Pelham school board members are going ahead with plans to lease six portable classrooms for Pelham High School, even though the state education commissioner hasn’t granted their request to make an emergency expenditure to do so.

The portables would allow school officials to move approximately 150 students out of the overcrowded building and allow repairs to improve safety, work that will mean reducing the number of classrooms in the building.

Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy didn’t authorize the school board’s emergency request to allow them to spend roughly $211,000 this year to rent the portables.

In a letter to School Superintendent Elaine Cutler, Tracy said state law allows him to authorize emergency expenditures “when an unusual circumstance arises during the year.”

The problems at the school, he wrote, have been discussed during the past few years and are therefore not an “unusual circumstance” that permits him to authorize their request.

Tracy did, however, advise the school district to take actions to provide for students’ safety.

Even without Tracy’s permission, the school board voted 3-2 at their Dec. 6 meeting to go forward with leasing the portables.

They did so even after Brian Gallagher, the district’s business administrator, warned they could be held personally liable for renting the classrooms.

“We need to address these issues right away,” school board Chairman Michael Conrad said after the meeting.

Voting to go forward with leasing the modulars was Conrad, Bruce Couture and Eleanor Burton. Voting against was Linda Mahoney and Cindy Kyzer.

Last March, a warrant article to add four portable classrooms at the school to alleviate overcrowding was turned down by voters.

This fall, fire officials warned the school board of several problems at the school, including walls constructed with combustible materials, void spaces above the ceiling that could allow a fire to spread undetected, and the need for better exits in the math and art classroom areas.

During the Dec. 6 meeting, architect Paul Marinace recommended several improvements to the school.

These included suggestions that a new corridor be created in the art area and rooms be reconfigured to provide direct access to it; creating a new corridor for the math area that directly leads to a building exit; and altering a dead-end corridor in the English area, the length of which exceeds the fire code to reach an exit.

The estimated cost of the work is $395,000.

Reconfiguring the rooms would mean two less classrooms for math and one less classroom in the art area.

Marinace has recommended that the portable classrooms be located behind the school near the southeast corner of the building.