This is no surprise, given the rapid and frantic growth occurring in the community where my wife and I live. I watched construction crews assembling a portable classroom module on the campus of a brand new elementary school in Princeton, Texas.
Dorothy Lowe Elementary School opened for the 2020-21 academic year. Then the COVID-19 pandemic closed in-class learning for most of that school year. Students and teachers returned. Boy, howdy! Did they ever!
I live in a subdivision that is growing practically daily. We live a block from the school and we watch the traffic jam up at the beginning of the school day and then at the end of it when moms and dads deliver and then pick up their children.
The portable classroom, it looks to me, will be one of many to be erected while the Princeton Independent School District decides what to do about the burgeoning student population. Indeed, Princeton ISD predicted growth would explode, saying this on its website: Demographers predict that the District will add over 6,700 new students over the next 10 years. The District could either build a new campus to house more students or purchase over 40 portables to accommodate the growth.
We are witnessing the cost of growth. Families with young children are looking for a place to live and for their children to be educated. The school system will need more classrooms and more teachers. How does it pay for all that? Hmm. Let me think. Oh … you know the answer to that one.
I understand PISD will open a new elementary school next academic year. I am unclear about what that might mean for the students who attend Lowe Elementary or their parents.
What does strike me initially is that the temporary classroom is being erected so soon after the doors opened at an elementary school.
Then again, I am not terribly surprised. I could have predicted it would happen as I watch homes spring up like weeds on the prairie.