FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Portable Classrooms to Replace Burned Ones

An arson fire last month at Kazuo Masuda Middle School burned down Judie Lowman’sclassroom, costing her 30 years of teaching materials.

“It still hurts,” Lowman said.

Since the March 3 fire, Lowman has had to hold her seventh- and eighth-grade math classes on the stage in the school’s media center.

“It’s not the best environment, and I don’t have a place I can call my own, but it’s the best we can do,” she said.

But by next school year, Lowman will once again have her own classroom.

The Fountain Valley School District Board of Trustees recently approved buying two portable trailers to use as classrooms. The trailers will be moved onto campus this summer, in time for school in September.

The district also plans to rebuild the burned classrooms, in which damage was estimated at $300,000 to $400,000.

Principal Don Keller said that the portable trailers will remain after the classrooms are rebuilt. Keller said the extra space is sorely needed to relieve the school’s over-enrollment problem.

Keller said that a number of classes are being taught in the wood shop and in the media center. The boy’s physical education class, which also was displaced because of the fire, meets in the schoolyard.

Meanwhile, the community has rallied to raise money to offset the cost of the fire to the district. To date, about $3,000 has been donated, including a collection by the school’s PTA and student council which raised $877.

The money will be used to enhance the rebuilt classrooms with extras the district otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford, Keller said.

“The school district has already cut back substantially,” Keller said. “There’s no telling what the future holds in terms of funding.”

The school is holding a dance-a-thon fund-raiser April 19. A portion of the proceeds will go to the fire fund.