Dothan High to get portable classrooms

By Jim Cook

Published: June 16, 2008

Some Dothan High School students will kick off the school year in portable classrooms as the school prepares to convert its science and arts building into a ninth grade center.

The Dothan City School Board on Monday voted to rent 10 trailers from Acton Mobile Industries to serve as temporary classrooms while workers renovate the science and arts building. The total cost of renting the portable classrooms is projected to reach about $100,000.

According to Dothan City School Superintendent Sam Nichols, the portable classrooms are necessary to accommodate classroom needs while the construction project is ongoing. The $4.5 million project will likely begin in September or October and may take longer than a year to complete. Once the science and arts building is completed, lab classes will be relocated to the school’s old vocational arts building, which is being rehabilitated for this purpose.

Nichols wants the classrooms in place before school begins in August.

Portable classrooms were once widespread in Alabama, but their number was greatly reduced after former Gov. Don Siegelman secured passage of a school construction bond issue in the late 90s. Enterprise High School currently uses some at its temporary campus at Enterprise-Ozark Community College.

Also on the agenda Monday night was a vote on a proposed school rezoning plan. Under the plan, school zones will be reconfigured to create zones that are more geographically consistent than the current configuration which was gerrymandered based on the requirements of a now defunct federal desegregation order.

The new zoning scheme would create two clustering zones, which for the most part would be split north and south by Main Street. Elementary schools in a cluster would feed into that cluster’s middle schools, which would feed into that cluster’s designated high school. The plan would also convert Beverlye Middle School and Heard Elementary School into magnet schools, doubling the school system’s magnet enrollment and giving students in each cluster an opportunity to attend magnet school.

The vote on the rezoning plan was delayed until the board’s July 7 meeting because members Margaret Johnson and Brenda Guilford were not present. According to Dothan City School Board Chairman Steve Stokes, Johnson was tending to a sick family member and Guilford had another engagement. Stokes said he was not comfortable with voting on such a major undertaking without the full board present.