Inside the hallway of a portable unit in Eight Corners School. Maxen Ryder

Scarborough Public Schools have recently held tours of its schools, including Blue Point, Eight Corners, Pleasant Hill, the middle school, and Wentworth. The tours have focused on discussing the structural difficulties of the current K-2 schools, the problems with overcrowding, safety concerns, and the reliance on portables.

“The school tours have been powerful because they really help connect the data around overcrowding and increasing enrollment to the everyday obstacles our amazing school staff and teachers face while trying to provide the best for our students,” said Shannon Lindstrom, chair of the Scarborough School Board. “It’s challenging to see how these numbers impact the day to day experience of students until you actually walk through the schools and speak to the teachers and principals who support and empower our students’ success.”

The problems have created the push to develop a unified school that would answer limitations of the current primary schools. It is being developed as the most economic and effective answer to the the district’s problems, especially with even bigger class sizes coming in the future, according to the projected enrollment study presented in March.

According to the study, the current schools were not built with the same fire resiliency as modern schools. They are overcrowded already with the district being forced to use portables to expand the school. The portables are not as efficient to heat or cool. The current schools also present problems such as exterior doors going into classrooms, a safety concern not present in modern schools.

According to town officials, the school district and the town have been analyzing the problems, as well as well as the potential solutions, for months and have been focused on building a unified school that will serve the community for years to come.

The exterior of Eight Corners, with a storage container on the side. Maxen Ryder