Letter: School District Lax on Safety and Honesty

Reader Pam Scott, who has been a member of both the Educational Specifications Committee and Design Advisory Committee for the high-school renovation, writes with the following letter:

Dear Blog-Lebo Editors:

Saturday afternoon I wrote a letter to the Municipal Commissioners urging them to vote “No” on the Shared Parking Agreement with the School District. The reason I asked them to vote “No” is because the District has too often shown itself to be dishonest and/or inept when it comes to managing its facilities.

The School District should change its way of thinking and just come clean with the community about the true state of the high school buildings.

Why should the Commission, parents, students, staff, or residents trust a District to properly manage such a large project when the District does the following?

1. Goes out of their way to discredit and misrepresent their relationship with Dirk Taylor. Anyone reading the papers or watching the Board meetings will be familiar with this incident.

2. Misrepresents the amount of asbestos in their buildings. For example, much talk has been made of the sprayed-on asbestos in Building C, but no mention of the same sprayed-on asbestos in Building F (see results for Sample F-07-01: “Tan, Fireproofing, Homogeneous: 4% Chrysotile [asbestos]” on page 34 of the RTK-requested document “Report of Bulk Sample Analysis for Asbestos”).

3. Cuts corners with asbestos regulations. For example, after a bucket overflowed, causing ceiling tiles to collapse into the student activities director’s office in September, the District substituted their own hodge-podge air clearance testing instead of the required-by-law air clearance testing for this asbestos-release episode. (See see SE Technologies’ log on page 4 of MTLSD RTK Request #2010-84.) This is dishonest and/or inept. (Under the asbestos-in-schools regulations (AHERA) that have been in place since the 1980s, a major fiber-release episode consists of the falling or dislodging of more than three square or linear feet of friable asbestos-containing material. If these episodes are less than 160 square feet or 260 linear feet or less, air clearance for these episodes may be done using the PCM method instead of TEM, but five samples are required to be properly collected and analyzed; the District merely collected and analyzed two.)

4. Makes up their own standards. The District claims to have followed the appropriate protocol with respect to radon in the high school while substituting their own hodge-podge testing instead of standard accepted protocol. The lab report they received for their “long-term test” is clearly marked “Delay between end of testing period & return to the lab may increase reported radon concentration. Consider retesting. Your Alpha Track results are valid but do not meet the EPA protocol for long term testing of 91 to 365 days.” For the District to then go out and tell staff, students. and the community that they have “followed the appropriate protocol” is dishonest and/or inept. (See the AccuStar Labs report on page 3 of MTLSD RTK Request #2010-79.) Similarly, the District regularly substituted “Modified AHERA” for genuine AHERA air clearance testing during the elementary school renovations. (See the asbestos reports which AHERA requires to be available for viewing during regular office hours at each school as well as the District’s administrative offices.)

Sincerely,
Pam Scott,
Member, High School Educational Specifications Design Committee
Member, High School Design Advisory Committee