Officials address mold at West Penn Elementary

It was not the way the start of the school year was planned to be, but the Tamaqua Area School Board president and superintendent are confident that the district implemented the best possible solution for students.

Larry Wittig, president of the Tamaqua Area School Board, said the health interests of the West Penn Elementary school students were placed above all else in deciding to leave the building closed at the start of the school year and bus students to Tamaqua Elementary School.

“We went above and beyond for the kids,” Wittig said in response to questions about the mold situation at West Penn Elementary.

Superintendent Ray Kinder agreed. “We want our parents and community to believe that we will go the extra mile as opposed to doing less. We believe it was handled in the best way possible based on the available information at the time.”

Of the 500 school districts in the commonwealth, 10 other districts are dealing with a serious mold issue. Pleasant Valley, in Monroe County, is one of those districts and the closest one which is dealing with a mold issue similar to Tamaqua’s.

Pleasant Valley delayed the opening of the school year a day and closed the intermediate building to staff and students until the remediation work was complete. During the remediation work, the elementary and intermediate schools shared the elementary building on a two-day rotation schedule.

On Wednesday, the intermediate building was declared cleared for use, with students returning to the building on Friday.

A wet summer

Indeed, it was a wet summer in Pennsylvania. Average rainfall for the summer months in the Tamaqua area is approximately 14 inches. This year, the area was deluged with 23 inches of rain through the end of August, more than 60 percent above the average.

With all the rain, Kinder said, leaks were foremost in his mind as potential problems, and he hadn’t considered a potential mold problem until it was discovered in mid-August by teachers who were preparing their classrooms.

“You see other buildings in the county with puddles and rooms filling with water. We didn’t have that problem. Until you look for or notice mold, it’s difficult to know there’s a problem.”

Wittig said the mold remediation company initially advised the district to remove the mold on its own. However, when additional mold was found, the decision was made to secure professional help.

Wittig estimated the cost of hiring the company to be between $15,000 and $20,000, but Kinder said there were no official estimates from the remediation companies. The district has retained the Spotts, Stevens & McCoy engineering firm of Reading to supervise the remediation process. That firm has hired subcontractors to perform the work.

West Penn students and faculty have spent the first several days of the school year sharing space in the Tamaqua elementary building, with students being bused up to 11 miles to school. The changes in busing will not result in any additional costs to the district, according to Kinder. A claim will be submitted to the district’s insurer to see if it can get reimbursement for the mold remediation work.

When asked why only the West Penn building was affected, Wittig pointed to the age of the building and its ventilation system. Classroom rugs were cleaned with a “wet” method rather than a dry that had been used in the past. Kinder added that of the district’s buildings, West Penn is used the least during the summer months. The ventilation that naturally occurs with the opening and closing of the other buildings on a more frequent basis helped those buildings avoid the mold issue.

“This was not the ideal way to start the school year,” Kinder said. He said he was pleased with the cooperation and understanding from faculty, staff, and parents and is unaware of any complaints about the situation.

Kinder said when the school reopens, he will meet with maintenance staff to determine what could be done to prevent such a problem in the future.