for 20 AUG 07: TRAILERS TRASHY?

A recent e-mail made a complaint which sounded familiar:

How about getting our children out of the stinky broken down 10' wide trailers called portable classrooms before spending millions on an administration building for the desk sitters of MCSD.Put them out in these poor excuses for classrooms and see how they like them.(especially on a rainy day)

Now, now - some school administrators work in the old Bradley Library, and it used to have leaks in the roof. It might still, but you can't see them now without a security card.

Since I'd received this complaint before, I asked the e-mailer for some examples of "broken down trailers." That person pointed me to Hardaway High School - where if they can't afford new classrooms, they at least can afford a nice new weight room for the sports teams.

We drove to Hardaway High Sunday, to check on those "stinky trailers." Admittedly it wasn't raining -- but I figured enough rain might be left over from Friday night to make any bad odor more noticeable.

Several portable classrooms are set up on the north side of Hardaway High School. I was reminded of how Don Siegelman campaigned against portables, when he ran for Alabama Governor in 1998. Hopefully he's in a permanent concrete prison cell today.

The e-mailer specifically wanted us to examine the portables closest to College Drive. At first glance, they look like all the other portables. I mean, none of them say "Winnebago" on them....

A closer look had to wait a moment, until after a Columbus Police car passed us. Taking close-up pictures of this sort of thing can raise terrorism suspicions, you know....

But that close look revealed some small faults in one of the portables - with what looks like a water stain on one wall, and small holes at ground-level. The termites didn't seem to have chewed away at Hardaway's wooden ramps and stairs, so perhaps they want iron in their diets.

There's nothing but a dirt path, if Hardaway High School students have to walk between the portables. Maybe that's why the e-mailer is concerned about rainy days. Fresh mud on a 75-dollar pair of name-brand sneakers can look embarrassing.

We couldn't stop to smell the roses around Hardaway High School's portables, so we smelled the portables instead - and didn't notice anything unusual. Perhaps if someone planted rose bushes or something similar around the portables, they would look more appealing. So how about Hardaway becoming a horticulture magnet school?

But perhaps the e-mailer's real point is not with the condition of the portables themselves - it's the fact that they're being used at all. If the Muscogee County Schools are going to build a new central office, they should adopt a policy borrowing a bit from the Bush administration. You might call it, "Leave All Portables Behind."

There's one other "trailer" at Hardaway High School, that seems to be bigger than any portable classroom. A 45-foot-long storage container is parked next to the sports fields. If they're going to haul the football team to games in that thing, I think it's going to need some air holes.

To be honest, something else seemed more noticeable in the north parking lot of Hardaway High School - and that was how a couple of students (I'm assuming) have "reserved" parking spaces. They've painted the spaces, to make them distinctively their own. I've never seen that at a high school before - and it beats distracting paw prints on the streets, leading to a school nicknamed Tigers.

Now let's check other things, on a Sunday where news was hard to find:

+ The evening news noted Columbus has a rain deficit for the year of almost nine inches. But Birmingham is more than 20 inches below normal - giving Baptist preachers there hope that people finally will stop calling it "The Magic City."

+ Phenix City School Superintendent Larry DiChiara told the Ledger-Enquirer he'll offer incentive pay to teachers who don't use any sick days. Isn't this reassuring? Teachers desperate for extra money could make dozens of children ill.

+ WHAL-AM "Viva 1460" announced the creation of a Peru earthquake relief fund, through SunTrust Bank. I expect a few local bloggers to offer something similar - buying illegal immigrants from Peru one-way tickets home, to clean up the damage.

+ Sportscaster Andrew Wittenberg announced during WXTX "News at Ten" he became married about a week ago. But being a true Southern sports fan, he made sure the honeymoon ended before college football season started.

+ Sports Illustrated writer Peter King told NBC's Sunday Night Football that Michael Vick might not play again until 2010. This assumes Vick goes to prison, then serves an N.F.L. suspension. If Vick thinks football linemen are tough, wait until other prisoners try to rush him without any pads on.

+ Instant Message to the New York promotional house which sent me a "2008 Women's Monthly Planner": OK, I guess I'll try to use it. But did it have to be all in pink?

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