Dive Brief:

• New prefabricated modular "Gen7" classrooms, pre-verified by the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), will be installed in Silicon Valley's Morgan Hill School District.
• Morgan Hill School District's San Martin/Gwinn Elementary School, which serves K-8, is expecting a more "cost-effective process for schools, provid[ing] a better learning environment for students and substantially lessen[ing] a school's environmental impact," according to a press release about the modular classrooms.
• American Modular Systems' Gen7 classrooms are designed to exceed 2013 California Title 24 Energy Standards by 40-70%.

Dive Insight:

Aside from low-energy use benefits and the environmental advantages to some modular classrooms, some districts like the Snoqualmie Valley School District in Washington are saving money by reconfiguring grades. When faced with an increasing student population, the Washington district added modular classrooms and created a freshman-only school instead of using a traditional middle school configuration.

This new approach looks at modular classrooms as more permanent, as opposed to the traditional portable modular classroom of old. In the '90s, some school children looked forward to classes in "portables," since the modular buildings often had luxuries like air conditioning that some brick-and-mortar buildings lacked. The two new Gen7 modular classroom buildings slated for installation in Silicon Valley will be used to accommodate increased enrollment in a Dual-Immersion Multicultural Education (DIME) program.