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Forced to choose between a rock and a hard place, Albuquerque Public Schools took some of both.

The rock is the reconstruction of Georgia O'Keeffe Elementary School, which would mean busing students to other schools during construction or placing temporary classrooms in a neighboring park.

The hard place was satisfying the neighbors, many of whom did not want to see their park filled with school buildings.

The Albuquerque Board of Education voted Wednesday for a a plan to install portable classrooms in the park while the old school in the Far Northeast Heights is demolished and rebuilt.

"It's not great, but that's a compromise," board President Paula Maes said after the decision. "The kids will get a new school, and that's the bottom line."

The original plan, which drew fire from neighborhood groups and individuals, called for the replacement to be built on the adjacent park. School district officials said the campus is too small to accommodate students while construction is going on.

After the new school was finished, the old school would have been demolished and replaced with a new park.

But that plan, which some people said was ideal for the children, was taken off the table when the city said declined to swap land with Albuquerque Public Schools.

The plan approved Wednesday will take up much of the park and its parking lot with 17 portable classrooms during school construction. About two acres and a temporary walking path will still be available for neighbors.

Construction will take about 18 months, according to a handout from APS.

Linda Sink, the district's interim superintendent, said the plan can still be tweaked to address parents' concerns.

The packed meeting Wednesday, held in the cafeteria of the aging school, showed the conflict between neighbors that was sparked by the reconstruction plan.

During the public comment period, one resident referred to parents who favored the land swap as "transient guests" who are only involved in the neighborhood as long as their children are in school.

A father replied that he had moved to the neighborhood just so his daughter could attend Georgia O'Keeffe, and he was certainly not a transient.

In the back row, a man repeatedly whispered that the meeting was an "exercise in stupidity."

A woman pointed out that the four armed APS officers at the meeting was a sign of bad neighborly relations.

Proponents of the land-swap plan said it would have allowed the fastest construction of the new school, been cheaper than the compromise, and allowed students to be taught in their regular classrooms until the new school was ready.

"I think if education was really the only issue in this dispute, it really would have been, `a no-brainer,' " said board member Gordon Rowe.

But APS has to stay on good terms with neighborhoods, he said, and the compromise was the best way to keep the relationship healthy while moving ahead with construction.

Georgia O'Keeffe is a 20-year-old complex of metal classrooms at 11701 San Victorio Ave. N.E. It was built quickly and inexpensively to meet demand for more classrooms as its neighborhood grew. Life expectancy for the school was 10 to 12 years, district officials have said.

Sandy Eckman, president of the Prospector's Ridge Neighborhood Association, said she is happy with the compromise and glad that residents got at least some of what they wanted.

"The neighborhood gets to keep the park, and the children don't have to be bused to other schools," she said. "They'll get to see their school go up."