PORT TOWNSEND — For David Herrington, facilities manager for the Port Townsend School District, Aug. 11 is looming large on the calendar.
That is the date two modular buildings are scheduled to be delivered to Blue Heron Middle School campus.
If all goes according to plan, the modular units will be ready and waiting when students arrive for class Sept. 8.
“That’s our goal,” Herrington said.
Mountain View closed
The modular units are being added to hold students from Mountain View School, an upper elementary that was closed in June to save money.
The campus will be leased to the city of Port Townsend.
School district officials decided to move the third grades to Grant Street Elementary and relocate the fourth and fifth grades and the multi-age OPEPO program at Blue Heron Middle School, almost doubling the number of students to 557.
The fifth grades will go into existing space in the school, with the two modular units housing the fourth grades and OPEPO.
Permits
But time is short and the permit process can be long — so far, only the grading permit has been issued, Herrington said.
That allows the ground to be broken and forms built to pour concrete on the sites, one for the four-room unit in a gap between the gymnasium and the classroom pod, which will used for the fifth grades, and one for OPEPO at the north end of the campus.
Herrington and his crew have moved the third-grade classroom furniture and supplies to Grant Street Elementary, he said, as well as the fifth-grade classes into Blue Heron.
His crew also has cleared out the south end of the Mountain View building to accommodate the Port Townsend Police Department, which is scheduled to move in Sept. 1, he said.
But the fourth-grade classes remain set up at Mountain View.
“There is no place to put them at Blue Heron,” Herrington.
Once the next permit comes through, which Herrington is hopeful will happen this week, the concrete footings and foundation walls can be poured and cured by the time the modular units arrive.
“We’re hoping the units will be set up and secured by Aug. 14,” Herrington said. “Then it’s a matter of electrical, water, sewer, security, fire, telephone and Internet.”
Herrington said it’s been a lot of work to relocate the classrooms and get Mountain View ready to be leased, work that has been constant since school let out in mid-June. And it won’t be until mid-August that he will have an idea if the units will be ready by the time school starts.
“Right now, my biggest concern is time,” Herrington said.
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
