Classroom space is so inadequate at South Portland High School that students studying English as a Second language are taught in a pair of converted storage rooms.

The makeshift classes are cramped when empty, so it’s hard to imagine 20 students learning in there together.

Likewise, staff doesn’t have enough office space, either. So the computer technician who maintains student laptops has an office in the basement laundry room. He shares space with industrial-sized washers that don’t work anymore.

Student guides offered these anecdotes and many others Monday to about a dozen residents who turned out for an after-hours tour of the city’s only high school.

The guided tour was organized by the South Portland School Department to educate the public about the need to renovate the 1950s-era high school. A proposal to rebuild the high school for $55 million will be decided Nov. 6 in a citywide vote.

Monday night’s tour was the first in a series of scheduled walks through the high school that aim to show voters the need for rebuilding and renovating the city’s only high school.

If the school bond passes, officials hope to break ground in 2009. Construction would be done in phases, so that the student learning would not be disrupted. The rebuilt high school would be completed in 2012.

Monday night, visitors heard a litany of problems about aging school buildings that ranged from broken showers in the girls’ locker room, which haven’t worked since the 1970s, to ground-floor offices that flood during heavy rainstorms.

Visitors also saw overcrowded conditions, water-damaged ceilings and floors, asbestos-covered pipes and ceiling tiles and aging mechanical systems that malfunction.

Some residents commented on the stuffiness and lack of ventilation inside the school buildings. A few complained about the glare of exposed fluorescent ceiling lights in some of the hallways.

Ann-Marie Wong, who has a son at South Portland High, said she came on the tour to be better informed as a voter.

Wong, who also graduated from South Portland High in 1972, said she was most concerned about the health and safety issues.

“They need to get rid of the mold, the asbestos,” Wong said. “This is the kind of stuff that can make kids really sick.”

Principal Jeanne Crocker, who spoke at the tour, took residents into the home economics room, where she pointed out old countertops that collect water underneath the linoleum and have grown moldy.

She noted the school’s elevators, which are small and narrow. They fail to meet federal standards for handicap accessibility.

She also pointed out a stairway to the ground-floor gymnasium, where there is no elevator and only a mechanical lift that can carry a wheelchair. Crocker said the lift doesn’t function right. “We’ve had accidents in it,” she said.

To get to the gym, students in wheelchairs usually go outside and use a separate entrance.

As the tour snaked through the high school, Crocker also showed visitors rows and rows of empty hall lockers. Most are too narrow to fit books or backpacks. Students simply don’t use them to store belongings.

“I never had to worry about being stuffed into a locker,” joked 16-year-old Jake Viola, one of the student tour guides.

Viola and 17-year-old Coral Sandler, the other student guide, told the group about the frustrations of trying to learn in classrooms that are not big enough or have thin walls that do not muffle sounds from neighboring rooms.

Viola said the state requires that classrooms be 800 square feet, but the average classroom size at South Portland High School is 600 square feet.

A lack of space also has led administrators to combine several learning activities in a single classroom. Student quilters keep their sewing machines in the math classroom.

The student computer lab is set up in classrooms where unrelated courses are taught. Students only can use the lab when the classroom is free.

The student tour guides said the serving area in the cafeteria is too small to accommodate all the students. Students at the high school go to lunch in three separate shifts of 350 students. Sandler said oftentimes by the time she gets her lunch, the period is over.

But Coral Sandler said the cafeteria line is so long that the 20-minute period is over right after she buys her meal.

The tour concluded with a brief question-and-answer period, in which several people asked how the most serious building problems will be fixed, if the referendum fails.

Crocker said that there would be an immediate need for about $6 million in repairs to mechanical systems, including the heating and ventilation system, that are at the end of their service life.

Crocker also said she worried about future accreditation of the high school, if significant problems are not remedied.

School officials have said previously handicap accessibility problems would need to be corrected regardless of whether voters approve the bond for the renovations.

“We are up for re-accreditation every 10 years, and a team will visit the school in November 2008,” Crocker said. “If the building plan is not voter approved, I feel there will be some kind of penalty.”

A CLOSER LOOK

The public is invited on guided tours of South Portland High School to see problems with the buildings and learn more about proposed renovations.

The public does not need to call in advance but should just show up at the scheduled time. The 45-minute tours, which start at the high school entrance, are on the following dates:

• Sept. 30: 1, 3 and 5 p.m.

• Oct. 6: 4 p.m., after the homecoming game

• Oct. 21: 1, 3 and 5 p.m.

• Nov. 3: 1, 3 and 5 p.m.

There also is an ongoing series of presentations and displays at other South Portland schools. On Friday at Small Elementary, there will be a display, showing the architect’s renderings of the proposed high school. The display will be set up during the school’s ice cream social, which starts at 6:30 p.m.

More events will be added as they are scheduled. Call the school department at 871-0555 for information or check its Web site (ssfc.spsd.org).

A lack of office space led administrators to set up an office for the laptop computer technician in an old laundry room in the basement.Librarians hang an umbrella under a skylight in the school library to keep the glare off the computer screens in the work area.South Portland High School student Coral Sandler, center, leads residents on a tour of the building the school department has said needs to be renovated. Sanborn and Jake Viola said it’s sometimes frustrating trying to learn in classrooms that are not big enough or have thin walls that do not muffle sounds from neighboring rooms. Tight fit

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