CALAIS – Youngsters in the city’s alternative education program have been bounced around more than a pingpong ball.

For a while they were in the basement of the City Building. Then they were moved to another downtown basement.

Now they have a permanent home – at least until 2005.

The pupils have moved into one of the two portable classrooms that used to be on the lot housing the former Calais Middle School. The city leases the pods from Schiavi Leasing Corp. of Philadelphia.

Four years ago, school department officials entered into a five-year lease with the company after the city was forced to close the middle school for health and safety reasons.

One pod was moved last year to the Palmer Street School, a residential treatment center for children with moderate to severe mental health and behavioral problems. The school opened in 2000.

Soon a second pod will be moved next to it.

The pods were empty because the middle school pupils have been sent to new quarters in Calais High School and in the city’s elementary school.

When the move is complete it will have cost $73,340. Included is more than $20,000 for site preparation.

The cost to move the pods has raised eyebrows. However, Norm Dineen, the school committee representative who supervised the move, said the arrangements were handled by Schiavi.

The move required breaking each of the pods into three units and hauling them less than a mile to the Palmer Street School.

Superintendent Bob Coffill said the cost of the move would be covered from state funds.

But what will happen to the pods once the city’s lease is up in 2005 is uncertain.

“I think the challenge that now faces this city is we have to enter into negotiations [with Schiavi] as to what we do with the pods and then how we further expand the property,” Coffill said.

He added that there are more pupils who need to be in the alternative education program.

Coffill said it made sense to move the pods so the pupils would be closer to the services provided by the private Palmer Street School staff, including psychiatrist and support staff.

Program director Sue Carter said the alternative education budget was not paid for out of local property taxes.

“We’ve never received dime one from the city budget. As a matter of fact we’ve actually helped offset costs by paying our share of things like busing,” she said.

Carter said funding for the program came from tuition, Medicaid and a state agency grant.

Up to 15 youngsters were crammed into two small rooms at the Palmer Street School.

The Calais School Department rents space from the Palmer school. “Our youngest now is 6 and our oldest is 17,” Carter said. The youngsters, who for the most part live at home and attend classes in Calais, come from all over the county. Some are from the residential treatment center.

Pupils in the alternative education program tend to have difficulty in a public school environment.

“They are not your traditional kids who can go in and sit down and listen to a lecture for 30 minutes,” Carter said. “Maybe they need to get up and move more often. Maybe they have issues about being in bigger classes and some have behavioral issues that keep them from public school.”

If there was no alternative education program, Carter said, many of the pupils would wind up as dropouts.

Or they would be farmed out to district placement schools, Coffill added, at a cost of more than $75,000 a year per student.

Scott Bailey, 14, of Calais attends the alternative program. “When he was in the regular school, he needed extra help and there was no extra help given,” said his mother, Cathy Bailey. “And here he is, getting the extra help and he’s getting A’s and B’s instead of D’s and F’s.”

Bailey said that her son also was calmer at home. “A lot of people think it’s just for kids who have social problems and it’s not. It’s for kids that need help and he’s done awesome,” she said.