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This successful teacher lost her health and career due to a profoundly leaky, moldy school (that was later torn down). The school district vigorously denied the health problems caused by this moldy school.
Former Highline (WA) teacher shares personal story in hopes others will recognize sick schools
Breathing lessons
Former Highline teacher shares personal story in hopes others will recognize sick schools
  
Story and photos by LINDA WOO
WEA Communications
It's a good day when Annette Shillinger can get out of bed, shower and empty the dishwasher.
It doesn't sound like much, but completing such everyday tasks are milestones for the former veteran Highline school
teacher and librarian who says she became ill more than two years ago because of mold in her school.
"I really thought I was going to die," says Shillinger, who was a librarian at Cedarhurst Elementary School in Burien
for 13 years. "I thought I had cancer because I was very active and I got so so sick."... .
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Annie's speech to the WA State Board of Health:
Annie's Speech to the WA State Board of Health, March 31, 2006
My name is Annette Shillinger, and for 35 years I’ve worked as a public school teacher and librarian. Because of litigation I cannot name the school district. (I am being sued by my employer to overturn my L&I award.)
The last 13 years of my career were spent in a small school in an area of high poverty. Most of our children were on free lunch and breakfast. Many had parents who worked minimum wage jobs to survive. This was, politically speaking, regarded by some as a “negligible” building. Parents had little political clout.
My second year there a rainstorm sent water cascading down a wall in the library, completely soaking and destroying a computer the children used. The following years brought classrooms and hallways lined with buckets and wastebaskets to catch rainwater. In 1998, the district announced that stachybotris chartarum had been found in four classrooms, two next to mine, and in the younger children’s restrooms that bordered the other side of my library. People in haz-mat suits worked that summer. We were not allowed in the building until Labor Day weekend, being told the school was now safe. Later, I learned another mold remediation had taken place in 2001, though staff and parents were never told about it.
Surprisingly, the roof was not replaced or even repaired. Occasionally, the district sent employees to patch the roof, but I can verify that roof leaked in dozens of places for over twenty years.
On Aug. 8, 2003, I went in to the library to begin preparing for the upcoming school year. I worked nine hours at my computer, mostly formatting children into their new grade levels and entering new students. It was 88o in the library and I ran a large Costco fan. The library had not been cleaned. It was dirty with dust everywhere. An area of paint had flaked off the water-damaged wall behind my desk and lay in a pile of rubble on the aged carpet. The library carpet had been installed in the 1970’s.
As I walked to my car that afternoon I felt like I had come down with the flu---my chest and throat burned, I felt dizzy, had a headache, and a persistent cough. I didn’t know it then but that day was the beginning of a nightmare for me----one which changed my life in countless ways.
As my time is limited, let me just say that the illness stayed with me, at first showing signs of improvement while away from the building and over weekends, but by late November of 2003 I was extremely ill. I coughed up blood often, my voice was so hoarse few people recognized me on the phone. I began forgetting things---book titles, children’s names, and committee meetings. This was not at all normal for me. My life narrowed to work, then dragging myself home to bed. I couldn’t work out regularly at the gym, I wasn’t able to participate in social and family events, I had no energy for cooking, which I love to do, and my husband and I no longer went on regular dayhikes on weekends. I didn’t realize worried friends were calling my husband because my speech had become slurred.
Let me note here that 80% of the staff were reporting lesser degrees of the same symptoms, and many children were sick. Since I had been in the building, teachers and students had transferred because they felt sick at that school. In October of 2003 all staff received a memo directing us to no longer send children to the clinic if they were crying about headaches or falling asleep in class: our office staff could not handle the large numbers of students coming for help.
I loved my job, and as corny as it may sound, I especially liked working where I knew I was making a difference. School was the most stable place for many of our kids. After thirteen years there, I was the most senior teacher there---only one other teacher had been there as long as I. We’d had a revolving door of staff and students, many of them complaining of illness. That year I thought I could make it to the holiday break, but my last day was Wed., Dec. 17. I spent the next eight months mostly in bed, suffering from physical and cognitive impairment, fatigue, vertigo, nausea, difficulty breathing, trouble concentrating, and severe joint pain. Just days after leaving my school I developed a massive kidney infection---the doctor believed it was a result of the high toxin level in my body. Blood serum, skin, and lung testing would reveal extreme antibody levels to fourteen molds, as well as scarring in about 15% of my lung tissue.
