West Lebanon -- Yesterday afternoon, three semi trucks, each carrying a 52-foot-long half of a white clapboard modular building, arrived at Seminary Hill School.

Principal Martha Langill stood by as the trucks backed the trailers onto a bed of crushed stone in front of the school. The buildings will serve as fifth-grade classrooms when school starts in less than four weeks.

The modular classrooms are a crucial part of the district's elementary school consolidation plan, which places all fifth- and sixth-graders from West Lebanon and Lebanon at Seminary Hill School this year. With the closing of School Street School and Sacred Heart Public School, grades K-4 will go to Hanover Street School and Mount Lebanon Elementary School.

“We will be ready -- no question,” Langill said yesterday, as the third section of the two prefabricated structures was being moved into place. The last modular section is due to arrive on Monday, said Superintendent Mike Harris.

Harris said that the consolidation plan has been unfolding smoothly over the summer. “Things are in pretty good shape.”

The only major project that won't be done by the first day of school is the installation of an elevator at Seminary Hill, Harris said.

The elevator is intended to make the 155-year-old building's three stories accessible to people with disabilities, in compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

In June, the School Board approved using surplus funds to purchase the modular buildings for about $100,000.

Costs associated with moving and setting up the trailers at Seminary Hill are still within the $125,000 budgeted. Harris said he does not expect those numbers to change substantially.

“They're actually pretty much dead-on,” he said.

Seminary Hill School does not have enough room in the main building for all fifth- and-sixth graders plus space for other programs.

The School Board considers the portable buildings to be a temporary solution, referring to them as “transitional” classrooms. The board hopes to eventually move the fifth grade into a new middle school, and is working on a bond proposal for March 2010.

This past March, a grade 5-8 middle school proposal fell only a few dozen votes short of the required 60 percent majority it needed to pass.

Melissa Billings of Lebanon has a daughter going to Seminary Hill.

“I'm really anticipating a great year,” she said. “My sixth-grader is ready to meet all of the kids from both sides of town.”

Billings said she thinks Langill has done “an amazing job” of preparing families for the transition.

“I feel that my daughter is in great hands,” she said.

But she said that parents with fifth-graders going into the modular classrooms might feel differently.

Randy Wagoner of Lebanon also has a sixth-grader going to Seminary Hill. Wagoner is disabled and uses a wheelchair, which would prevent him from visiting his son's class or going to a parent-teacher conference anywhere except in the wheelchair-accessible auditorium.

He said he expressed his concerns to school officials when he found out that his son would attend the school.

“They've been more than helpful in trying to accommodate us,” Wagoner said.

“Do I wish it was an accessible school? Absolutely. Do I understand that it's an old building? Yes.”

Harris said that preliminary engineering work for the elevator has begun. Engineers drilled at the site to test the ground to support the new construction, he said. “Apparently they're very pleased with the ground.”

Banwell Architects in Lebanon was chosen in a competitive bidding process to draw up plans for the elevator, Harris said. The school district hired Banwell at a cost of $30,000.

The estimated cost of the project is still around $400,000, Harris said, but he acknowledged that the estimate isn't firm. “We need the specs in order for anyone to get an idea of what it's going to cost.”

Construction of the elevator is scheduled to start sometime in October.

The work of moving things out of the two closed schools, and among the three remaining schools, has been done.

“What's going on is the cleaning and setting up of classrooms,” he said.

Martin Downs can be reached at mdowns@vnews.com or (603) 727-3210.