Panel Suggests More Portable Classrooms

SIMI VALLEY —  A committee charged with advising the school board on how to handle 750 additional students expected in the fall suggests using more portable classrooms to ensure students and teachers are inconvenienced as little as possible.

And only as a last resort should the district relocate students from the schools they now attend, says the district’s Facilities Master Plan Committee.

With the Simi Valley Unified School District anticipating an enrollment crunch in the fall, the committee Wednesday night said portables should be used to preserve support facilities such as libraries, teachers’ lounges and computer rooms that might otherwise be sacrificed to make room for added teachers and students.

A second, less-favored option was to consider grade reconfiguration, which some feared was a euphemism for encouraging sixth-grade attendance at middle schools.

“I think in the ideal short-term [scenario] we would not want to take sixth-graders out of their” current schools, said committee member Michelle Foster.

Chairman Michael Murphy said the committee was aware that Sinaloa Middle School has additional capacity that might be used by sixth-graders. At the same time, he expressed the committee’s understanding that it is dealing with a sensitive issue.