Officials still looking to add portables at high school

Pelham school officials and legislators went before the state Board of Education recently seeking permission to lease portable classrooms for Pelham High School.

They didn’t get the answer they were hoping for, but they may get help from the state legislature.

Local school officials want to move 150 students into the classrooms so they can move them out of the school, where fire code violations have been found.

Prior to the Dec. 13 board of education meeting, state education commissioner Lyonel Tracy, citing an opinion from the Attorney General’s Office, informed school Superintendent Elaine Cutler that he did not have the authority to grant her request.

“Right now we can’t do anything,” said David Ruedig, chairman of the state board. “Our hands are tied by the advice of our lawyers.”

He did leave open the possibility that new information provided to the AG’s office might change their opinion.

Last summer, Pelham fire officials toured the high school and discovered serious safety problems, including poor exits in the math, art and consumer science areas, doors that swing into hallways interfering with traffic, windows too small to escape through and walls made of combustible materials.

“Upon examination of the high school, I was dismayed,” Fire Chief Michael Walker told the state board. “In my 33-year career, I have not seen as many code violations in a school building as I had seen there.”

Pelham school board members were amazed at the violations when they were shown to them, he said.

“It was an eye-opening experience for them,” Walker said.

As part of their efforts to fix safety problems, local school officials want to redirect money in the current school district budget to spend roughly $211,000 to install and lease the portable classrooms.

A warrant article to buy four portable classrooms to relieve overcrowding at the high school had been turned down by voters in March.

Following the fire chief’s findings, the school district’s lawyer, citing a state law that allows for emergency expenditures, advised Cutler to seek Tracy’s permission to spend money to rent the portables.

There was not enough time to call for a special town meeting this year to lease the classrooms, the lawyer had advised.

Despite Tracy’s decision, the school board voted 3-2 at their Dec. 6 meeting to go forward with leasing the classrooms.

State Rep. Lynne Ober told the state board that she was dismayed Tracy’s decision does not make reference to a state fire marshal’s report about the high school. Pelham school officials have worked to solve the problems within the law, she said.

“This plan will make children safer and take them out of harm’s way,” she said. “Must we, in New Hampshire, have a tragedy such as the one that happened in Rhode Island at the nightclub? Must we read about Pelham children dying in the fire? Must we read about Pelham children maimed in a fire because they couldn’t get out of the building?”

Cutler said without the portables, she has no available classrooms to relocate the students to. The high school was built to hold 586 students and now houses 704 pupils, and there is no space at the town’s other schools, she said.

Daphne Kenyon, a state board member from Windham, said she wanted to tour the high school and examine some options.

But other board members said they were concerned people would try to shift responsibility for solving the problem to them.

“This community and its elected officials need to rally to solve this problem,” said board member John Lyons. “The attorney general has said we cannot do it.”

Ruedig said he believes there are several options the town can pursue, including bringing the request for portables to voters at a regular or special town meeting, and altering bus schedules and splitting school sessions to find space.

“I wish we can snap our fingers and take care of this,” Ruedig said. “It doesn’t seem to me to be the way it’s designed to work in New Hampshire.”

The state legislature may get involved with the issue. State Rep. Jean-Guy Bergeron of Pelham is developing legislation that, if passed, would allow the school district to obtain the portable classrooms.

In addition to seeking the portables, the school board has hired an architect, Paul Marinace, who has developed solutions for fixing safety problems at the school.

Those solutions include creating new corridors in the art and math areas and reconfiguring classrooms to provide direct access to them, and altering a long hallway in the English area.

Other solutions can be made as part of a major renovation of the school, Marinace has advised the school board.