Portable Usage in Oregon and Washington State

Earthfix and Investigate West had an excellent series, with data and graphics, on the use of school portables in Oregon and Washington State.

InvestigateWest sent a survey to the 20 largest school districts in Oregon and Washington about its portable classroom use, policies and perspective. The survey asked each district how many portable classrooms it has and what percent of its total classrooms are portables. The survey also asked how many portable classrooms were newer than five years, how many were older than 20 years, and how many had been retrofitted with new heating, ventilation and air conditioning units, as well as a full inventory of all portable units. All districts responded but with varying levels of detail. Numbers are estimates in some cases.

Part One: The Price of a Quick Fix - environmental and health costs
Part Two: The System
Part Three: Rethinking Classrooms
Graphics
Data


There's also a link to this report - Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol; Criteria for High Performance Schools, 2010 edition.

Some interesting quotes from the series:

 Data


The Puyallup School District where she teaches has 205 such boxes. They form 20 percent of the district’s classroom space. They hold more than 4,000 students — so many that a new high school, a new middle school and two elementary schools wouldn’t provide enough classroom space for them all.

The largest districts in Oregon and Washington now have thousands of them and a majority are more than 20 years old, data collected by InvestigateWest and EarthFix show. 

Around 10 percent of portables in Oregon and Washington’s largest districts are newer than five years old.

Portables are often charged residential electricity rates because they are separate from the rest of the school. Those can be 25 to 30 percent higher than the rest of the school’s.

The first and only large-scale study of portable classrooms in particular was done by the California Air Resources Board in 2004, in response to numerous complaints.

“Facilities are handled locally by local school districts,” said Crystal Greene, communications director for the Oregon Department of Education. “I am not aware of any role the state has in terms of portables.”

Use of Portables


That year, state auditors flagged Evergreen for “excessive” use of portable classrooms. Citing a suggested limit in Texas called the “Texas Ten Percent Portables Guideline,” auditors noted that Evergreen had more than twice the recommended number of portables. And, because portable classrooms are more expensive to maintain than regular school buildings, they said, the district could save money by reducing them.

“The school districts with a portables count above 10 percent of permanent classrooms are not necessarily at fault or careless in their handling of facilities planning,” auditors wrote. “They have in large measure used portables because such action has presented the only apparent and responsive path to housing the increased numbers of students.”

With no limit on portable use, Washington tries to discourage them through funding policies. Portables aren’t eligible for state funds, nor are they counted as existing building space when the state evaluates a district’s need for funding.

Health


Washington education officials leave ventilation issues to the state’s Department of Health, where Nancy Bernard is one person handling what used to be two departments: Indoor Air Quality and School Environmental Health and Safety. 

Washington is ahead of many other states, but enforcement for good indoor air in schools is largely nonexistent. Washington law requires local health authorities to perform periodic inspections of schools, but doesn’t require them to test indoor air. 

Lessening the Use of Portables

Jefferson is one of the latest examples of Spokane’s rare but coveted position among Northwest school districts — it’s been shedding old portable classrooms.  

Spokane has ditched portables the old fashioned way: by passing bonds and building with brick and mortar. Meanwhile, architects in the Northwest have been developing modular classrooms with green building materials, better ventilation and low energy costs. Only a handful of districts have purchased these portables with the new and more expensive designs.

Spokane has reduced its use of portable classrooms by 20 percent since 2008, when a state audit examined excessive use of portable classrooms. Spokane schools eliminated more portables than any other district in that audit, according to data collected by InvestigateWest and EarthFix.

A nearly stagnant student population has been an advantage for Spokane.

Green Portables

Before long, they had designed the SAGE classroom — a modular built with non-toxic materials, natural lighting and ventilation, and low energy costs. The SAGE classroom costs $90,000 and can be energy-neutral for $120,000, Leite said. 

Traditional modular classrooms have a wide cost range, the low end of which is around $50,000.
“That was always the bottom line,” Palleroni said. “We’d do all these things, get really excited, come back, we would add it all up and say, ‘Oh, darn it. Too expensive.’ So go back to the drawing table.”

The Edmonds school district in Washington plans to install several SAGE classrooms, and schools in Oregon, Washington and Maryland are also interested.

In Seattle, a nonprofit organization known as the SEED Collaborative designed a modular classroom that qualifies for the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most rigorous standard in sustainable building. The classroom boasts net-zero water and energy. It collects rainwater, composts waste and recycles water into a vertical garden along one of the classroom’s walls.

It costs around $200,000 — double what a SAGE classroom costs and four times more than the price of a low-end traditional portable.