Landon Lied to BOE?

At last Monday's Westport Board of Education meeting on August 13th, Elliott Landon was asked to provide a complete history of the air quality issues at King's Highway Elementary School.

He explained that he started in his role in 1999 and couldn't locate any records of air quality issues before 1999. Under his watch, Landon referred to the 2001, 2006 and 2007 studies that the administration commissioned and we have had posted on this blog for weeks. These were the only air quality studies and documented issues that Landon said existed when he answered the BOE's request for a complete history.

That appears to have been a lie.

There was another air quality study at KHS completed by outside experts (LMG Consulting Engineers) for Mr. Landon and the administration in 2002. This study was never shared with the BOE. This study was never shared with parents. This study was never shared with the media. Elliott Landon omitted it from his complete history on air quality at KHS.

The March 8, 2002 report is attached below and is extremely troubling. It indicates that some ventilation fans were inoperable and been so for considerable time and that there were 15 air quality code violations at the school. These violations include:

• No controlled ventilation in the Gym or Auditorium
  
• A storage room (#151) being used as a classroom with NO ventilation
  
• Numerous instances of toilet exhaust being connected to building exhaust
• A storage room (#234) being used as an office with NO ventilation

As shown above, 5 out of 8 exhaust fans were not running at KHS leading to actual airflow of 23% of the designed air flow.

There are a number of recommendations in the 2002 study. As with Landon's seven month wait from Sep 2006 to close the pod and failure to ever seal it, we question whether any of these recommendations were acted upon in a timely manner or at all.

There is an upcoming BOE meeting at Westport Town Hall next week, Aug 27nd. We look forward to hearing how Landon explains this omission to his employer, the BOE on delivering a complete history of KHS air quality issues since he has led the administration.

There is an excellent review of this report and questions that it raises in today's Westport News. Westport News has tracked all of the capital requests for KHS since 2002 that suggest the violations may not have been fixed. You can read it here.