WESTBROOK – With space at Saccarappa Elementary School tight, Westbrook school administrators have a plan to give students more room by using a portable classroom.
School officials decided at a workshop Sept. 25 that using a city-owned portable classroom was the best and most cost-effective plan for the elementary school.
The $36,000 estimated price to rehab a portable classroom still needs approval. The next step toward approval could come from the Westbrook School Committee’s Finance Committee, which meets on Oct. 2, after the American Journal’s deadline.
The rehab work would be done by the school department. Superintendent Marc Gousse said the money would come from the school department’s contingency account, which has a balance of approximately $50,000.
“It’s more cost effective to move it and rehab it ourselves,” he said. “We have the labor already, and we can do it for under $36,000, including moving it.”
The portable classroom would be moved from the old Prides Corner Elementary School. The classroom would be rehabbed with new floors, ceiling tiles and other work.
If funding is approved on Oct. 2, the issue will move on to the School Committee on Oct. 9, with the anticipation that the new classroom could be open to students by early November.
The portable classroom would sit on unused tennis courts on the side of the school building. The courts also have room for a second portable classroom, if it is needed in the future.
Adding a portable, which essentially looks like a large trailer with windows, to the elementary school site would open up more common space for the students.
Currently, the cafeteria is split in half. One side is used for music and art classes, while the other side serves food that the students carry back to their classrooms to eat. Music and art classes would be moved to the portable, and the full cafeteria would be available for students to eat in.
Out of the four portable classrooms owned by the city, two at Prides Corner School and two at Fred C. Wescott Community Center, only one could be rehabilitated into a classroom at this time, according to Gousse. Dean Flanagin, director of operations, said purchasing a new portable would cost upward of $60,000.
Gousse said if the influx in students continues, as some officials have speculated it will when a new Avesta housing development opens later this year in Westbrook, arts and music could go back to the cafeteria, and the portable could be reclaimed as class space.
For a long-term solution, Gousse envisions expanding the school building into the fields behind the school, still leaving room for playing fields. Expansion would include adding classrooms, a new gym, cafeteria and a meeting space, which would allow the small library to move into the current cafeteria, creating a space similar in size to the other two elementary schools’ libraries.
Brian Mazjanis, Saccarappa Elementary School principal, said he thinks the plan is “great” and encompasses both a short-term and long-term solution that will work well for students and staff.
“This was all part of the conversation when we did reconfiguration,” Gousse said. “We don’t need a new building.”
Two years ago, the city closed Prides Corner Elementary School, the fourth elementary school in the district. The building was old and needed millions of dollars in repairs to keep it open for the 2012-13 school year and even more money to keep it functioning in years to come, Gousse said.
The district then reconfigured the remaining three elementary schools, Congin, Canal and Saccarappa, into kindergarten- to fourth-grade schools. The new Westbrook Middle School added fifth-graders to allow for the influx of students from Prides Corner.
Saccarappa Elementary School was built in 1953 as a kindergarten-through-second-grade school. Since the reconfiguration, enrollment numbers have jumped by nearly 30 students, or close to two classrooms of students.
Flanagin said it is too early in the process to estimate the cost of a long-term expansion project. He said he hopes to have details about the expansion project by the beginning of the 2014 school year.
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