Doubts Mark Mold Meeting in Westport

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07/27/2007

Doubts Mark Mold Meeting in Westport

http://www.westport-news.com/ci_6478760

By Luongo

The passion of Westport parents, who at this time do not trust the central

school administration to guard the health of their children against

environmental contamination, dominated a meeting Wednesday in the Town Hall

auditorium. The meeting had been called, as the new school year approaches, to

assuage parental fears about mold and carbon pollution at the King's Highway

Elementary School (KHS).

In response, Westport First Selectman Gordon loff said that his

administration would address KHS as a town-owned property and would ask the

town's Maintenance Study Committee, in concert with parent representatives, the

school system's Health and Wellness Committee and the Westport Weston Health

District, to take the lead in developing a plan and a process for assuring that

the school is safe for its scheduled opening in late August.

Two of Westport's state legislators, state Sen. Judith Freedman and State Rep.

ph Mioli, attended the meeting and both appeared moved by the response of

more than 50 parents at the meeting and a presentation by leaders of the KHS

Clean Air Committee.

" I can't blame them, " Freedman said about the arguments made by the parents and

their many expressions of doubt and frustration. " There was a lot

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of skepticism. They know their kids and the school should listen to them, " she

said.

Freedman said that she hoped everyone would work together to make sure that

parents are assured of a safe school, and she appeared assured herself that this

would take place.

" It was an eye-opener for me. It scared the heck out of me, " Mioli said about

information presented at the meeting. He was surprised at the depth of problem

and said he had only recently heard about the issue. " I wish somebody had given

me a heads-up. "

Two representatives from the Connecticut Department of Health, who had done a

walk-through at KHS, started the meeting with a slide presentation about mold

and other contaminants and reported that they had not found visible evidence of

a serious mold problem at the school, but expressed concern about high levels of

carbon dioxide and unexpected carbon monoxide in some parts of the building, as

noted in an air-quality assessment of the building last spring.

Kenny Foscue, a state epidemiologist and health educator, and Miriam Heyman, a

state industrial hygienist who is active in environmental assessments, hit a

sensitive nerve with the parents when they appeared to downplay the value of

environmental testing at the school.

" Testing would find mold, " Heyman said, but she made available a health

department fact sheet, which claims that there are no appropriate standards for

indoor air quality in such environments as schools and residences.

" The important thing is to find the source of the mold, correct it and remove

all materials that have it, " Heyman said, advocating a comprehensive plan of

attack on the problem, but not starting with testing, which she warned is very

expensive and frequently the work of " charlatans. "

Superintendent of Schools Elliott Landon said at the meeting that, at Heyman's

urging, he was ready to commit the school system to the state's Tools for

Schools program of indoor air-quality maintenance and assessment

recommendations.

Westport has been among the few school districts in the state not participating

in the program. Parent committee members at the meeting strongly agreed with the

move.

Parents were soon peppering the state health officials with challenges,

establishing the fact that the officials had not had a chance to check behind

walls for mold, explore water pipes in the ceiling, check out flooring under

carpeting and, above all, assess the impact on the school proper of the

mold-contaminated permanent portable, or pod, which is now closed.

Foscue and Heyman appeared taken aback by the intensity of the parents'

response, especially their recitation of health complaints that parents said

went back to 1997.

Saying this was all news to them, Foscue and Heyman urged an improvement in

communications with parents and the wider community on the part of school

officials.

They also acknowledged, as pointed out by a parent, that their own handout said

that testing " may be used to confirm or refute a highly suspected source. "

That prompted n Reilly and Bill Pecoriello, two of the more out-front

members of the parent committee, to say that the pod was just that kind of

source.

They pointed out that the pod was closed late last summer, but never sealed off

and is only separated from the building by a sheetrock wall, which they suspect

provides a pathway for contaminated air from the pod.

It is also from the pod, according to parents, that contaminated porous

materials, such as books, were transferred into the school and, they said, it is

the pod that appears to be the source of many chronic illnesses, such as

headache, respiratory ailments and nosebleeds.

Reilly and Pecoriello said that they, too, wanted a comprehensive plan, but

wanted testing first. " We have a work-order set. It would only take three days, "

Reilly said, adding that the parents would pay for the cost of testing.

They also called for an independent expert of their choosing, an air-quality

specialist, who has worked on mold conditions in the Easton school district, to

participate in the development of the comprehensive plan.

The state health officials said that they held that individual in high regard

and loff said after the meeting that the adding of the expert to the

planning process in a consulting role would make sense.

The pod became the focus of a lack of trust issue at the meeting. Reilly, for

example, said that he would have expected Landon to have seen to the sealing-off

of the pod and the preventing of the transfer of porous materials from the pod

into the school.

He took Landon to task for saying that the school did not have a mold problem in

response to the air-quality analysis in May, which reported normal " fungal "

levels at the school

" The pod is part of the school, " Reilly said, asking also why it took nine

months for the school administration to start removing suspected carpet from the

school and doing other remedial work.

The parent committee is attempting to obtain a copy of the document that was

filed by the school system last month, in which the state requires schools to

assess the condition of their buildings.

Reilly told the Westport News earlier this week that remnants of the carpeting,

which he was able to retrieve and send for analysis last week, are now known to

have mold spores. He said the laboratory is now determining the species of the

mold that was detected.

Landon defended himself at the meeting as someone totally committed to the

safety of children, citing the fact that he has not permitted students to work

in the community gardens or eat produce from the garden.

" There are suspicions of chemicals in the soil, " Landon said, indicating that he

was continuing the ban despite being criticized for the action.

He defended the carpet removal as part of a program to remove all carpeting from

the schools, as reported in the Westport News, and he added that KHS had been

scheduled for the carpet removal this summer, denying any validity to the

assumption that the removal came in response to parental pressure.

However, Landon did not enhance his credibility with the parents when he said

that he had been served a " cease and desist " order that was instituted by the

parents that now prevents him, under advice of counsel, from doing any further

remediation.

Reilly responded that there had been no such order served, at least not yet, and

that the parents also want all carpeting out of the school, but only after it is

tested.

Documents show that the parent committee's attorney did request that the work

stop and did warn of possible legal action, if it did not. But Reilly told this

newspaper earlier in the week that the parent committee had legal action on hold

until after the Wednesday meeting.

Pressed after the meeting for an explanation of these different accounts of the

carpeting matter and asked if he had actually been served a court order, Landon

acknowledged that he had not, but said the school system's attorney had advised

him that the letter from the committee's attorney was equivalent to such an

order.

Parent skepticism has been fueled, in part, by the fact that the school

administration did not make public a mold study of the pod that was done last

September after the pod was closed, which showed serious contamination, but did

release the May study that was favorable.

Several members of the Board of Education were present at the meeting, including

the board's vice chairman, Marjorie Cion, who confirmed after the meeting that

the closing of the pod and the September study never made it onto the board's

public agenda, as either an action or discussion item.

" In hindsight it would have been better if they had been on the agenda, " board

member O'Day said in response to Cion's observation.