Many students have negative feelings about the new portable classrooms in the middle of the quad, though students recognize that the portables make space for new buildings.

The portables were moved from two different locations on campus, one near Embarcadero Road and one near the Caltrain tracks, to make room for new construction, assistant principal Jerry Berkson said in an interview last week.

Berkson said he expects construction to begin early this summer, and the buildings to be completed within three years. “They will probably start construction by this summer,” Berkson said. “And then construction will last about two years.”

Many students are unhappy about sharing the quad with portables for that length of time.

“I really don’t like them,” junior Shruti Srinivasan said. “They make the quad way smaller, so there is less space for people during lunch. It makes the school a lot more inconvenient when it comes to walking from class-to-class because you have to navigate around them.”

In general, students agree that the portables are aesthetically unappealing, but find that it is not too terrible.

“They [the portables] look like a prison,” sophomore Ben Hawthorne said, “In my opinion, they’re hideous, but I guess they make the walking distance shorter if you have a bunch of classes there.”

Despite widespread dislike of the portables, Berkson remains enthusiastic about the projects that the buildings make space for.

“We’re building two large buildings,” Berkson said. “The one near the Embarcadero will be a media arts building, and the other building will be a two-story math and social science building.”

Once construction is done, the portables will probably be unnecessary.

“More than likely we won’t need [the portables] because [the new buildings] will be open,” Berkson said. “It’s just a bunch of puzzle pieces.”