Willowridge students start at other campus
Travis Allahar felt more like a freshman than a senior when he walked to Marshall High School in Fort Bend ISD for the first day of classes on Tuesday.
Instead of smirking at freshmen and hanging out with his friends from Willowridge High, Allahar worried about spending the next month learning to navigate an unfamiliar campus.
Allahar was supposed to start the school year at Willowridge, located five miles away, but was shifted to Marshall for several weeks as crews continue a cleanup of a massive mold problem at his school. Still, the first day went smoother than expected for Allahar.
“It was pretty good, honestly,” Allahar, 17, said Tuesday afternoon. “Everything went well, even the kids. It went as a school’s supposed to go.”
Less than three weeks after Willowridge High’s nearly 1,300 students learned that their moldinfested campus would not open in time for the first day of classes, they filed into Marshall High on Tuesday morning as students from both schools started the academic year under the same roof.
Most years, Marshall High only serves about half of the students it can fit inside its walls. But it was a packed house Tuesday, with the majority of Willowridge students taking their classes upstairs while the Marshall High classes were primarily held on the first floor. Lunch was divided into several staggered periods, and community volunteers came to keep an eye on how the two groups of students mingled.
Morning traffic jam
The beginning of the day was more difficult, with cars clogging multiple entrances of the school at sunrise, some mistakenly driving into bus ports while others had to back out of tight jams. Television vans lined the sidewalk across the street from the campus, and Fort Bend ISD police directed cars and students.
The temporary merger of Marshall and Willowridge high schools is the latest fallout from a mold infestation unlike any seen locally in recent memory.
Willowridge staff members found mold in the nearly 40-year-old school on July 3, a week after air conditioning had been turned off during planned construction. Some mold was found in the band hall offices as early as June, but maintenance staff cleaned the area and said they had resolved the situation before the school’s air conditioning was shut off.
An environmental consultant on July 5 identified the growing fungi as Penicillium mold — a type usually seen growing on spoiled food. By then, it had spread across nearly the entire school, destroying furniture, contaminating band instruments, eating away at books and growing over teachers’ lesson plans.
District officials say a team of 200 specialists has been cleaning the campus around the clock, seven days a week since July 19, the day that Willowridge Principal Thomas Graham wrote families telling them about the situation.
While Fort Bend ISD leaders originally hoped to have the campus ready for the start of the school year, it soon became apparent that ridding the campus of mold would be a much more difficult task than anticipated. Workers now estimate the school will be ready for students in mid-September, at a cost of about $7.6 million.
Some in wrong place
Willowridge’s campus was practically deserted Tuesday morning, save for a handful of workers, multiple generators sitting outside the school’s entrances and a dumpster overflowing with opaque plastic sheets.
Around 7:25 a.m., 15-year-old Jose Ramirez arrived at the empty campus in his mom’s dark gray minivan. He looked puzzled, unaware that he was supposed to be at another high school 10 minutes away.
“We didn’t have any information,” Ramirez said. “We did find out the school had mold, but we thought when we showed up this morning, someone would tell us where to go or what to do. We at least thought there would be a sign or something.”
Though Ramirez was likely late to his first day of classes, Diovion Atkins made sure to get to Marshall High early, given the influx of Willowridge students.
“It’s going to be pretty crowded and maybe a little disorganized,” the Marshall High student said as she walked up to the campus around 6:50 a.m. “It could be pretty hectic, but I hope it will be OK.”
And it was OK, Allahar said later.
He said it was like a regular school day, but it lacked a certain gravitas he had expected for his last “first day of school.” While he’s hopeful the temporary merger continues to go smoothly, he’s eager to go back to his alma mater.
“I mean, it is my senior year.”