Mold problem closes WACTC
Technical school to close for eight weeks, but officials say there is no heath risk
WOONSOCKET – Though the problem poses no immediate health threat and isn’t particularly widespread, the discovery of mold has prompted school officials to plan for shutting down the Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center for up to eight weeks, starting Tuesday, and relocating its roughly 600 students to neighboring Woonsocket High School while an estimated $800,000 remediation effort is under way.
Parents, teachers and staff were notified of the student-relocation plan by Schools Supt. Patrick McGee late Wednesday night, after the School Committee voted 3-1 to adopt the superintendent’s recommendation for rectifying the problem.
“We’re trying to make it work with minimal disruption,” said McGee. “Naturally, because they’re go- ing to be out of their space, there’s going to be some disruption – we can’t avoid that.”
But the superintendent said school officials have “a solid plan” to accommodate WACTC’s students at WHS and to make sure they stay on track with their studies in such hands-on disciplines as culinary arts, automotive repair and carpentry.
By reworking schedules and taking advantage of some common areas, including the high school library, WHS can accommodate the influx of WACTC’s student body, said McGee. Parts of the trades curricula that rely more on theory and computers instead of specialized tools and equipment – typically slotted for the tail end of the school year – will be moved up to the beginning.
“The school department did a great job of identifying
how they’re going to handle this,” said School Committee Vice Chairman Paul Bourget. “During the cleanup phase they’re going to be doing a lot of what would have been spread out. The classroom work that might have been done in April will be done during the cleanup period...so they won’t be losing any time. When they go back they’ll be doing the hands-on.”
McGee summarized the plan in an e-mail to parents, inviting them for a full briefing at 6 p.m. Monday in the WHS auditorium.
The superintendent traced the discovery of the mold to
a routine inspection by school staff on Aug. 28 – the day before the school year began. At that time, custodians discovered a patch of mildew on a carpeted area – the result of the shampooing of the carpet a few days earlier, combined with unusually high humidity. Apparently, said McGee, “it never dried.”
McGee called Vortex, Inc., a Warwick environmental remediation company, to do an inspection. Vortex sampled the air for mold spores and took test swabs from the carpet, ceiling tiles and vents for evidence of surface mold.
On Sept. 5, Vortex reported the results of the tests to school officials, concluding that the air quality in the school was “fine,” according to McGee. The company also discovered surface mold on fewer than 1 percent of ceiling tiles scattered about the entire building.
None of the findings represents an immediate threat to the health of any child or school employee, according to McGee.
Vortex’s report, which McGee quoted verbatim in the notification to parents, put it this way: “At the time of inspection, throughout this building, there was extremely low airborne mold levels and
minimal surface mold… this building is safe for occupancy.”
Out of an abundance of caution, however, McGee said he decided it is necessary to rectify the problem immediately.
“I’m being proactive,” McGee said. “This is a project we were planning to do in the summer. I don’t want people thinking we’re keeping children in the building and it’s not safe.”
Members of the school committee discussed three possible options for attacking the mold during the school year on Wednesday night. Option 1 involved cleaning tiles and ductwork after hours, while the building was unoccupied. Option 2 called for doing the work while school was in session in bits and pieces, removing students from, and sealing off, work areas.
Committee members chose the third option of emptying the building while Vortex crews attack the problem. The work involves the following components:
● The replacement of all ceiling tiles
● Replacement of carpeting
● Inspection and cleaning of all heating and ventilation
systems
● Cleaning of all furniture ● Monthly mold inspections for the foreseeable future
Not everyone on the school committee was in favor of what Bourget says was the most aggressive approach to eradicating the mold. One member, Steve Lima, voted against the plan, favoring Option 2.
Despite the company’s low-risk assessment, Bourget said the majority of the board was sufficiently concerned about possible health impacts to some individuals from the types of mold that Vortex found in the building.
“This is not the black mold that’s dangerous, but we have to get rid of it,” he said. “The procedures we’re doing are the most conservative. The least conservative would have been to leave the students in the building and do it piecemeal.”
McGee said he expects to receive a formal contract proposal from Vortex in the coming days, but the current ballpark on the cost of the work is about $800,000. The money will come from $3.1 million the state paid the city as part of a deal to take ownership of WACTC. Officials struck the deal some two years ago, but the school, built in 1975, was not officially conveyed to the city until May 22, according to the city’s property records.
One of the first uses school officials found for those funds was to repair the leaky roof at WACTC – a problem officials now say helped cause the spread of mold in the ceiling tiles. The long-permeable roof, combined with this summer’s onerous spells of unusually high humidity, were very likely key factors in bringing about the conditions the school department now seeks to rectify, says McGee.
The discovery of mold in a public school building was hardly unique to the Woonsocket Education Department this year. As schools throughout the region were getting ready to reopen after the summer break, mold infestations were discovered in several of them, including the A.F. Maloney Elementary School in nearby Blackstone.
There, the student body was transferred to Millville Elementary School for several weeks while environmental crews removed the mold from the building.