Black Hawk Elementary School classrooms closed

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http://www.themonroetimes.com/o0919mol.htm

September 19, 2002 1:34:42 PM Central Time

2 classrooms not in use due to mold

By Yeater Rathbun

Lafayette County Bureau Chief

SOUTH WAYNE -- Students are no longer using two Black Hawk Elementary School

classrooms documented as having mold problems, according to high school

principal Jerry Mortimer.

Mortimer said Environmental Management Consulting industrial hygienist

Freeman's Sept. 16 report recommended the school district consider

relocating sensitive individuals currently working or studying in the

5-year-old kindergarten room and Iverson's first-grade classroom.

However, Black Hawk district administrator Tom Wilkins decided to move

everyone out of those rooms effective Wednesday, Mortimer said.

Wilkins was not at the school Wednesday and is not expected back until

Friday.

Iverson's first-grade class is now meeting next door in the Student

Achievement Guarantee in Education room. This room was only used part of

each day, according to elementary principal Kretschman. SAGE is a

state-funded class-size reduction program.

Five-year-old kindergarten is now meeting in the school library. The room

will continue to serve as the building's library as well as house the class.

Freeman's report recommended the district investigate the " cubbie " cabinets

and heating, ventilating and air conditioning ductwork in all the rooms in

the 1991 addition to find out if corrective action is needed anywhere else.

Kretschman said Wilkins has not told her whether the district will do that.

The addition contains nine classrooms, the school nurse's office and two

bathrooms. The findings in Freeman's report are limited to the 5-year-old

kindergarten and Iverson's first-grade classrooms.

Kretschman also said she did not know how much it cost the district to have

Freeman investigate and assess the two rooms covered by Freeman's Sept. 16

report or who designed and built the elementary addition.

According to Babcock, executive director of the American Institute

of Architects, Wisconsin, state law cuts off architects, contractors and

buildings material suppliers' liability 10 years after a building project's

substantial completion date, which means the clock stopped ticking on the

Black Hawk Elementary addition in 2001.

Black Hawk School nurse Farah Mellenberger, who is actually a Lafayette

County public health department employee serving the district under

contract, has logs documenting health complaints coming to her office Nov.

29, 2001. She said the complaints were very vague statements about

kindergarten children with allergy-like symptoms when they were at school.

Babcock said there were special provisions in the law for problems

discovered in the eighth, ninth and 10th years after a project was

completed. However, he also said, most claims are made before substantial

completion. Babcock said it was unusual for claims to be made more than five

years after completion. After that, he said most issues are really

maintenance and operation problems rather than design and construction

problems.

Times to newseditor@ themonroetimes.com.