LOWELL — The opening day of school for the Pawtucketville Memorial Elementary School was delayed last year due to widespread mold issues throughout the interior of the building, including classrooms. The school district and the city administration are confident that history is not going to repeat itself for the first day of school this year.
In an email to City Manager Tom Golden and Director of Health & Human Services Lisa Golden, Commissioner of Public Works Paul St. Cyr said testing on the five classrooms discovered to have mold show that the spaces have been remediated to acceptable levels.
“To put the findings in layman’s terms for this type of testing, we looked to compare the Total Fungi count from the outside sample to the inside samples – the sampling process on Friday took approximately one hour to complete,” St. Cyr wrote on Sunday night. “The results were very good!”
The remediated classrooms were identified on the report as Rooms 1067, 1071, 1077 and 1079. Previous mold outbreaks have affected Rooms 1045, 1069 and 1084, as well as other areas of the building.
There are approximately 500 students in grades pre-K through 4, with 90-95 staff members on site. Grades 1-4 return Tuesday; pre-K and kindergarten students return Sept. 4.
Based on past history, the almost 60-year-old building has a proclivity for mold growth. The PMES is a brick-and-metal school building originally constructed in the 1960s as a single-story structure. Significant renovations were undertaken in the late 1990s, and an addition to the school was constructed about 20 years ago, adding a second story and a gymnasium to its footprint. Since that time, the school has experienced ongoing problems with water leaks and infiltration.
Three years ago, an HVAC system malfunction over the weekend left condensation all over the inside of the school just days before reopening for the fall semester, spurring the beginnings of mold growth.
According to previous reporting, the staff members that were there, including the principal, custodians and some teachers who had come to prepare their classrooms, were asked to vacate the building due to the presence of mold spores and the slippery surfaces.
In November, teachers at the school told the School Committee that mold at the school was again growing on furniture, books, ceilings, cubbies and supplies.
“Our ceiling is literally dripping onto desks, floors and our belongings,” kindergarten teacher Melissa Landsteiner said then. “There are days the building is so moist that kids are slipping and falling, and desks are needing to be wiped in order for kids to work. We’re cleaning puddles off our shelves.”
Committee member Connie Martin said the problem had been discussed for as long as she had served on the body.
“I have been told more times that I can count that the problem has been solved,” she said then.
School Operations and Maintenance Director Rick Underwood addressed the mold issue during the Aug. 21 meeting of the School Committee.
“On Aug. 17, I got an email from the custodian there that there were signs of mold,” Underwood said. “I immediately called Paul St. Cyr. We mobilized on the school and started making plans to mitigate it. It was roughly four to five classrooms. Very small spots of mold in one classroom. It wasn’t as severe as it was in the prior years.”
But it’s not the first time this summer that mold was suspected in the building, located at 425 West Meadow Road, which was open to students and staff for summer camp.
Councilor John Descoteaux showed pictures to the City Council in July of what he described as “black mold” growing in various locations in the school.
“Rooms 1067 and 1069 — black mold spores on ceiling,” Descoteaux said. “The offices attached to the main office is starting to smell like mildew and mold is starting to [grow] on the walls.”
One month later, Room 1067 was one of the rooms deep-cleaned due to the presence of mold that exceeded standards.
The month delay in treating the contamination was addressed in a statement released last week by the United Teachers of Lowell.
“Staff were told that suspected mold spots were most likely just stains and not mold,” the union’s statement said. “As August progressed, visible signs of mold growth continued throughout the building. This is the same pattern of previous years which required delayed openings of school.”
The recent mold problems prompted the majority of the teaching staff to stage a standout protest last Friday against the conditions in the building.
On Monday, the environmental testing company, EFI Global, conducted the first of monthly air quality tests to be taken during the school year. The results are expected in a week, said Chief Financial Officer Conor Baldwin.
“The City Manager has been in regular communication with the DPW Commissioner as well as the Superintendent of Schools and the Health Director and the results of the tests are encouraging,” he said by email.
While walking in Friday’s protest and holding a sign that said “Students deserve a safe school,” second grade teacher Taylor Medonca said the conditions inside the classrooms confuse her students.
“When the floors are slippery, they don’t really understand why,” she said, describing surfaces in the past that have become slick from the mold. “Most of the kids [on the impacted hall] are immune compromised. It happens every year.”