Piece by piece, the portable classrooms for Simle Middle School will arrive this week.

Each half of the five portables will be delivered to the school, where it will be assembled. One already was assembled earlier this week. One portable will be next to the building, and the others will be inside the track.

The Bismarck School Board received an update on the construction at Simle and Century High School at its board meeting Monday in the Tom Baker Meeting Room of the City County Building.

The portables were needed for classroom space during an 18-month remodeling of the north wing of the school. Construction began after school let out with asbestos abatement. The abatement is complete on the first floor, and workers will be moving to the second floor.

The renovation at Simle will include two new family and consumer science classrooms, two new science classrooms and two specialty rooms. It will cost about $4 million.

At Century High School, construction continues on remodeling the science wing. The rooms have been gutted and new pluming and gas lines were run through the floors of the classrooms for the lab stations. This week, dry wall is being installed and finished, and later this month, cabinetry will be installed.

The board also learned more about the process of annexation, after four parents from an Apple Creek subdivision came to the board with concerns about possible changes to the open enrollment policy. Superintendent Paul Johnson presented the North Dakota century code that covers annexation for school districts for the board's information. The board did not take any action.

At the last school board meeting, four parents told the board they did not want the board to change the open enrollment policy. The board is considering no longer accepting open enrollment students, which are students who reside outside the school district boundaries, unless they already have siblings who attend the school district. Students already open-enrolled in the district would not be affected by a change to the policy.

The proposed change to the policy is in response to crowded classrooms and the need to hire teachers midyear to break up large classes. The district receives per pupil state aid for the open enrollment students, but it does not receive property tax from the families who live outside the district. Property owners pay property taxes to the school district within which their properties reside.

The parents, who spoke to the board, are concerned because they moved out of the school district's boundaries thinking they could later open enroll their children in a Bismarck public school and their children do not fall under an exception to the proposed change.

In Apple Creek, the elementary school district has a tuition agreement with the Bismarck district to provide middle and high school-level classes. Residents of Apple Creek School would not need to use open enrollment for seventh grade or above to attend a Bismarck public school, and the Apple Creek District pays the Bismarck district tuition.

Annexation was brought up by Johnson as another avenue the parents could explore for their children to attend a Bismarck public school. Residents in land contiguous to a school district can start an annexation petition through the county superintendent of schools office.

It must be approved by two-thirds of the voters in the area and a child must be in the proposed annexation area and wanting to attend school in the district that would annex the area, Johnson said.

It is one of four ways students can attend a district school outside of their assigned district. Next, the county annexation board would consider the petition and hold a hearing. If approved, the petition would go to the state board, which could chose to hold a hearing or just approve it, Johnson said.

The other ways for a district to accept students outside their district is through open enrollment, tuition agreements and nontuition agreements, Johnson said.

The board could address the parents' concerns through an exception in the open enrollment policy.

One possibility is to specify a period of time within which people who moved out of the school district would be eligible to open-enroll in the district.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@;bismarcktribune.com.)