School districts hosting public kindergarten for the first time this September will soon see a wave of portable classrooms descend on their elementary school grounds.
Pelham, Salem and Windham have three-year leases — covered by state kindergarten aid — on standalone modular units.
Pelham and Windham will hold kindergarten classes in these modulars.
Salem will teach its kindergarten students in classrooms in main buildings, and transfer upper grade students, mostly fourth- and fifth-graders, to the portables. Only some, not all fourth- and fifth-grade classes from a given school will be moved to the portables, Salem Superintendent Michael Delahanty said.
Delahanty said the decision to teach the kindergarten children in the main building was to satisfy parents' concerns about the younger children being separated from the main building.
He said there is no evidence to suggest students need to be inside the main building.
"Children won't feel as though they are not part of the school," he said. "Our experience (with portables) is the physical location does not matter even a little bit."
School Board Vice Chairman Mike Hatem said the discussion about moving kindergarten students inside has not come up in Windham.
"Frankly, the portables are probably in better shape than Golden Brook," he said.
The 10-classroom, 9,520-square-foot portable at Golden Brook Elementary School will be to the right, facing the school. It will be about 25 feet away from the building, in what is now the parking lot.
Inside, the portable will have a central corridor and five classrooms on each side. Each class will have a handicapped-accessible bathroom with a sink.
Site work at this and all locations will start after school closes for the summer, and all portables will be ready for occupancy by mid-August, Jeff Snow said. He is the lease agent for Schiavi Leasing Corporation of Oxford, Maine.
All three towns are leasing their portables from Schiavi.
The portables, the classrooms in which are divided by floor-to-ceiling walls, are climate controlled and must meet the same specifications that an inside-the-school classroom must meet.
"It's a modular school, built to the same code requirements as conventional construction, but able to be relocated in the future," Snow said. "Because it is temporary or modular or portable does not mean it is inferior."
Schiavi is responsible for the condition of the units. If there is a roof or window leak, or the heating system malfunctions, Schiavi will make the repairs at no additional cost.
The lease on the Windham unit is $9,890 per month.
The cost of the leases for Salem was not available on Friday.
Salem will have two-classroom portables at four elementary schools: Barron, Fisk, North Salem and Lancaster. Each class will have a bathroom.
Salem will have a single-classroom portable with a bathroom at the Lewis Soule School.
Pelham will have a six-classroom portable.
Like Windham's portable, there will be a central corridor and an equal number of classrooms on each side, three in Pelham's case. Each classroom will have a bathroom.
The Pelham portable's lease is $122,664 a year.
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