The Oak Harbor School District is one step closer to deciding where Broad View Elementary School students will attend class during the next school year.

The board of directors passed a motion at its meeting last week, approving the dispersal of as much of the Broad View student body as possible among the district’s five other elementary schools and authorizing the superintendent to “acquire up to six classrooms,” said Rick Schulte, superintendent.

The Broad View Elementary building will undergo a remodel during the 2002 – 2003 school year. Oak Harbor School District was planning to send the students to school at temporarily at the old North Whidbey Middle School building, but that was closed this spring due to health concerns.

The Broad View Elementary principal and staff are currently working on class assignments for next year, and the district is investigating its options on how to acquire portable classrooms and where to put them, Schulte said.

“I expect by Monday we’ll have some decisions made,” Schulte said on Friday.

District officials are looking into three options for portable buildings, including rental, the buying of used portables or the buying of new portables. There are also three portable buildings at the old North Whidbey Middle School site that the district is considering for use as Broad View classrooms next school year. All portable buildings will have additional site costs involved, on top of the purchase or rental price of the buildings.

The source for funding of the portables is unclear, Schulte said. He hopes the district can keep the total cost of the buildings and related site work at about $300,000, which Schulte hopes can come from the district’s capital projects budget.

However, there is no surplus of money. If capital projects money is used to pay for portable classroom buildings, other projects the district hoped to complete in the next fiscal year may need to be delayed, Schulte said.