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The money required to modify facilities, to structurally alter school buildings, is considerable, and is a time-consuming process. Altering schools means passing a bond, hiring architects, reviewing several sets of plans, hiring a construction company, removing the children during construction, doing the construction, redoing the construction to correct the mistakes from the first go-round, and finally, reopening the school.

If a school needs an additional room or two, the administration cannot simply request it. A wall can't be added, a bathroom remodeled, an office repainted without going through reams of paperwork, endless meetings, and several tiers of management, including the powerful purchasing department. It's likely the administration will be told there is no money for such improvements.

How then does a school accommodate a sudden influx of children with special education needs?

There are several options, the more popular being to increase the class sizes of regular education classes to free up a couple of rooms. For example, there are four classes of fifth graders, and each class has 25 students. Divide 25 by 3 to get 8.33 or 9 students. 25 + 9= 34. By increasing the class size to 34, the administration has freed up one room.

Having to free up rooms would indicate that the special education services needed are for children who cannot be mainstreamed. If the now available space needs to be modified to accommodate specific physical needs, the administration will need to lobby the special education department for funds.

Another option is to schedule room use to allow for multipurpose usage. At the elementary level, whole classes of children are shifted to the art room, to the gym for P.E., to the library. This leaves the room empty for 50 minutes. Children who are mainstreamed, but need special services for speech or spelling, for example, can be scheduled to meet in that room for their class.

A converted storage room can be a cozy room for those classes that consist of two or three children. Before passing judgment on that option, bear in mind that school storage rooms are pretty big, say 12 by 15 feet.

Many schools create pullout programs for their gifted classes. This means that the gifted children are in mainstream classrooms, but have an hour scheduled for specialized activities suited to their academic needs. These classes often consist of two or three students at a time. The storage room can be a viable option for this need.

Finding space in a school facility is challenging. Every nook and cranny needs to be put to use. Because structural modifications are few and far between, administrators and staff must be creative, must be able to create classrooms where there were none.

Learn more about this author, Shelly Mcrae.
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