Photo courtesy of Molly Benson

Students are seen walking to their sixth period portable class. The walk to class can be warm with sunny weather outside, but this isn’t always the case, making the portables inconvenient for some students.

Every student knows the typical school classroom: desks, whiteboards, prometheans and usually an indoor environment. As WJ grows with larger classes entering each year, the classrooms are filled to the brim. As a result, the school has built new portables to hold more classes with students. This year, the school administration added an additional three to the previous collection. These alternate classrooms have many positive outcomes, but unfortunately, there are many negatives as well.

With the recent terrors of school shootings, these portables are not helpful in the event that something similar happens at WJ. Students are expected and have been told that if they are outside transitioning to portables, their safest bet would most likely be running as fast as they can. This situation is not only terrifying, but also unrealistic because of the fencing around the portables and the crowd of students in any of these six rooms trying to escape. This puts students and teachers at risk and should be a concern for the school.

Another less extreme disadvantage of portables is that it’s very difficult for students to get to class on time, since there is only one route to their location. No matter what part of the school students are coming from, the congestion of the single path to the portables will most likely delay them, especially if their previous class is on the third floor. Teachers in the portables expect students to be on time to class, even though some students have to travel far.

Lastly, the weather in the portables is pretty unpredictable. With the seasons changing, it can be hard to know if one should wear a sweatshirt to class or not, all depending on the temperature in the classroom and the weather outside. Even classrooms inside the building have various temperatures, so imagine being in an outdoor environment where the temperature can change several degrees just depending on if the doors are slightly cracked open.

Although there aren’t many other options to resolve WJ’s overcrowding issue, portables are inconvenient and are somewhat risky to students’ safety. Portables do make WJ’s overcrowding issue more capable of working with, and these additional classrooms create the possibility of academic advantages in our school. But in the end, these properties, although beneficial, are not necessary to the building and the overall possibility of danger and inconvenience isn’t worth the risk.