Nazareth Area School District

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Prevention cures worries in Nazareth

Monday, November 25, 2002

By BRIAN SHAPPELL

The Express-Times

NAZARETH -- The Nazareth Area School District works diligently to keep mold

out of local schools, Assistant Superintendent Diane Dautrich said,

especially in light of mold problems five years ago.

Dautrich said the district's stance is " prevention rather than care. "

Dautrich said the school district hired an outside company to perform

regular assessments on conditions at the district's buildings. She said the

company looks for several problems including the amount of foreign

substances and the amount of moisture in the air.

" The district has a history of problems so we need to err on the side of

caution, " Dautrich said. " We don't have the luxury of waiting to see if we

have a problem. We want to be sure we have good conditions all the time. "

In 1997, 1,800 students in Nazareth Area's high school and middle school

started school three weeks late when the discovery of fungus and mold in the

buildings led to massive repairs. The district's elementary students waited

three days for school to begin after Shafer Elementary School failed a state

inspection just before opening day.

Cleanup efforts closed down the high school for seven months, forcing

students to share the old middle school building. For that period, they

attended half-day sessions, being taught only core curriculum.

The district spent more than $4 million to rid the high school building of

its fungus problem, although its insurance company paid the school $2.8

million for the cleanup.

The fungus discovered there, stachybotrys chartarum, can cause nausea,

asthma and other ills and is potentially lethal.

In 2000, 350 students from Freemansburg Elementary School attended classes

at the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. for several months. The elementary

school was closed before the academic year began after leaks caused during a

summer roof renovation caused mold to grow.

Mold problems also forced the Bangor Area School District to delay the

opening of Domenick DeFranco Elementary School for several months in 1994.

During testing and the subsequent cleanup, students had to attend classes at

four other schools in the district.

One year later, there were many complaints from students in two New Jersey

municipalities -- Clinton and Lebanon Township -- saying mold inside their

schools was causing them to fall ill.

Reporter Shappell can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at

bshappell@....