Those “temporary” buildings were at my middle and high schools for decades.
this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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me_irl
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We got one at my elementary school and everyone wanted a class in it because it had AC whereas the main school didn't.
It's ABC, your school clearly wasn't that good
I remember we called them 'portables', I huess to avoid implying there was anything temporary about them.
Pretty sure they are still at mine
I graduated highschool in 2010. During my time at highschool we had more and more trailers, but by the end of it (and maybe before that) we had as many rooms outside as we did inside.
I have a strange nostalgia for them. I live in the southeast US, so it's really hot. The AC on these things was crazy. You basically had to wear jeans and a hoodie year round because you'd get too cold otherwise.
The baby boom brought a flood of new school construction. Then as the kid population declined many were turned into administration buildings, apartments, or just torn down to sell the land. Then the existing schools started to fall apart, requiring new construction levies that were hard to pass - "Why should I pay good money to edjumacate somebody else's snot-nosed kids when mine are all growed up!" On top of that, people were moving around a lot more often, so enrollments were hard to predict. Portables became the cheapest solution to make schools flexi-size.
Our school called it "the annex"
We had these at the COMMUNITY COLLEGE I attended in 2001. Took a math class out there. I say "out there" because they stuck these things far out past the parking lot no one used, beyond the field where they had a golf class. Dark wood paneled walls, the thud, thud, thud of walking on the elevated floors which I'm pretty sure were warped. Awful.
Yep and this was my school 💯
is this an american thing?
And Canadian.
We have them in America but I don't think they are exclusive to here. Due to urban sprawl, the population of suburbs can grow faster than they can build new schools. A quick solution is adding temporary buildings like these
There are air conditioning units on those. The ones I was in in the 70s had none. Just louvers the teacher wanted kept closed because they 'interfered with the breeze from the fan' on his desk. the one facing him. The only fan in the room.
You were lucky if your class was in the trailer because it was the only part of the school that had air conditioning
The portables had AC, everyone wanted to go to class in the portables.
Look at Riviera Kid with their fancy AC portables. The rest of us were crammed into windowless hotboxes like simmering sardines during that awkward early puberty phase where everyone was developing BO but hadn’t figured out adult hygiene. It was a bong of adolescent funk.
It was a bong of adolescent funk.
Adolescent Funk Bong is my new band name
Performing their smash hit "Smells like Teen Funk Bong."
At least in the US, Reagan lowered taxes and started cutting funding for public schools. A new building wasn't in the budget for majority of school districts.
Your parents loved him because he let them keep more of their money. Their boss stopped giving them raises and they didn’t notice because they stopped paying for your school.
That’s why all your elementary school friends are idiots and they grew up cheering for more of this.
Fuck Ronnie Raygun and his dumbass plans for the world.
These are still used. Dumbest I've seen is a new school with them.
That was my high school. Brand new school and 2 years after it's finished they had to start using these because they didn't make it big enough.
And they are still there
There's nothing quite as permanent as a temporary building.
And they call them "portables" haha
I haven't seen these in the North East in 30 or so years. I'm sure they are still in areas but most of these went away.
At least in our part of the north east, they’ve gone away because there are less kids in the schools. Enrollment and birthdates are both way down in our small towns. Ann my Moms town has closed 2 of the 5 elementary schools.
My wife teaches in one.
It's not great but mobile classrooms are very good when you need to expand but don't have enough demand for classrooms to fill an expansion of say 5-10 classrooms.
Obviously you want to build more than one at a time but building more than you need is not budget friendly. So aiming for 3 mobile classrooms and starting a 5y construction immediately makes a lot of sense.
Keeping these things permanently is just weird.
Had these in the UK too. Bonus points, we lost a huge chunk of playground/ netball courts in the process.
You had netball courts? Hmph. Luxury.
We were lucky to have a fishnet and a rock!
Yup same and we didn't get air conditioning either.
I had one of those as my form room for the first few years of secondary school because the building where I was supposed to have my form room was full of asbestos.
i only knew about these because of malcolm in the middle
They sucked and were a sign of poor planning, but still better than some of the newer schools I've seen as a parent, where it feels more like a prison.
I did 6th grade in one of those. It was actually pretty nice.
I wish people could understand that taxes when used properly will pay itself back exponentially, you should care more about where your taxes go then the tax rate itself.
The most important part is that your taxes are working for you not that they're as low as they could possibly be.
There in lies the catch 22 though because in order to understand where your taxes should be going you need a good education.
I think the primary use of taxes is salaries for bureaucrats, both the useful and the useless ones. Next it goes into corruption of politicians.
Really hard to fill a sinkhole that can expand as much as it wants.
Yes I'm reading the anarchist FAQ, how can you tell?
Before they rebuilt it in its entirety, the neighbouring school did something similar. The notification to us neighbours listed the construction as a pavilion...
I had family teach at a school that was a series of trailers, but it was after Hurricane Katrina. The lot for recess was basically an 1/8 acre of grass full of fire ants. I have no idea how those kids (and teachers) stayed sane.
meanwhile the student numbers at my former school dropped so much that they started teaching K-1-2 together.