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Daily Planet Staff 

The Berkeley Unified School District will spend more than $1.8 million to provide portable classrooms for King Middle School students while their main classroom building undergoes major renovations. 

The transitional housing project, which includes placement of 32 portable classrooms, will be considered during Wednesday night’s meeting of the school board. Temporary housing is needed because the central classroom building needs significant seismic and accessibility improvements; the district also wants to upgrade various electrical and mechanical systems in the structure. 

But creating a “portable city” wasn’t the district’s original plan. 

When district and site administrators began discussing how to handle the renovation work at King Middle, they intended to divide the grades, keeping seventh- and eighth-graders on site, while moving sixth-graders to the Franklin School site. Franklin will have available classrooms once Thousand Oaks School moves into its new home at the end of the summer. 

But in December, plans began to unravel. Teachers argued against separating the grades, saying the move would hurt their efforts to create an effective three-year educational model at the school. 

So, the district started talking about moving all of King Middle to the Berkeley Adult School sit, which would have forced the division and relocation of that school’s programs. But that idea infuriated BAS teachers, students and community supporters, who said pushing out the adult school would prove that the district didn’t value the campus or its programs. 

During all of these community meetings, new ideas emerged for handling the King Middle project. After comparing costs and impacts on educational programs, the district determined that the best option was to do the King project in two phases and place portable classrooms around the school grounds - as long as those buildings didn’t occupy the track and field on the north portion of the campus. 

The plan being presented Wednesday night appears to meet everyone’s goals: The three grades will remain on site, the track and field will be free of portables and BAS keeps its home. The only people who might still raise concerns will be parents who don’t want their students to attend a school that is also a work zone. 

In addition to the portable classrooms, the plan calls for the placement of a restroom portable, new utility hookups, rental of two temporary storage containers, reconfiguration of the science building to house four classrooms, and other modifications to increase storage and add office space. 

The $1.8 million price tag only covers the costs of work related to the transitional housing project. The total cost for the King Middle project is expected to be at least $20 million. All funds will come from Measure A, the $158 million school bond measure approved by Berkeley voters in 1992. 

Wednesday’s board meeting is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be held in Board/Council Chambers in Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The meeting is scheduled to be broadcast on B-TV, Cable Channel 25, and 89.3-FM, KPFB.