TALKEETNA -- When winter descends on the Mat-Su, Susitna Valley Junior/Senior High students have a special reason to beg to stay home from school.

For them braving the winds and whatever else Mother Nature is slinging that day is more painful than a bracing jog from the bus to the front doors at school.

At Su Valley the classrooms are portable buildings set on a gravel parking lot next to the Upper Susitna Senior Center. Going from one class to another means pulling on coats, grabbing backpacks and navigating between the 18 identical tan portables to the next class.

A bathroom break means running over to the senior center to use the only restrooms on campus.

"It's been pretty much miserable, I'd say," said Paxson Matthews, a 17-year-old senior at Su Valley.

Soon the students' bracing class changes will be just another tale of woe to tell their one-day children. Their new school, being built across the Parks Highway from the portable mini-school, will be complete in December. Classes will start there in January.

Meanwhile students have a well-developed list of frustrations with the temporary set-up.

Basketball, for example, has been crazy. The Su Valley Rams practice at Talkeetna and Trapper Creek Elementary schools, but those gyms are small -- too small to have home games, and small enough to complicate how the team performs.

Plays practiced in the smaller space feel weird when on a larger court, Matthews said. The team has tried to compensate, Matthews said. They won more games than they lost last season, but their 13-8 record for the year wasn't as good as he hoped it would be.

Madison Maynard, also a senior, plays on the girls' basketball team. She said her team hasn't had a home game since their school burned down in June 2007. She's really looking forward to playing in her own gym and having homecoming at the new school, not to mention prom and graduation.

Maynard said she can't wait to have classrooms with running water too. Dissecting animals in biology was a little difficult when the only bathroom was outside and across the parking lot.

"We didn't have any sort of lab situation out in the little portables," she said. "It's difficult to even try and keep the place clean because you're so far away from the main building with the bathroom."

DRAMA SCHOOL

Su Valley students lost their school more than two years ago when fire destroyed the building while the school roof was being replaced. The building was valued at $13.23 million, according to borough officials at the time. The cause of the fire was not determined.

Some people saw the fire as an opportunity to repair an ailing school. The old school, which opened in 1973 was a series of Band-Aid fixes overlapping across 30 years, including the $5.5 million roof replacement project.

Even before the fire, Su Valley residents had been through plenty of drama with their school, including when the School District in 2005 threatened to shut it down and bus students to Trapper Creek for school instead, after a report showed the roof might collapse under heavy snow loads.

A community outcry stopped that plan -- instead, district employees shoveled snow until work could start on the new roof.

COMMUNITY SOCK HOP

Now the community is so eager to see the new school they sometimes bypass the "No visitors" signs posted at the road leading to it.

Principal Rob Picou is counting the days.

"Everybody's busting at the seams with anticipation," he said.

Picou said the new school and resulting drama has brought the community together -- community members had input in the design, the contractor made space for students who needed to use the property, district officials helped solve problems that came up.

Picou has been Su Valley's principal for a little more than a year, coming on board partway through last year. He said it's been a challenging job, to shepherd a school that doesn't have a building.

"It's a challenge in a portable school to really build a sense of school community," he said.

Parents don't drop by the portable school the way they might at a regular school. Teachers don't interact as much. There aren't really places for students to hang out -- the senior center has a lobby and a lunchroom but space is pretty cramped and the lobby is filled with desks. The basketball hoop where students might play "Horse" or "Pig" at lunch is on gravel too, so the ball doesn't bounce well and can shoot off in unexpected directions.

Gym class has been held outside -- mostly on the Rams' old ball field across the street -- all year around. Cross-country ski coach Karen Mannix said just after the first good snow last year, she planned to ski with her team on the field. But when she got there, the snow was gone -- physical education teacher Stephen Harrison had his students make snowmen that day for gym class.

"It's just amazing, the resiliency of these students and teachers. There has been no end to the daily challenges," Picou said.

Problems aside, the students and the School District have been thankful to have a home at the Senior Center while their school is rebuilt. They're preparing photo albums and special gifts for the seniors before they leave, and Picou said he's inviting the whole community to a '50s-style sock hop at the school in January to celebrate their new digs.

"What the borough is going to end up with is a school that's really special -- everyone's going to want to come and see it," Picou said.

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