By Howard Packowitz
NORMAL – The Unit 5 School Board is agreeing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to help Towanda Elementary School ease a space crunch.
The board voted unanimously Wednesday night to pay JG Stewart Contractors of Bloomington $44,687 to pour the concrete foundation and do the other site work for a portable building with two classrooms for third and fifth graders.
The district will lease the temporary school house for three years at an annual cost of $26,000, according to Unit 5 Operations Director Joe Adelman.
Towanda Principal Scott Vogel said the school will need 10 classrooms next school year instead of nine because of a larger-than-expected number of incoming kindergarten students.
“We were anticipating and hoping for something smaller, but we ended up with 38 kids for one classroom. So, what do you do with that? Multiple options, but we had started talking about the portable because we needed to have additional space for kids to learn in,” said Vogel.
A classroom in the permanent building will be used for art and music, according to Vogel.
Towanda’s enrollment this school year is 191 students, but administrators expect about 200 or more children next school year.
“We have been growing, and starting to utilize the space at Towanda rather creatively, and we continue to grow,” said Vogel.
“So, some of that creativity is starting to be limited now,” Vogel also said.
Towanda would be the only school in Unit 5 with portable classrooms.
Howard Packowitz can be reached at [email protected]
