The Center for School Mold Help

Read these two articles, and the history of how Greenwich, CT's Hamilton Ave. School parents have hired an Industrial Hygienist to inspect school modulars that they think are "loaded with mold", a plan originally approved by the district and board, now at a seeming impasse.

 
The new school, under construction, will replace their ancient, moldy school. Meanwhile, some of the temporary portables students have occupied for 3 years have been found to be moldy, with numerous health complaints identified.

Visit our About Testing page to learn what can be done to determine if a building is moldy and toxic. If you have results from a district test and report, as they do in CT, that claims molds aren't toxic, compare the results in our TX Tech Fungal Glossary, by looking up each mold found, noting the health effects and toxins produced, with scientific citations to back each one up. Very often, we see insurance-hired companies produce reports that claim many school building molds are not a threat to health, when the opposite is often true. (SMH)

Mold dispute reaches impasse
Greenwich Time - Greenwich,CT,USA
http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_8872168

By Hoa Nguyen
Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/10/2008 02:07:42 AM EDT


School officials are at an impasse with a group of Hamilton Avenue School parents who want their environmental expert to run a new battery of tests on the mold-infested modular building.

Both sides have been deep in negotiation about how this additional round of testing will be carried out, but talks broke down earlier this week.

"I really do think we tried really hard to reach an agreement and we've reached an impasse that we're not going to get past," said Leslie Moriarty, a Board of Education member who has been negotiating with parents.

A group of parents were expected to meet last night to discuss their options, which for the moment look grim because the negotiation has been called off, said Laura DiBella, a Hamilton Avenue parent. DiBella lobbied to have a parent-hired expert run a new round of tests because they fear the mold contamination may be worse than what the Board of Education has told parents.

"We think the whole building is loaded with mold," she said.

Tensions have been running high since late Feburary when the modular was evacuated because of mold. Although the town and an environmental expert hired by the Board of Education said tests show the mold was not hazardous to human health, a group of parents want to run their own tests on the modular.

After an emotional plea from parents, education officials relented, but discussions broke down after both sides could not agree on terms, including who would be responsible for paying for what.


For instance, the Board of Education said that if the parents' expert decides to knock down a wall in order to test behind it, parents would have to pay for the wall to be put back and for the section to be cordoned off to make sure mold spores in the wall will not spread to other places.

DiBella said parents are willing to pay for the testing but that the remediation costs may be unreasonable.

"You're talking about the poorest parents in the district," she said.

School officials may have to remediate the entire modular building or possibly demolish it anyway, DiBella said.

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Comments:

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NoMoreSchoolMold

At The Center for School Mold Help, www.schoolmoldhelp.org , we have never heard of an expert who knocked down a wall to test it. This is ludicrous and seems to be a ploy to stop the independent testing from occurring. Testing may be conducted behind a wall without destruction of anything, or with a very small hole that that made and covered during the testing. An experienced professional knows this. Parents, be sure your expert has this capability and school board, let him/her in. The stalling and objecting show "the man (district) doth protest too loudly". Visit our Information - About Testing page to learn more.  

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Greenwich Post - Greenwich,CT,USA
Apr 10, 2008

Board, parents can’t reach deal on mold tests
http://www.acorn-online.com/news/publish/greenwich/31680.shtml

By Ken Borsuk, Staff Reporter

 
Plans to have an independent hygienist examine the mold discovered in the modular classrooms at Hamilton Avenue School are off the table for now. Parents say the school board placed too many restrictions on them.

A group of parents have been demanding the testing for weeks, saying they want independent testing done to confirm results released by the school district that the air quality was safe and the children hadn’t been exposed to anything toxic. Testing has been done by Charles Schwartz of Environmental Assessments and Solutions Inc., who found the mold had not contaminated the interior of the building and the air quality was in “an acceptable range.”

The board said those results were reviewed by the town’s Department of Health and a second company called Hygenix.

Mina Bibeault said parents are looking to be able to conduct the same scope of tests the board conducted.

“We deserve the same right that Mr. Schwartz was entitled to,” Ms. Bibeault told the Post Tuesday night. “Mr. Schwartz was able to go into any part of the modulars. Our hygienist should be able to do the same. We’re paying for this out of our pockets, and if he sees something out of the corner of his eye he should be able to have free rein to inspect that.”

In a statement issued Tuesday, the board said it had offered the parents an arrangement where one parent representative, the independent hygienist, one board member, the board’s hygienist, and one town health department staffer would have access to the entire modular building “as long as containment measures were taken to prevent the movement of the mold into the interior spaces.”

The parents also had to give, in advance of the tests being performed, information on what is being tested and how so the board could confirm it was being done to verify previous results, as well as make sure “satisfactory containment measures were taken” and the board was provided with the guidelines the parents’ hygienist would use to analyze the test results.

According to the board, the parents refused to provide that information in advance, something Ms. Bibeault disputes.

“I had no problem giving them the scope of the testing and the standards by which the independent hygienist would use to determine if the air quality was acceptable,”
Ms. Bibeault told the Post. “What I have a problem with is that the Board of Education and its hygienist were going to be able to look at our hygienist’s acceptable levels and determine if they were acceptable.”

