Evening star., 1940-02-09
D. T.. Portable
Schools Found
In BadCondition
Armstrong High Bears
Brunt, With 5
Of 13 in City
BACKGROUND

ItOnS IN pOTLdOte SchOOtS tCnen
school children of North Randle
Highlands School aUrote open let
ter to Mrs. Franklin d. Roosepelt
in bi-monthly newspaper asking
her to use influence to 1pin ade-
quate educational facilities. The
letter Wds signed "SeDenty Little
School Children" and pictured
conditions in old fashioned struc-
lures.
The conditions at drafty, poorly
heated, insanitary portables at
North Randle Highlands School are
repeated throughout the city, a
survey of portables disclosed today.
Several thousand District school
children, the survey revealed, have
been enduring for years without
comment the conditions described
in the letter to Mrs. Franklin D.
Roosevelt from the Seventy Little
School Children" of the North
Randle Highlands School.
Terming all the portables "un-
desirable" Supt. of Schools Frank
w. Ballou said he had asked in the
1889, 1910 and 1941 budgets for a
building and site for the North
Randle Highlands School. In the
1941 budget the Commissioners
struck off the building request and
the Budget Bureau ruled out the
purchase of site.
Purchased during the World War,
the portables have been reduced in
the last 20 years from 70 to the
present 13. Armstrong Technical
High School bears the brunt of the
portable lead with portables, in
each of which 240 children daily
attend classes.
Besides the North Randle High
lands School and Armstrong, the
portables are connected with STAN
ton, Eliot Junior High, Powell Jun
ior High and Randall Junior High
School.
In Need of Repair.
In need of frequent repair,
weatherbeaten and dilapidated,
heated by coal stoves, the portables
have been moved from place to
place as schools become overcrowd-
ed until they are now so old DR..
Ballou doubts if they can be moved
about any more.
School officials agreed today that
the portables should be eliminated
in favor of regular classrooms as
soon as possible, that the lack of
sanitary facilities is dangerous and
that the necessity for children to
run back and forth between port
ables and the main buildings in all
kinds of weather is unhealthy.
Although Eliot Junior High School
is housed in new building, it must
retain its portable because there is
no room for the metal crafts class
in the main building.
Henry M. Folmer, class instructor,
who remains in the building all day,
regularly wears overshoes and two
pairs of socks because, no matter
the warmth of the room, the floor
Is always cold.
He tends the furnace and inter-
rupts class to throw coal on the
fire. Set up on hill, the portable
gets the full force of the wind from
every direction. Rain and snow
seeping through the windows have
streaked the walls of the single
room.
In Use Every Class Hour.
With an enrolment of 1000 at
Armstrong and facilities in the
building to accommodate only 1,100,
the five portables are in use every
class hour. Because the students
may have four or five classes during
the day in one portable or another,
they have to carry their coats with
them all day and drape them on
the backs of their chairs-unless
the portables are SO cold they must
keep bundled up during class.
Mud sticks to the rough wood
floors so the portables at Armstrong
can never be kept quite clean.
With no protection between the
doors and the room, the changing
OF, classes keeps the door open for
10 minutes at time and chills
the room.
Behind the portables which line
the back of the building are the
back yards of the houses on the next
block On the other side of the
fence which cuts the portable off
from the back yards is an clubhouse
set directly between two .of the
portables. -
With no laboratory facilities in
the portables, the biology class must
learn the course without laboratory
work. Some of the classes are so
large that desks cannot accommo-
date them all and two or three STU
dents may gather around the same
desk or balance notebooks on their
knees. In one class the small port
able housed SIS pupils, with all the
windows shut to cut out drafts.
PortableS Brown With Dirt.
At Powell Junior High, where the
originally cream-colored portables
are brown with dirt, some effort has
been made to dress up the class
rooms. Shelves have been built and
curtains hung, but daylight can be
seen through the space between the
door and the floor and through the
chinks in the window.
Under the steps leading to the
portables are piles of wood which
the janitor must chop for starting
the fires in the morning. When the
rooms are too hot, the stove door
must be opened and the coal gas
fumes fill the room. One of the
teachers kept an informal record
OF the temperature as it plunged up
and down and reported that it was
Al degrees during one of the class
periods, 80 degrees shortly after the
last class when some of the chill
dren remained to study and % de-
grees when the teacher went to the
portable on Saturday to do some
work.
Near one of the windows was a
flag which fluttered in the breeze
filtering in through the chinks in
tho c1oSed window One windnw