Posted by Sharon on 12/14/09

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The following article makes Linda May appear to be as sane
and ethical as anyone else involved in this school's IAQ
issue.

http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-i-2009-12-03-
202345.112113_Schools_Mum_on_Mold_Mystery.html

2009-12-03 Articles
Schools Mum on Mold Mystery

by Paul C. Clark
Staff Writerwrite the authorDecember 03, 2009
Guilford County Schools has reached the most ludicrous, but
always most likely, outcome to the long-running Oak Ridge
Elementary School mystery: no smoking gun as to the cause
of the symptoms reported for years by teachers and
students; no one willing to take the legal risk of even
suggesting one, or of declaring the entire incident a case
of mass hysteria; and school administrators, despite having
spent in the neighborhood of $1.5 million on the school,
scurrying to send students back to the school, which has
been closed since June.

The four-year-long legal, environmental and medical farce
reached its height of asininity at the school board's
meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 1, when paid-by-the-hour school
board attorney Jill Wilson dope-slapped school board member
Paul Daniels and Guilford County Schools Chief Operations
Officer Leo Bobadilla for even talking about talking about
what is actually wrong, or not wrong, with the school. Oak
Ridge students have been split among three other schools
since a wave of headaches, respiratory problems and other
symptoms forced its closure.

You heard that right. The school board spent four years and
a million and a half dollars on testing and remediation,
called in the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health (NIOSH), part of the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention – the gold standard in figuring out
what is wrong with public buildings – spent months running
around fixing things NIOSH and a big-dollar New England
consulting firm, Turner Group, wouldn't exactly say were
the problem with the building, and yet no one will talk
about what anybody found out.

Lord knows there is data out there. Guilford County Schools
has released reams (no exaggeration) of testing results.
The school has had a recurring mold problem, a questionable
heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, is
reported to have had a host of problems during construction
(whose fault, a current lawsuit will have to determine),
and has generated a passel of reported symptoms ranging
from the scary – spontaneous nosebleeds – to the bizarre –
spontaneous puberty – as if elementary school students
didn't have problems enough. But no one – not Guilford
County Schools, not NIOSH and not the gaggle of highly paid
testing services that have examined the school, will say
what that data adds up to. And that doesn't seem to bother
most of the school board members.

Daniels, who tries to ask questions that need to be asked –
and that thousands of viewers watching the televised school
board members are probably screaming at their TV screens to
be asked, but that are somehow considered too gauche for
the other school board members to bring up – still lacks
the confidence to just ask them, whatever the rest of the
mildly-divorced-from-reality school board members think. In
this case, he hemmed and hawed, starting off with a
masterpiece of understatement – that there were "a couple
of lingering questions" about Oak Ridge. Truer, or more
obvious, words were never spoken.

Daniels asked if there were any concrete results of the
investigations, or any clear medical determinations on the
reported symptoms.

Guilford County Schools Western Region Superintendent
Angelo Kidd, who was fielding questions about Oak Ridge at
the time, responded that he couldn't really figure out what
Daniels was asking. That made Kidd sound a little dim, even
given that the question as posed wasn't a model of clarity.
Anyone in the audience could have translated Daniels'
questions for him: What caused hundreds of Oak Ridge
students and teachers to report a wave of symptoms, has
that cause been remedied, and when, and why, is Guilford
County Schools moving students back into Oak Ridge
Elementary School?

As Daniels asked more probing questions, Kidd covered
himself in less and less glory, fumbling to reply. "We do
know we've had issues in the building," he said. "The
complaints were building for years."

It took $1.5 million, the relocation of 700 elementary
students and the top experts in the country to determine
that the school has issues? Say it ain't so, Angelo!

Daniels continued doggedly, sharpening his questions. If
there were objectively verifiable health conditions,
wouldn't someone have said what caused them? Is anyone
willing to say mold is, or isn't, to blame? Have outside
doctors diagnosed any widespread disease among students
that can be environmentally caused?

At that point, Wilson stepped in, telling the school board
she wouldn't advise any of the school system's
administrators to analyze the findings. Daniels looked
understandably perplexed by the statement. The Oak Ridge
mystery has played out in banner headlines, screaming
television spots and public meetings, has been the subject
of years of debate and worry among parents, has drawn
national attention – and no one can hint at its solution?
And the school board is supposed to happily tell parents to
send their kids back into the school without saying a word
of what its herculean efforts have uncovered?

Bobadilla kicked in that the determination of the Guilford
County Department of Public Health, made in July – before
the school system spent hundreds of thousands more dollars
investigating and supposedly fixing the school – that the
symptoms were caused by poor ventilation, was the best
information on the cause of the symptoms. That echoes what
school officials have said privately, as they clearly think
that at least some of the symptom reports were caused by
the HVAC system, or by media-generated hysteria. But even
the health department said the reported symptoms were
statistically significant, and no one has yet explained why
a virtually new school has had leaks, wet floors and
strange sewage smells since even before its reopening.

Even that much of a hint was too much for Wilson, who
focused on Daniels' offhand statement that he knew
epidemiology was not Bobadilla's area of expertise. Wilson
said that Daniels was correct in suggesting they had no
expertise – her lawyerly way of blunting the liability risk
of anything Bobadilla might blurt out. But Bobadilla wasn't
blurting.

The net result of what Bobadilla and Kidd wouldn't say was
that the school system is planning to send students back to
Oak Ridge Elementary School in January or February, without
hinting what was, or wasn't, wrong with the school, to
protect the school system from any lawsuits that might
arise.

It's hard to see that tactic working. Some Oak Ridge
parents are enraged because they think there's something
wrong with the school and aren't sure it has been fixed.
Others, probably more, are enraged because their children
have been crammed into ill-suited, cramped temporary
quarters for months. All the parents are united in wanting
something resembling closure on the issue, and are running
out of patience with the school system. The reams of test
data provide ammunition enough for lawsuits on either side,
no matter what administrators and school board members do
or don't say.

School board member Darlene Garrett tried one last time to
get an answer to the smoking-gun question. "Have we found
any culprits so far?" she asked.

Wilson stepped in again, saying the subject wasn't
appropriate for open session. School board Chairman Alan
Duncan told her to raise the question again in closed
session, of which the school board had two that
evening. "You ought to get an answer to that question," he
said.

Whatever the answer to that question, parents, teachers,
students and taxpayers footing the bill for the Oak Ridge
clean-up aren't likely to hear it, at least until discovery
ends in the school system's lawsuit against Lyon
Construction of King, North Carolina, or any future
lawsuits. Lyon denies any wrongdoing in the construction of
Oak Ridge, and says it is being made a scapegoat for the
school board's decisions.

Guilford County Schools is trying to play it both ways –
downplaying any problems with the school, to limit its
liability in parent lawsuits, and claiming major problems
in the school's construction, to win its suit against Lyon
Construction. It's an odd balancing act.

The school board also unanimously re-elected Duncan
chairman, and school board member Amos Quick vice chairman,
in what has to be the most yawn-inducing board
reorganization every year in Guilford County. No board
members nominated other candidates, and there was no
discussion.

"We look forward to another year," Duncan said. "And it's
going to be an adventurous one, our superintendent warns
us."

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