Ms. Bibeault said it wouldn’t be fair to, in effect, give the board a chance to rule whether parents’ results were valid, and the parents didn’t sign the agreement. She said she also felt the scope the board was offering was too limiting and she objected to part of the agreement that reserved to the board the right to end the testing and remove the parents and their hygienist from the building.

The board stated it does not normally allow independent testing and had the town attorney’s office draft the agreement. In the statement the board said the offer went beyond its legal obligations and continued “our policy of transparency.”

Board Chairwoman Nancy Weissler told the Post Tuesday that based on her conversations with the parents they wanted entrance to the modulars “to basically do whatever they want.” She said the board had to insure the modulars weren’t contaminated by the new tests.

“We can’t take any risks that the examination might not follow proper protocol and the building could be contaminated,” Ms. Weissler said. “We’re still looking at remediating the building as a possibility [for Glenville School students].”

Ms. Bibeault contended that if the building is remediated or demolished the walls are going to have to come down anyway, spreading the mold around, so why place restrictions on where their hygienist would be able to go? She objected it wasn’t right to restrict parents to “inhabitable areas” of the modulars, as the board’s agreement states, when the mold was found in the exterior walls.

Ms. Weissler said she didn’t believe this would be a major issue in the community, pointing out that the request came from three parents, identified in the district’s statement as Ms. Bibeault, Laura DiBella and Vincent DeMartis.

“This is not the Hamilton Avenue School PTA,” Ms. Weissler said. “They didn’t want to move forward with this.”

Ms. Bibeault said just because only three parents are taking action doesn’t mean others aren’t concerned.

Dawn Nethercott, one of the school PTA’s co-presidents, said it isn’t in its charter to fund such an expense, and even if it were, she isn’t sure the PTA could pay for it. She said the members of the PTA are free to support the effort as individuals.

When asked where she stood on the issue, Ms. Nethercott said her focus was on making sure the children were being educated, getting the new school completed and having accountability for problems at the modulars.

Ms. Bibeault said she and the other parents aren’t asking for anything extraordinary.
“I do not want to find more than what Mr. Schwartz found,” Ms. Bibeault said. “I will pay to find out the exact same results. Just give me that opportunity.”

A recap of the history:

With Return of Mold, Students Are Displaced
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/16moldct.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By SARAH N. LYNCH
Published: March 16, 2008
GREENWICH


» FOR nearly three years, students at the Hamilton Avenue School have been reporting to class in temporary buildings while their school was being rebuilt after an outbreak of mold prompted the district to tear down the nearly century-old structure.

The mold problem infuriated parents, and since then, long construction delays have continued to wear their patience as their children have had to make due without a gymnasium and other facilities that children in other Greenwich schools take for granted. This month, they received more bad news: The mold is back.

This time, it was discovered in the temporary buildings after the school brought in a consultant in February to fix a leak in the roof. School officials say the leak was unrelated to the mold, but upon inspection, significant amounts of mold were found underneath the roof line of the buildings. The school shut down for a week beginning March 3, leaving some parents scrambling to find child care. Several tests have determined there is no health threat in the temporary buildings, but board officials said last week they would need more time to conduct further testing before settling on a solution.

The Greenwich Boys and Girls Club offered to take in 75 children for the week to help ease the burden, but none of the children received regular instruction that week. Some of the children even missed out on taking the Connecticut Mastery Tests, which officials have rescheduled.

Furious, parents staged a picket line outside the Board of Education building on March 3. That evening, they returned to the building for an emergency meeting where they were told that all Hamilton Avenue children would be dispersed by grade level and class to six schools throughout the town, possibly for the rest of the year. School officials hope the rebuilt school will be ready by the fall.

The solution did not please many parents.

“I think they are using our children like little pawn pieces in a chess game,” said Mina Bibeault, who has two young children in Hamilton Avenue. “They can just move the kids around without considering anything. They knew there were leaks in the building.”

Betty J. Sternberg, the Greenwich District superintendent, said officials are doing everything they can to help Hamilton’s roughly 375 pupils make a smooth transition. A new bus route has been planned to ensure that they get to school. Classes will be kept together, and they will retain their original teachers.

“I don’t want to minimize the disruption and the hardship, but I also want to say that sometimes I have found that children are more easily adaptable to this kind of thing than our adults,” she said. “It’s incumbent upon the adults involved in this to make the best of a difficult situation.”

Experts have said the mold was not caused by leaks, but by structural flaws, and Dr. Sternberg said that school officials had responded promptly to all past leaks. But the series of incidents has revived long-held feelings among some parents that their school gets short shrift because it is in a poorer section of town. When they picketed, some of the parents held signs that read: “Rich town, poor school.”

Laura DiBella, the former president of the Hamilton Avenue School Parent Teacher Association, said officials were slow to respond from the beginning of the mold problem. “I’m not saying this particular Board of Education or this particular group of people under the superintendent feels that way, but a lot of people assume that poor people are stupid and that it’s easy to get things by them,” Mrs. DiBella said.

Dr. Sternberg said that in her year and a half as superintendent, she had “looked very carefully at issues of equitable allocation of resources” and that Hamilton Avenue had “received more resources because they have greater needs than other communities.”

The Board of Education set up a committee to investigate the causes of the mold, said Nancy Weissler, the chairwoman of the board. Officials were told last week that more testing is needed to determine the safety of the temporary buildings before architects and engineers can go in to investigate the cause of the mold.