CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Kanawha County Board of Education is again asking for state funding to help renovate Andrews Heights Elementary in an attempt to "forever remove" four portable classrooms currently used at the Tornado school.

Kanawha County Superintendent Ron Duerring asked state School Building Authority officials Tuesday for more than $1.9 million to help build an addition to the school that would replace the existing outdoor portables with six permanent classrooms and expand the kitchen and cafeteria, as well as upgrade the computer lab.

"We've had environmental issues with the portables. We've put money in them trying to maintain them. Our goal is to provide a safe and healthy environment for all of our students," Duerring said. "We want to provide a better building and a better learning environment."

In 2011, environmental consultants found higher-than-normal levels of carbon dioxide and traces of mold in and underneath the school's portables.

This week, school superintendents from 20 counties asked the SBA for more than $159 million to build and repair schools, but authority officials will only award about $42 million next month.

This is the third time Kanawha County officials have requested help for an expansion of the Andrew Heights school. The county system would contribute about $650,000 in local funds for the project.

Suzanne Armstrong, principal at Andrews Heights, said getting rid of the portables is important amid post-Sandy Hook safety reform - and the portables hurt students' learning as well.

"All of the portables have kids in them every day, all day long. The county has done a lot of work on them, but at this point, the biggest concern is a safety issue. They're not part of the main building. If there was some sort of a safety emergency, can we get to them and communicate with them?" Armstrong said.

"We have kids that have to go back and forth for things like reading and math intervention. The travel time adds up and kids lose invaluable instructional time - we're accountable for so many instructional minutes a week."

The project would also provide a safer drop-off zone for Andrews Heights' 300 students and would clear the kitchen of safety hazards it now faces as the smallest school kitchen in the county, Duerring said.

"Cooks are bumping into each other," he said. "It's not adequate to serve 300 plus students."

In addition, nearly 30 families applied for preschool services at the school last week, but about half of those are on a waiting list because of a lack of space, according to Armstrong. The expansion would open opportunities for preschool services in the area.

"We are very much hoping we're able to do this," Armstrong said. "We think the kids all deserve to be under one roof. We've never been able to have a school-wide assembly because we don't have the space- we have to break it up into two or three groups. That's unfortunate they can't experience things like that."

Among the other projects proposed at Tuesday's meeting, Boone County school officials asked for about $2 million from the SBA for upgrades to Sherman Junior/Senior High School focusing on health and safety, and Mercer County officials asked for $9.7 million to build a new elementary school.

Reach Mackenzie Mays at mackenzie.m...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-4814.