MOULD KEEPS STUDENTS IN LIMBO
COMMISSION SCOLAIRE DE MONTRéAL is cleaning up five of its schools plagued by mould and poor air quality, leaving students and teachers in limbo, forced to move from building to building. Katherine Wilton reports that some students have been moved three
Landy Boudreau lives across the street from École Baril, his local elementary school in east end Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
But when classes resumed Wednesday, the Grade 3 student didn’t dart across the street to school.
Instead, he and his mates boarded a school bus at 7:28 a.m. for a 15-minute ride to École Louis Riel, a large secondary school about six kilometres from home.
Landy, who is 8 years old, has had classes in three separate buildings over the past three years because of chronic mould and other air quality problems at schools in the Commission scolaire de Montréal’s network.
“It makes me mad because he can’t come home for lunch anymore and he has to get up early to get the bus,” Landy’s mother, Lynda St-Jacques, said his week as she sat across the street from herson’s boarded-up school on Adam St.
Three of the five CSDM schools that have been closed for decontamination — Baril, St-Nom-de-Jésus and Hochelaga — are on Adam St. in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
The mould problems were most serious at École Baril, with airborne spores causing respiratory ailments, runny noses and coughing among teachers and students.
After Baril was closed and its students and teachers transferred to École Saint-Nom-de-Jésus and Hochelaga, more health problems associated with mould surfaced, alerting officials to air quality problems in those schools.
Some of those children and staff members (from École Baril) were sensitive to the presence of mould in their new schools, said Alain Perron, a CSDM spokesman.
The school board was then forced to temporarily close École St-Nom-de-Jésus and Hochelaga and transfer students to two high schools.
One of the high schools, École Louis Riel, had ventilation problems that have been repaired over the past several months.
The school closings have forced about 1,200 students to attend classes elsewhere, and more students may be on the move next year.
The board is scheduled to close École Ste-Lucie in StMichel in 2014 and move the primary school students to a local high school to decontaminate the school, The Gazette has learned.
A 2012 study revealed that as many as 30 of the CSDM’s 214 schools require intervention, some urgently.
To date, five schools have been closed to carry out extensive decontamination, mainly mould caused by water infiltration in the aging buildings over many years.
The government and the board are spending $16 million to gut, repair and expand École St-Gérard in Villeray, which closed in January 2012 after teachers and students developed health problems. Air samples showed unhealthy levels of mould in almost all the rooms.
The EMSB’s fifth closed school is Annexe St-Raymond, an adult education centre in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
A spokesperson for the English Montreal School Board said there are no mould problems in the board’s buildings. John F. Kennedy High School, which was closed during the 2011-12 school year after as- bestos was found in the building, reopened last May.
CSDM teachers in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve who have followed the displaced primary school students in moves to two separate high schools are still finding the transition difficult, said Yves Parenteau, press attaché for the teachers’ union, the Alliance des professeures et professeurs de Montréal.
“They have a class but not all the equipment they need,” Parenteau said.
“They lost a lot of material that couldn’t be moved because of the (mould spores). The books in the library are not suitable for younger kids and it’s hard to get time in the gym.”
At École Baril, the damage is so extensive the building is slated to be demolished and rebuilt. The Quebec government and the board will foot the bill, but no one is sure when the school will reopen.
Robert Cadotte, a former CSDM school commissioner, says he will contest the demolition of École Baril because he says the 102-year-old building is an important heritage site in the community.
However, St-Jacques worries that a debate over the school’s historical value could drag on for years, further delaying the reopening of École Baril.
“I am worried that by the time this all gets sorted out, my son will be in high school,” she said. “Heritage is important, but we need a local school.”