by Wheelie Williams and Rollanda Reynolds | March 30, 2021
In the summer of 2020, St. Francis added portable classrooms across the campus to accommodate ongoing construction in the 300 building. On Saturday, March 27, however, the portable classroom housing Room 112 near the chapel mysteriously disappeared, leaving cars crushed and faculty members confused. Just recently, on Tuesday, March 30—three days after the disappearance—students found that the building traveled roughly 100 meters, ending up near the Safeway on Miramonte Avenue.
After further investigation, some of the faculty and staff reported that they met to rotate the portable classroom ninety degrees clockwise in the late afternoon as a “teacher bonding” activity, but it seems that by then, the classroom had already disappeared.
“I was completely shocked when I arrived,” said Mrs. Yang who was on the scene. “There was just an empty spot where the portable was supposed to be. For a second I thought that the school decided to get rid of all our portables and forgot to tell us.”
With a review of the security footage and the area surrounding the portable, a few of St. Francis’s staff found strong evidence suggesting that it had, in fact, rolled away, leaving a rampage in its wake at around 4:00 P.M. While the exact cause of the incident is currently unknown, investigators believe the cause to be a perpetrator who angered the portable classroom.
Firefighters combing through the wreckage left by the portable classroom reported that seven of our staff members’ cars were completely crushed, and two pedestrians had suffered minor injuries. Luckily, no surrounding buildings had been damaged. St. Francis’s FBI Club further investigated the scene and found that the portable classroom’s detachment from the ground happened at around 3:27 P.M. and was silent but deadly—despite the appalling wreckage caused, no witnesses were present, and no students at school heard any noises during the approximate time the incident occurred.
“This was completely unforeseen,” said Mrs. Yang, adding that it was a blessing that this accident happened during the weekend with no students actually inside the classroom. “I trained Betty [the portable classroom’s name] better than this, and she always stays put when I tell her to. I can’t imagine what set off this horrible reaction of hers.”
Currently, there is still no concrete evidence pointing to what actually happened at the scene. So far, the police suspect that the perpetrator who possibly angered Betty was an unnamed Physics Honors teacher who was playing an explicit rock song on his electric guitar on the previous Friday evening.
“We are doing everything in our power to ensure that this tragedy never happens again,” added Mrs. Yang. “Currently Betty is being grounded—literally—for causing such a mess and I will be beginning anger management classes for Betty, Toby, and Alex next week.”
As our student body acclimates to the new hybrid schedule, we hope that no buildings will suddenly get too overwhelmed with the sudden influx of students and roll away.
