Beckham already has 28 classrooms in mobiles and would take more. The outside classrooms give her students more room to move than the narrow hallways inside the school. Once the new Wando High School is built, she hopes all her students will fit comfortably inside it. For now, Beckham said there are good reasons for portable classrooms. One is that heat and air in most portables is more consistent than in the main school building, she said.
Portables fall under the same guidelines for heat and air as the school buildings.
New regulations mandate that fresh air is constantly pumped into the schools, improving air quality and cutting down on carbon dioxide build-up, which can hurt academic performance, said Ervin Robeson, utilities manager for the district. As air conditioning units in the district's portables go bad, the district will replace them with units up to current standards, he said. With the new units comes a control system to keep temperature and humidity in check, thereby keeping down energy costs and maintaining the proper amount of moisture in the air to prevent mold and mildew. But after renovations at Jane Edwards Elementary School in West Ashley, Principal Ann Brown was glad to move her students out of mobiles and into the school. Brown, who had seven portables on campus at one point, feels safer with her students all under one roof, she said.