“In schools, nothing is as constant as change, and educators are faced with increasing demands to provide more and different spaces for a variety of projects," says Rich Maas, vice president, Screenflex Portable Partitions, Inc., Zurich, Ill.

It used to be that when you planned a school, you pretty much knew what the space needs would be, so you designed a facility that met those needs. Now the needs tend to change and exist on a less permanent basis. There is standard education but also special education, such as English as a second language, day care before and after school, other after school projects, as well as community uses of the facility in the evenings.

“The trend is toward open plan schools, where the space needs to be reconfigured as the enrollment changes," Maas says. "Also, what do you do if you have a school designed for 500 and you have an enrollment of 550? You have to carve out space from the library, cafeteria or gymnasium. And, suppose your referendum passed. The good news is that you can build more classrooms. But the bad news is, where do you put the first graders when that wing of the school is being torn down?”

The answers to these questions are to be found in portable partitions and moveable walls. One main distinction between the two is that the latter are floor to ceiling and, while moveable, have less flexibility than the portable partitions, which are typically on casters and do not rise to the ceiling.

Screenflex Portable Partitions’ name clearly projects what type it carries. These panels fold up in an accordion fashion for minimum space storage and can be easily pulled from one location to the next. The panels can be used as a straight wall, folded into a four-wall enclosed space or something in-between. There are multiunit connectors, so a 24-ft. wall could be connected to another for 48 total ft. More typically, the panels are used to make classrooms out of spaces not intended to be used for that purpose. For instance 240 linear ft. can create eight 24-ft. by 24-ft. classrooms in a gymnasium and can be stored in less than 50 sq. ft.

An interesting variation is the "portable classroom'' veneer cabinet, with a markerboard on top and nine panels, each about 161 ft. long and 6 ft. high, which can fold out and enclose a space. The casters are automatically adjustable to different level floors. No assembly is necessary.

The panels are sound absorbent, to an extent. Maas makes the distinction that if you're in a restaurant and can hear your friends, you might also hear muffled sounds in the background, but they won't be that distracting.

On the other hand, to the degree that acoustical control is necessary, this is where the floor to ceiling moveable walls come in. Here, says Randall J. Roedle, vice president of Marketing for Woodfold Marco Manufacturing, Forest Grove, Ore., there are basically two types, called the accordion and the operable partition. Both of these require a support system across the ceiling that ideally has been part of the original design, even if the moveable walls don't come until later.

The accordion type is, as the name implies, simply folded up at one end, until you pull the handle to form a wall. The operable type is heavier and looks more like a real wall than a divider, but, says Roedle, the accordion is less expensive and easier to maneuver. "If you have a 50-ft. space with an accordion divider, it might take two minutes to push it out of the way," Roedl says. "With an operable wall, you might have 10 four-ft. panels that have to be manipulated and moved."

The accordion wall has better sound protection than the portable partitions. But to really control sound, says Troy Pavy, director of Marketing, Modernfold, Inc., New Castle, Ind., what's needed is the operable partition.

There are different standards you look for when you shop for the product, one of the main acoustical ones being sound transmission classification (STC). Basically, the higher STC for any partition or wall, the better the sound control and the more you pay for it. Pavy explains that with a 25 STC you can hear normal speech on the other side of the divider. At 35 STC, loud speech is understood; at 40 STC, you can hear loud speech but it is intelligible; at 45 STC, loud speech is barely audible; at 50 STC, loud shouting is barely audible; and at 55 STC, loud shouting is not audible.

"We have 55 STC on the high end," says Pavy. "To give you some idea of sound classification, a 6-in. concrete wall is a 43 STC." A main reason for going to the operable system, whether the panels are moved by hand or electronically, is aesthetics, Pavy says. For the walls look permanent." Modernfold also offers a glass wall, as does the Janesville, Wis.-based Hufcor, as one of its new offerings, says Bonnie Swenson, director of Marketing Services. Hufcor's operable walls can go up to 30 ft. to fit into the overhead grid in a gymnasium, Swenson says, but adds that Hufcor also offers the portable partitions and accordion walls as well.

This might be another way of saying that there is no one right use for either portable partitions or accordion and operable moveable walls. Either by themselves or in combinations, they offer you multiple ways to achieve the maximum use of your educational space.