I am making slow progress now, and I am hopeful I can return to work. I filed for L&I and was awarded time-loss and medical expenses. I always believed L&I was a safety net, so I was shocked when the school district who employed me for thirty-five years appealed my award. After a review process, L&I reaffirmed my award. My self-insured district responded by stopping payments and taking me to court to overturn L&I’s decision. My husband and I were forced to find an attorney and prepare for court.
I am now awaiting a verdict. Every day is a struggle to think positively. We have been ruined financially and had to file chapter 13 to protect our home. Our savings are completely depleted, as the medications I am taking are extremely expensive. They include antifungals to combat the colonies of fungi that are occupying my sinuses and lungs.
I am fifty-eight years old, loved my job, and was proud of my high credit rating. I am in my third year of a fungal illness which is not understood by many, and is alienating and heartbreaking. Every day I miss my friends and co-workers and especially the children I loved so much.
We need enforceable state laws that will protect our children and staff from this deadly threat. This is a very complicated story, and I have included some additional information and pictures.
I feel the L&I staff, to a person, treated me with respect and dignity. I was extremely surprised when Tim Hardin, the man from the health department who is charged with looking out for schools, took the witness stand against me and testified that “toxic mold is a creation of the media.” Dr. Ammann from the State Dept. of Ecology testified for me at my trial, explaining that damp indoor places are a threat to human health.
Please know that everything I have shared today is true and really happened to me. Thank you so much for listening.
Annette Shillinger
This photo shows the ceiling in the staff bathroom. It took years of leaking to look like this. As soon as concerns were made known, the employer brought in paint crews to cover up the stains. In court, the employer’s attorney argued that this photo couldn’t be used because it was not from my classroom and we couldn’t prove it was taken in Oct. 2003.
This photo reveals staining where the wall and ceiling met. Water would trickle down the wall---you can see streaking on the paint from years of leaks. The water would roll behind book shelves and soak the carpet. Oct. 2003.
Water damage along the wall next to an air filter. The filters were installed in 2001 after the building’s second “mold remediation.” The roof wasn’t repaired, nor were the filters run regularly. Oct. 2003
Please notice how the continuous leaking buckled the molding. Oct. 2003
Some ceiling tiles had soaked through with rainwater and fallen out.
This corner had a large leak that persisted for many years. To the right you can also see where paint is buckling from water that leaked over and behind it. Please note this photo is from Oct. 2003, five and two years after separate mold remediations.
One can visibly see greenish-blackish mold growing on the wood where water had seeped through the ceiling. So much water came through that the acoustic tiles fell out.
Please notice the staining all across the wall. Water would trickled along this wall. It destroyed a computer I had set up when I first began working there in the early 1990’s. This wall had not been painted and the roof had not been repaired until after I left in Dec. 2003. The carpet had been installed in the 1970s and was continually damp from this water.
In March of 2005 I visited an immunologist who is also a professor at Stanford Medical School. He told me the allergy testing performed by the independent medical examiner measured an inappropriate unit to declare that I have no allergies. This is three weeks after the Stanford professor’s interdermal test for my response to IgG units of aspergillus, one of the molds remediated from my school. Aspergillus and stachybotris chartarum are both molds that favor indoor environments and produce toxins. My body has been colonized by these fungi, and I have developed a severe type IV allergy to them. The poisons that made me sick are actually living in my sinuses causing breathing difficulty, fatigue, severe joint pain, vertigo, and memory problems. I became so sensitized to the mold toxins that even clothing I had worn in the school had to be discarded. I had to throw away my entire wardrobe because it was contaminated by microscopic mold toxins. Thirty-five years of teaching materials, many valuable signed first edition books, had to be left in the building.
This photo shows the water damage along the wall of a second grade classroom.
Water would cascade down the inside of this classroom window and then pool on the floor. Please notice the rotting windowsill. |
