Modular Classrooms For Sandy Hook Approved

By School Board

By Jeff White

Sandy Hook School has known that it would be getting modular classrooms next year to assuage its overcrowding problem. This reality became official Tuesday night when board of education members awarded the contract for the assembly and installation of the temporary classrooms.

Four modular classrooms will be installed at the school by Arthur Building Systems of Bristol. The cost for the classrooms, already figured into the district’s proposed operating budget for next year, will be leased at a cost of $7,298 per month for three years.

The bid that the school board accepted also includes a removal cost of $19,565 when the lease expires.

The school district has drafted a schedule for the implementation of the modular classrooms. Over the next two to eight weeks, Arthur Building Systems will primarily concern itself with obtaining town building commission approval for their drawings, and the manufacturing of the modular classrooms themselves.

Site work is scheduled to commence June 19, with the classrooms ready for installation and assembly July 3. The district hopes to be able to move necessary furniture and equipment into the classrooms by August 16, with the entire setup ready for students on the first day of school in the fall.

The school board’s decision to move ahead with the modular classrooms reflects the pressing space needs of Sandy Hook School, which continues to grow at a faster rate than Newtown’s other schools.

Hawley School’s enrollment currently is at 547 students, Middle Gate is at 547, and Head O’ Meadow is at 539. Sandy Hook has 700 students enrolled this year. Whereas the other elementary schools expect only nominal increases in their populations, Sandy Hook fully expects its enrollment to swell to 770 by next fall.

 Kindergarten through third grade at Sandy Hook each house six “sections,” or classes. The district average is four. School administrators plan to add two more sections to the fourth grade, which currently has four classes averaging 26 students per room. An additional class is planned for the fifth grade, which currently averages 25 students in each of its four rooms. At least one more kindergarten session is being considered, bringing the total kindergarten sessions to seven.

The modular classrooms will house the two additional fourth grades and the one additional fifth grade, along with another class. The classrooms will be located to the rear of the school, jutting out into the back playground and accessed by a corridor branching off the back main hallway.

Sandy Hook Principal Donna Pagé has called the district’s choice to bring in portable classrooms the “less dramatic” option of dealing with Sandy Hook’s space concerns.

School board members hope that these portable classrooms will be temporary, and that their proposed 5/6 school, which stands to pull significant student populations from the four elementary schools when it is completed, will eradicate the need for them by 2002.