The baby boom brought a flood of new school construction. Then as the kid population declined many were turned into administration buildings, apartments, or just torn down to sell the land. Then the existing schools started to fall apart, requiring new construction levies that were hard to pass - “Why should I pay good money to edjumacate somebody else’s snot-nosed kids when mine are all growed up!” On top of that, people were moving around a lot more often, so enrollments were hard to predict. Portables became the cheapest solution to make schools flexi-size.
Those “temporary” buildings were at my middle and high schools for decades.
Pretty sure they are still at mine
Yep and this was my school 💯
I graduated highschool in 2010. During my time at highschool we had more and more trailers, but by the end of it (and maybe before that) we had as many rooms outside as we did inside.
I have a strange nostalgia for them. I live in the southeast US, so it’s really hot. The AC on these things was crazy. You basically had to wear jeans and a hoodie year round because you’d get too cold otherwise.
We had these at the COMMUNITY COLLEGE I attended in 2001. Took a math class out there. I say “out there” because they stuck these things far out past the parking lot no one used, beyond the field where they had a golf class. Dark wood paneled walls, the thud, thud, thud of walking on the elevated floors which I’m pretty sure were warped. Awful.
There are air conditioning units on those. The ones I was in in the 70s had none. Just louvers the teacher wanted kept closed because they ‘interfered with the breeze from the fan’ on his desk. the one facing him. The only fan in the room.
The portables had AC, everyone wanted to go to class in the portables.
Look at Riviera Kid with their fancy AC portables. The rest of us were crammed into windowless hotboxes like simmering sardines during that awkward early puberty phase where everyone was developing BO but hadn’t figured out adult hygiene. It was a bong of adolescent funk.
It was a bong of adolescent funk.
Adolescent Funk Bong is my new band name
You were lucky if your class was in the trailer because it was the only part of the school that had air conditioning
These are still used. Dumbest I’ve seen is a new school with them.
That was my high school. Brand new school and 2 years after it’s finished they had to start using these because they didn’t make it big enough.
It’s not great but mobile classrooms are very good when you need to expand but don’t have enough demand for classrooms to fill an expansion of say 5-10 classrooms.
Obviously you want to build more than one at a time but building more than you need is not budget friendly. So aiming for 3 mobile classrooms and starting a 5y construction immediately makes a lot of sense.
Keeping these things permanently is just weird.
At least in the US, Reagan lowered taxes and started cutting funding for public schools. A new building wasn’t in the budget for majority of school districts.
Your parents loved him because he let them keep more of their money. Their boss stopped giving them raises and they didn’t notice because they stopped paying for your school.
That’s why all your elementary school friends are idiots and they grew up cheering for more of this.
Fuck Ronnie Raygun and his dumbass plans for the world.
i only knew about these because of malcolm in the middle
And they are still there
There’s nothing quite as permanent as a temporary building.
And they call them “portables” haha
I haven’t seen these in the North East in 30 or so years. I’m sure they are still in areas but most of these went away.
At least in our part of the north east, they’ve gone away because there are less kids in the schools. Enrollment and birthdates are both way down in our small towns. Ann my Moms town has closed 2 of the 5 elementary schools.
My wife teaches in one.
Had these in the UK too. Bonus points, we lost a huge chunk of playground/ netball courts in the process.
I had one of those as my form room for the first few years of secondary school because the building where I was supposed to have my form room was full of asbestos.
I did 6th grade in one of those. It was actually pretty nice.
