Roadrunner Elementary School Mold Solution May Take Another Year

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MOLD SOLUTION MAY TAKE ANOTHER YEAR

by Cavanaugh

About 100 students at Roadrunner Elementary School may spend another year in

classrooms infested with mold that some parents say is affecting their

children's health.

The Marana Unified School District Governing Board took no action at its

meeting June 25, allowing administrators to wait until state-funded

construction is completed on new classrooms for the students in 2003, rather

than replacing the moldy modular buildings this summer with spare modulars

it has on hand.

The district has been battling mold in the two buildings for a year and a

half, replacing ceilings, tearing up carpeting and sections of floor,

installing $3,500 awnings to repel rain and paying an environmental

monitoring company $2,500 every three months to test the air for the

presence of mold spores.

MUSD officials estimate the district could pay as much as $45,000 in moving

and utility hook-up costs if they were to replace the modular buildings with

vacant ones from another school.

The Arizona School Facilities Board, the agency that pays for construction

of new buildings for the state's public schools, has classified the

Roadrunner modulars as deficient and plans to replace them next year with a

new classroom wing.

The four classrooms in two buildings at Roadrunner, 16651 W. Calle Carmella

in Avra Valley, house Project Roadrunner Indivi-dually Designed Education,

or PRIDE, students.

The first-through fourth grade program, which teaches students language arts

and math skills based on their abilities rather than their actual grade

level, requires students to remain in the modular buildings for successive

years.

Joanne Mesich, a parent who has three children in the PRIDE program, said

her oldest son has been in the mold infested building for two years and was

frequently ill with fevers and respiratory problems.

" They simply don't want to spend the money to move out the old buildings.

They do just enough to stay in the safe zone, " Mesich said. " The

administration is cooperative, but only to the point of not replacing the

modulars until the state pays for the construction. They want the state's

Facilities Board to solve their problem. "

Although Mesich wasn't the first parent to complain about a child in the

PRIDE classrooms becoming sick from mold, she's led the charge to try and

have the buildings replaced and has raised the problem before the school

board twice in the last two months.

" It hit me one night when I was up with a sick child at 3 a.m. " Mesich said.

" It's the building that's making kids sick. If they were to do a study of

the rates of absences from kids in those buildings, they would know they

have a problem. "

Mundell, MUSD's assistant superintendent in charge of finance, said in

an interview after the meeting he does not believe the district is placing

the students' health at risk.

" If we felt the kids were in any danger, we wouldn't do anything different

than what we are doing now. This is more dealing with the way people

perceive things, than with reality, " Mundell said. " We don't think there is

any dangerous mold in there, and where there has been any indication of any

excess mold, we have corrected the situation.

" The main thing is that we are going to replace them as soon as possible but

in all likelihood, if we started trying to reshuffle modulars right now,

they wouldn't get there in time to do any good, and they might goof-up the

construction schedule on the stuff that we want to get in. Or the kids could

end up with no classrooms at all for a time during the shuffle. "

Mundell said air quality testing of the modulars in the last 18 months has

resulted in only one reading that indicated mold spores in the air since the

infestation was discovered. He characterized the May 8 reading as a

" mistake " caused by the kids tracking in mold.

" The one bad reading we had was because the monitor made a mistake and took

it when the kids were tromping in and out from recess, so you get dust and

mold spores brought in by the kids. They retested it and said it was fine, "

Mundell said.

" There's no inordinate amount of mold there. Right now there's no growing

mold, based on the reports. "

Bob , MUSD director of maintenance, said the initial infestation was

caused by rain water seeping through door and window frames on the modulars,

which are some of the oldest in the district.

" There's nothing wrong with the kids being in there right now. We have in

excess of 75 modular buildings in the district, and have others that are

equally old, although none of the others have mold. The School Facilities

Board is replacing 26 of them right now, " said.

Hasty, a researcher with the Arizona Department of Health Services

Office of Environmental Health, said reports of mold infestation of

buildings are on the increase, but mold rarely causes serious health

problems beyond an allergic reaction.

" Most people are not going to have any reaction to mold, while others, if

they are exposed to even minimal amounts, will have an allergic reaction.

It's still a significant percentage of the population that will have some

sort of reaction, depending on the degree that they have been exposed, "

Hasty said.

" Kids, obviously, because their immune systems are not as developed as an

adults, are probably going to have more of a problem with it, " Hasty said.

The University of Arizona tore down its City housing complex at

East Fort Lowell and North Columbus Boulevard in Tucson two years ago after

more than 20 apartments were found to be infested with mold. Three residents

who said they suffered adverse health effects from the mold filed monetary

claims against the university.

While the latest reports indicate the mold problem at Roadrunner is under

control, both Mundell and admit the dry weather conditions have

helped the situation and the true test will come with the summer rain.

With the start of the monsoon season due any day now, said he

believes the district is prepared.

" We've gone through and removed or cleaned any areas where the mold was

active, sealed the windows, replaced door frames, painted and do just about

everything that the experts tell us we should do, " said.

said he did not have an exact tally of how much the district has

spent to remediate the PRIDE modulars or if it was more than the $30,000 to

$45,000 he estimates it would cost to bring in spare modulars from Coyote

Trail Elementary School, which has a surplus of the buildings.