By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — The Board of Education wants to keep the two portable classrooms in use at Long Lots School for another two years.

The board voted last week to request permission to extend the portables’ lease. The request will go to the Board of Selectwomen, with school officials planning to use its budget carryover account to cover the $144,000 cost.

Because the expense is below $200,000 the request does not need Board of Finance approval. The carryover account agreement with the finance body requires only that it be notified of the intention to fund the extension in this manner.

Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice said a strong case was made for keeping the two modular classrooms during the board’s recent redistricting deliberations.

Even with redistricting, Scarice said space at Long Lots remains tight. Three classrooms are permanently off-line at the school, which is scheduled to be replaced.

“It will go a long way to keep us in a good place, until the new school opens up,” Scarice said.

Plans for a new Long Lots Elementary School are now in the design phase. The hope is that the new school, to be built next to the existing one on Hyde Lane, will be complete by the fall of 2027.

The zoning permit granted to the school district to use the portables in 2023 was for up to five years.

The portables are currently used as fifth-grade homerooms. Scarice said the intention is to keep it that way.

The lease renewal options will cost the district $2,000 less a month than the first two years. The district currently pays $8,000 monthly. In July 2025, it would start paying $6,000 a month.

The board was told that First Selectman Jennifer Tooker supports the extension.

So did the school board, by a unanimous vote with six members present.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.