the portables as possible because they had air conditioning and our 50 year old school building didn't.

I'm sure more was learned in them than could have been learned in a 90 degree classroom.

Oxymoron

[Calydor]

Sustainable but temporary. Maybe it's just because English isn't my first language but I really fail to see how you can have both; or why you would WANT both.

Re:Oxymoron

[MightyYar]

It's only absurd if you consider it to be a closed system. If the trailers are portable, then they can be reused at another site once construction is complete. Temporary, reusable trailers can be better for the environment than other alternatives:
- Refurbishing an older building for temporary use.
- Building non-mobile temporary structure.
- Clearing a vacant spot of land for the new structure.

Some of these old school building have inefficient boilers that are over 40 years old... they aren't exactly winning any efficiency awards. Moving students to a temporary location and then rehabilitating or replacing the old facility can be a net environmental gain.

Re:Oxymoron

[king neckbeard]

They want an environmentally/economically sustainable way of having temporary classrooms when they need them. A similar example would be disposable cutlery. Petroleum based plastic cups are intended to be temporary, but they are not sustainable because they deplete natural resources and do not biodegrade. By contrast, there are now cups that fit that role made from plant products, but will break down after a month or two of environmental exposure. These cups are intended to be temporarily used, but their design is at least intended to be sustainable.

Re:Oxymoron

[gstoddart]

Some of these old school building have inefficient boilers that are over 40 years old... they aren't exactly winning any efficiency awards. Moving students to a temporary location and then rehabilitating or replacing the old facility can be a net environmental gain.

Sure, that's one possibility.

But, allow me to offer another.

Where I live, schools seem to be going up quite fast. Without exception, within a few months of the school opening (if not before), they truck in the portables.

Brand new schools, with portables.

So, either school boards are uniformly stupid, and can't add. Or cities are failing to make the developers pay enough to build adequate schools for the amount of houses they build. Or school boards are so under funded, they start off designing a school they know will be outgrown before its even open.

In any case, from what I see, they're being used to compensate for short-sighted planning or too-small budgets on brand new schools more than they're being used for generating any net environmental gain due to remediating old heating systems.

But every single school near me, some built withing the last 3 years, most built in the last 10, has portables. And they more are less going to be there permanently.

Re:Oxymoron

[CanHasDIY]

Where I live, schools seem to be going up quite fast. Without exception, within a few months of the school opening (if not before), they truck in the portables.

Brand new schools, with portables.

So, either school boards are uniformly stupid, and can't add. Or cities are failing to make the developers pay enough to build adequate schools for the amount of houses they build. Or school boards are so under funded, they start off designing a school they know will be outgrown before its even open.

.. Or the portables are intended to serve a different, specific purpose. Do you know which classes are held in them?

When they started putting mobiles in the school lots back home, I got suspicious. When they moved all the LD and "bad kid" classes into them, I had my suspicions confirmed - the portables exist to segregate groups of "undesirables" from the rest of the student body, likely to limit their influence both on attitudes and government-mandated test scores on which funding is based.

They even have their own buses; it's like 2 different schools sharing one parcel of land.

Re:Global warming is causing bad grades now

[impossiblefork]

No, it's actually quite right.

Just yesterday I happened upon a presentation by a company called Swegon, which designs and manufactures ventillation system equipment, in which they showed a material from a British researcher who (I believe on their proposal) had arranged measurements of student performance as a function of class CO2 levels and classroom temperature and the effect on the speed with which students performed diverse simple tasks, like adding numbers, multiplication, etc. and overall it turned out to drop by 30% as CO2 reached the worst levels.

In some schools the CO2 levels reached about 2000 ppm. The idea that this doesn't affect people is ridiculous and properly designed ventillation systems are important.

waste

[Charliemopps]

I'll never understand this. In my city there are at LEAST 4 abandon super markets. There are many other abandon commercial spaces. In one grocery store they abandon, they actually built new businesses in the parking lot, feet away from the front door, making the building totally unusable. These are not run down, older buildings infested with rats. In many cases they are less than 20yrs old!

When this country was founded, government functions were held in local business buildings. Often older buildings were taken over by the city government for use rather than let them turn to blight. Why aren't we doing this now? I could WALK to a 50,000sq/ft building that's been abandon for over 5yrs from where I'm sitting right now. The primary function of city government is zoning. If there is an abandon commercial building they should tell the owner to either develop it, tare it down and turn it residential or sell it to the city to be used for things like emergency classrooms.

Re:Global warming is causing bad grades now

[timeOday]

Would it sound less weird if they said, Studies Show Glucose and Oxygen Help Brain? Your brain (like the rest of your body) is a chemical reactor and needs fuel - that is glucose + oxygen. You can't just breathe the same air over and over all day.

I doubt anybody (but you) linked it to global warming. Am I right?

What's needed is more math in zoning/building

[kick6]

I don't know if this is the same for the rest of the country, but in Texas public schools seemed to be created for the CURRENT overflow in existing schools. Of note that, especially in the Houston area, residence creation is still blowing and going.

So what results is a school is planned to be built for the, say, 3000 student overflow in surrounding schools. Then 4 years later when the doors open...there's 6000 kids going to that school necessitating temporary buildings from day one. Someone needs to hire a damn mathematician to, oh I don't know, trend the population growth or some fancy-pantsy thing?

Re:What's needed is more math in zoning/building

[Overzeetop]

But nobody wants to pay for it. Have you heard the banshee cries of builders when the city/county suggests a tariff on each new residence to cover the cost of a new school? You'd think they were going to cut off his dick and feed it to the hounds. But it's the new housing that brings the students and requires the expansion. It's rare that a place with no new houses has any meaningful increase in student population.

Howard County, Maryland does it right by putting caps on new residences at 105% of the school capacity (to allow for some flexibility). Once that cap is hit, no more building permits are issued until the school capacity is increased. Then, all of a sudden, it's in the builders' interests to find a way to get the money and land to build new facilities, no different than roads and sewers, and they seem to find the money and agree on a fee structure to pay for the new schools. But Texas will never do that, because it's anti-business.

Re:Global warming is causing bad grades now

[NotDrWho]

And my guess is that you're a idiot.