VENTURA : Trustees to Vote on Portable Classrooms

Three new portable classrooms may be added to E.P. Foster Elementary School in Ventura in July to accommodate a projected growth in the number of students.

The Ventura Unified School District board of trustees will vote at its meeting tonight on whether to add the temporary classrooms at the year-round school, which has 513 students this year, just over its capacity of 510 students.

Principal Greg Kampf said the school is expecting about 60 more students when the next school year begins July 29. The school is at Pleasant Place and Ventura Avenue on the west side of the city.

Until last year, the school operated on a traditional school calendar and had only kindergarten through third-grade students. However, when the school converted to a year-round calendar in July, 1990, the student body was expanded to include fourth- and fifth-grade students, Kampf said.

In addition, parents from outside the school’s attendance area were given an option of sending their children to the school’s year-round program, Assistant Supt. Richard Welcher said.

The temporary classrooms would be leased and installed at a cost of about $30,000--a sum that would come from districtwide collection of developers fees. Tonight, the board will decide whether to install the classrooms on an emergency basis so the classrooms can be in place when the school year begins, Welcher said.

The classrooms would remain on the campus until a controversy over changing school boundaries is resolved, officials said.