GARDINER — Delivery of a portable classroom building at the school in Pittston is on schedule for arrival in the middle of November.

Gabe Dostie, the school district’s director of operations and transportation, said Tuesday that the unit is being assembled in Georgia and is expected to be completed this month.

After that, he said at a meeting of the Gardiner-area school board’s Finance Committee, the unit will be transported to Pittston, and installation is expected to take about two weeks.

“I haven’t spoken to (our contact) since the hurricane hit, but we should be fine,” Dostie said.

Hurricane Florence made landfall earlier this month in North Carolina and South Carolina, bringing heavy rainfall and flooding across the two states.

Dostie said by the time the permits are secured to move the unit up Interstate 95, road conditions should not be a problem.

Dostie said site work at Pittston-Randolph Consolidated School has been completed, including rough-ins for sewer, water and electricity. Contractors have been notified about the unit’s expected arrival date so that installation can be completed on schedule.

The addition of the modular unit has brought about other changes at the school, including moving and updating the basketball courts.

During the course of the work, he said, the district discovered and corrected a drainage problem in the parking lot and found the sewer line had been laid 15 feet down.

“When I hear there were discoveries, that sounds like more money,” Finance Committee Chairman Eric Jermyn said.

“We anticipated things would run over, and we budgeted for it,” said Andrea Disch, the district’s business manager.

In May, district officials learned that delivery of a four-classroom, four-bathroom modular building by Schiavi was contingent on having a signed lease for the building, which could not happen until the result of the referendum that month in Randolph was known.

At that time, the arrival date of the modular unit was expected to be no later than mid-October.

Historically, Pittston Consolidated School has housed up to 227 students, and it has 12 instructional classrooms.

Enrollment for the current school year, which started Aug. 29, is 238 at the elementary school in Pittston.

Until the modular building arrives, the library, art and music rooms were expected to be used for classroom instruction.

When it arrives, the modular will be home to classrooms for fourth- and fifth-grade students.

As it is at all school districts across the state, enrollment in the Gardiner-area schools is declining.

Not long after the 2018-19 school year started, school district officials started considering whether to close Teresa C. Hamlin School in Randolph. After the departure of a teacher and the transfer of her students and some of their siblings to Pittston Consolidated School, fewer than four dozen students were left in a school designed for 155 students.

In a series of meetings from November to January, an ad hoc committee made up of officials from the school district and the school, as well as Randolph elected officials and parents, reviewed the district’s options and several scenarios for the school’s future. The committee recommended closing the school.

Following separate public meetings held by the school district and by the town of Randolph, the decision was endorsed by the school board, and by Randolph voters in a townwide vote.

Jessica Lowell — 621-5632

jlowell@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @JLowellKJ