Mold forces high school to close

Other district schools remain open

PENNSBURG » Just two weeks into the new school year, students attending Upper Perkiomen High School have an unexpected week off because of mold issues in the building.

Upper Perkiomen High School will be closed all this week “in order to remedy recent moisture issues,” according to a letter to parents posted on the school’s website.

All other schools in the district remain open as normal this week.

The letter from Superintendent Alexis McGloin states: “As you know, we have had unprecedented weather this summer, with incredibly hot, humid and rainy conditions persisting for a longer period of time than is typical for this part of the country. Many of our fellow eastern Pennsylvania districts were forced to delay the start of school or close buildings for a period of time because of moisture and mold issues, and now our high school can unfortunately be added to that ever-growing list.

We first noticed some surface mold in areas of the high school over the summer break. Soon thereafter, we employed nationally — and globally — renown, well-established companies 1Source Safety and Health Inc. and BELFOR Property Restoration to address those mold and moisture problems. The areas of surface mold were cleaned, the air was scrubbed, air filters were proactively replaced, dehumidifiers were brought in, and we felt confident that the issues were resolved at the time.

Unfortunately, as you know, the problematic weather has persisted, and our system simply can’t keep up at this point. The moisture challenges have become larger than we and the experts initially thought, and some new problems have popped up since the start of the year, including new mold growth in the gymnasium. As the environmental conditions remain unchanged, we felt it was important to have 1Source and BELFOUR look deeper into to root of the moisture problem

in the high school.

What these experts have suggested is that we make significant changes to our high school’s oldest HVAC system to make it more efficient and take steps to alleviate our moisture problem. They also recommended cleaning the affected areas and ductwork, to ensure that the problem is remediated effectively and that our high school is a healthy environment for students and staff.

As you can imagine, making these changes to the HVAC system and conducting this level of cleaning is no small task, and therefore we have no choice but to close the building for the week of September 10-14. We want to ensure that this problem is addressed properly, and we are not looking to cut corners on this important issue, so a building closure is unavoidable.

At this time, we’ve identified four make-up days for the high school. The fifth missed day will not need to be made up due to an extra day built into our school calendar.

The make-up days will be:

• November 6 (Election Day)

• November 19 & 20 (originally-scheduled parent-teacher conferences will occur at another time)

• January 21 (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)

All other schools will be in session and elementary and middle school students will not need to attend school on the high school make-up days.”