The Town of Westport has added video of the Sept 25th King's Highway Maintenance Review Committee meeting and posted it to its website. You can see a complete list and access all the videos by clicking here and scrolling down the screen.
Alternatively, you can click below to see the specific meeting which runs for 1 hour 18mins.
Sep 25, 2007
You may need Windows Media Player on your computer in order to run these videos.
Last week, Gavin Anderson, Chairman of the Westport King's Highway Maintenance Review Committee and Gil Cormier, the consultant leading the air quality cleanup at KHS, gave a history of the work at the school and took parent questions.
Here are a number of quotes from that evening:
1. Gil re: CO2 levels in the school
"May co2 levels were too high"
"Guidelines are 700 plus outside"
"Outside is up to 500"
"2000 to 3000 is too high"
"3000 parts per million [ppm] is not a good thing in classrooms"
2. Gil re: CO2 monitoring
"Gary Martin is learning how to use a monitor"
"I'm setting up the monitoring protocols"
"Monitoring will start probably next week"
"The one meter purchased cost $5,000"
3. Gavin re: air quality issues
"Need to think how to ventilate a building like this"
"[children & teacher] Symptoms are important to develop hypotheses"
"Our traditional experiences of inspection need to be changed"
"In the older part of the building [KHS] unit ventilators don't run unless heat is on"
4. Gil re: air purifiers
"Air purifying units will do no harm"
5. Gavin re: carpeting in the classrooms
"Don't want to see kids sleeping or lying on carpets"
"Not a good idea for them to sit on or lie on"
6. Gavin re: cleaning and maintenance
"[he] Hasn't received quantities of cleaning solvents used"
"Asked Nancy Harris again for it yesterday"
"Heater fins hadn't been cleaned for years"
7. Gil re: pod that was demolished
"Saw visible mold inside wall cavity"
"Water coming through the brick veneer"
"No way to remediate [the pod]"
"I came up with the idea of a bubble isolation chamber and to create negative pressure"
"Room 28 just outside the modular"
Under questioning by members of the BOE at the September 24th Westport Board of Education meeting, Elliott Landon explained his desire to seek funding to re-point brick at all the town schools instead of getting data first and then requesting funds by stating "I would rather be safe than sorry".
Landon didn't answer when questioned on why he wouldn't "rather be safe than sorry" and let parents install air filters at their cost in their children's classrooms.
At the September 24th Westport Board of Education meeting a parent in a third grade classroom with a functioning air purifier asked why the school administration and Landon refused to allow a teacher across the hall to plug in a matching air purifier that another parent had purchased for another third grade room.
Landon forcefully declared that this parent was wrong and that no such air purifier existed across the hall.
A few minutes later, the parent who purchased the non-existent air purifier spoke. She stated that it did exist, that she and her husband bought it on the recommendation of their child's doctor. She stated that it was in the classroom and that the school administration would not allow it to be operated.
Since the BOE meeting last month, the administration has disconnected the original air purifier that was running in the third grade class. We now have two third grade classrooms with non-operating air purifiers.
At the September 24th Westport Board of Education meeting, there was extensive questioning of Elliott Landon by parents about his refusal to allow HEPA air purifiers in the classrooms.
A number of parents offered to pay for the units and would match the single air purifier currently functioning in one of the classrooms (also parent purchased). A parent with a prior sick child at KHS stated that their kid was better since the purifier was installed.
When pressed by a parent and RTM member on why air purifiers were not allowed, Landon quoted 'policy'. When the same parent pressed on what policy he was referring to, Landon admitted there was nothing in writing. When pressed on why parent requests were being denied, he said it was his decision based on advice he had received. When pressed on whether it was legal or health advice, Landon tried to avoid a clear answer and admitted that legal advice has set his personal decision not to allow parents to purchase and install air purifiers in the classrooms at KHS.
After questions from the parents and BOE, Elliott agreed to review his decision by Friday the 28th.
His decision was a continued refusal to allow the installation of air filters in KHS classrooms.
During questioning by the Board of Education at the September 24th meeting on the lack of window pulls in classrooms at KHS (that would allow teachers to open windows and improve air flow per Gil's recommendation) Nancy Harris, Elliott's right hand, stated that her provider had been unable to secure them. She offered no time frame for getting window pulls in every class even though the BOE, Maintenance Review Committee and parents wanted it done.
A parent who spoke was stunned by Nancy's inability to find window pulls and remarked that she found them the prior week in a few minutes for minimum cost after searching on Google.
It is going to take creative solutions to get the air quality improved at KHS per the MRC recommendations. We hope that Nancy doesn't consider Google or the Internet to be a creative solution.
At the Sept 24th Board of Education meeting, seven items were on the original agenda. Continued questions on KHS air quality was number seven. The night went roughly as follows:
Meeting schedule 8:00 pm
Meeting start 8:15 pm
Item 1 start 8:30 pm
Item 1 end 11:10 pm
Item 2 start 11:20 pm
1:30 am parents get to speak on KHS as part of item #2
after 2:00 am meeting adjourned
Remaining items were postponed.
We were heartened by the 60 or so King's Highway Elementary School parents who were present at the meeting. Of those who arrived at 8:00pm, some 40 of them were still present at 1:30am when public questions were allowed on item 2 on the agenda.
A number of concerned parents, some with sick children, spoke for the first time at a BOE meeting and expressed their frustration with Landon and the school administration.
