Eric Altizer

Photos by JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

A supply closet is now a conference room at Auburn Middle School, which would be replaced if a $125 million spending plan is approved.

Wooden walls constructed in a portable classroom create a space for in-school-suspension students at Auburn Middle School.

A closet is now a private conference room at Auburn Middle School.

RINER -- Over his 14-year tenure at Auburn Middle School, math teacher Eric Altizer jokes that he's learned quite a bit of science.

That's because his classroom is next door to a science instructor's room and backed against the library.

Neither classroom has an entire wall between them, so he and students pick up lessons every now and again. Most of the classroom's walls stop short of the ceiling, leaving a gap large enough for plenty of sounds to waft through.

Sometimes, he can hear which books the students plan to check out.

Students giggle when it happens, but "when your rooms are open like that, it's hard to focus," said Altizer, who started kindergarten in what is now the middle school.

The open-air construction, rooms without walls designed as one space, was popular in school construction during the 1970s.

Nearly 40 years later, it's one of the reasons that residents here have been longing to see dirt turned that would signify construction -- or at least renovation -- of their aging secondary school buildings.

Walking the halls of Auburn Middle -- one of three schools that stand to gain from the Montgomery County School Board's $125 million capital requests -- the frustrating aspects voiced during public meetings are evident.

Rows of lockers for 280 middle schoolers jammed into what was first constructed as an elementary school make little room for students as they navigate between classes.

Students who take physical education, technical education, health or music courses walk outside -- either to the neighboring high school, with which they share classrooms, or to one of eight restroom-free portable classrooms.

That travel time cuts into the 45-minute instructional times, and often students are tardy returning to their classes housed in the middle school because of discrepancies in the bell schedules.

The school's entire sixth-grade class remains in the portable village, until they need to reach a locker or attend a class at the high school.

And, while teachers like Pamela Bostwick praise the portables because they offer a more contained space, drawbacks such as giant puddles and cold students arise during inclement weather.

It's all part of the pie that school leaders and teachers pride themselves on making from a host of "lemons."

Other pieces -- the sole 22-unit computer lab in the school's library that connects to four open-walled classrooms, the stage converted into a classroom, the tucked-away storage space that this year will become a retreat to dissect testing data, the former home economics space that shares with the librarians' storage and the teachers room that during Standards of Learning testing time coverts to a computer lab -- round it out.

Come May, the school is nearly forced into silence, which affects quality instruction for students who have yet to finish taking their exams.

Because of the lacking walls, students must remain silent. That means a bevy of worksheets or individual reading, not ideal for how some students learn, teachers said.

There are perks.

This year, teachers finally got a copier moved into a makeshift work room, and teachers say the close-knit building forces them to communicate more.

"Even though our building isn't what we want to it to be, it's a family atmosphere," said Principal Guylene Wood-Setzer.

In 2006, Montgomery County Public Schools inked long promised plans to build a new Auburn high school to replace its 72-year-old structure.

Then, that building was to be renovated to house middle school students because the current middle school is a 38-year-old former elementary school.

Now, with Blacksburg's students scrambled because of the Feb. 13 gym collapse, some Auburn residents believe that their needs will be trumped.

Or, that the $45 million needed to build a new Auburn High will come through, but the high school will not be renovated.

"Anything is better than nothing," Altizer said.