GloucesterTimes.com, Gloucester, MA

Principal Sue Ellen Hogan yesterday was counting the hours until the arrival of two trailers to relieve overcrowding at Beeman Elementary School, whose student census has increased from 218 last spring to 330 last month.

"We can't wait for them," said Hogan, who noted that because of the 51 percent enrollment increase the Beeman library has been claimed for teaching Title 1 students. Teachers have no "preparation place," she added.

She thanked Superintendent Christopher Farmer for a recent tour that spurred the decision to lease the trailers.

The School Committee voted to lease the 440-square-foot trailers on Oct. 3.

School Committee member Carolyn Kirk said the one-year lease price was $12,000.

At that, they were a bargain compared to the four modular units the committee is still waiting for after fronting the $426,000 purchase price or the $2.5 million that the committee has decided it needs to spend on additional expansion to accommodate the larger number of students and teachers in the elementary schools next September.

The trailers - "similar to what you'd find on a construction site," said School Committee Chairman Jonathan Pope - will have to do at Beeman until the arrival of four subdividable, modular units that the committee has been seeking with increasing desperation since last spring.

"The trailers are just temporary," Pope said. "They'll go away early next year - we hope."

The modulars were intrinsic parts of the two-year redistricting plan approved by the committee last spring, keyed to the closing at the end of the coming spring term of O'Maley Middle School.

Fuller School is to become the middle school; the district's fifth-graders, who now are educated at Fuller, would be reunited with the lower elementary grades next fall.

The start of the transition committed the School Committee to a citywide reassignment of students and faculty, which meant overcrowding this fall across the district, hence the need for the modulars.

One each was to be attached to Beeman, East Gloucester and West Parish elementary schools, and Plum Cove School, which is being expanded from a K-2 school into a full elementary school.

The School Committee last spring sent a request to Mayor John Ball for $465,000 for the modulars. It cleared the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee in early July but got bogged down in "rules and regulations in the state procurement process and the budgetary process," said Steven Magoon, administrative assistant to Bell.

"The city took its time," Pope said.

"I feel as though we've already lost six months," said Kirk. "The School Committee has no control over the timing" of the steps required to order the modulars.

"No one wanted to violate the orderly process," said the mayor, who by charter serves on the School Committee. "But no one wanted to accelerate that (process) more than I."

In September, to expedite the process, the School Committee agreed to front the price of the modulars out of existing accounts rather than wait for City Council to dot the i's and cross the t's of the purchase order.

On Tuesday night, in a series of votes at the end of a joint meeting, the council reimbursed the School Committee out of unspent funds in loan orders.

The 900-square-foot modulars now are expected to arrive early next year.

But Pope warned that even more expansion would be required to make the second phase of the school consolidation plan work.

Pope and Farmer said an additional 14 classrooms would be needed to accommodate the pupils displaced by the conversion of Fuller Elementary into the middle school after the O'Maley is closed at the end of the spring term.

According to Farmer's briefing to the joint meeting Tuesday night, Beeman would need six new classrooms, Plum Cove five, Veterans two and East Gloucester one.

Farmer said the 14 additional rooms "are essential if we're going to return the fifth grade (to the elementary schools). There is no educational justification to keeping a grade separate," he added.

Pope said he expected the School Committee to meet and decide how to proceed with the procurement of the additional spaces within two weeks and "having a funding package" to the (council) within a month.

He put the cost at "no less than $2.5 million," and said there was no realistic expectation of any help from the state for what he described as a "Band-Aid."

"This will give us roofs over the children next year," said Pope. "This is not the big plan, it's not intended to be."

Pope said the long-term need of the district is a new school in Magnolia or West Gloucester and an investment of $50 million to $70 million to upgrade all the schools.

"These are 40-year-old buildings with 30-year life spans," he said.