Parents
file suit over mold
Wash. Twp. group wants students transferred
Tuesday,
August 10, 2004,
By TIM ZATZARINY JR.
Courier-Post Staff , WOODBURY
A group of parents who contend the
Washington
Township school district mishandled mold problems in two middle schools
filed a lawsuit Monday demanding that the district send the students to
another school in the fall.
The parents, members of Washington Township Parents Who Care, filed
the lawsuit against the local school board on behalf of 13 former and
current students at
Orchard
Valley and Chestnut Ridge middle schools.
Mold in the ventilation systems at both schools aggravated their
children's existing health problems, the parents contend.
Two of the students named as plaintiffs are set to enter
Orchard
Valley in the fall. Their health would be harmed by attending the school,
their parents say.
"The buildings have become the center of a growing public health
crisis that has affected a number of the township's most vulnerable
residents: 12- to 15-year-old middle school students," according to the
lawsuit, which was filed in Superior Court.
The plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction allowing the students to
attend other schools until the mold problem is permanently fixed, along
with unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
They also want the district to start a fund to pay for medical
monitoring for all affected current and former students up to age 20.
In a related complaint filed Monday, the parents seek a temporary
injunction forcing the district to send affected students to
Bunker Hill
Middle School or pay for them to attend school outside the district when
classes begin Sept. 7. A Superior Court judge is expected to hear the
injunction request within the next two weeks, said the plaintiffs'
attorneys, Louis Giansante and Carol R. Cobb of Moorestown.
Although the district has taken steps to permanently fix the
problem, that process won't be finished by the start of the school year,
the parents said in the lawsuit.
School board solicitor Joseph Betley said Monday that the district
has been open with parents about the mold issue since problems surfaced in
1990, two years after the schools were built.
"The parents believe there's been a cover-up and I believe that's
an unfair criticism with no basis to support it," Betley said.
In September 2003, the district's engineering firm determined that
classroom ventilators at the affected schools were ineffectively
extracting humidity from the air, creating a breeding ground for mold in
classrooms and inside the ventilation systems.
Throughout the school year, dozens of students and staff members at
Orchard
Valley
and Chestnut Ridge complained of health problems attributed to mold. In
the spring, 28 students were transferred to
Thomas
Jefferson Elementary School, where they were taught by a middle-school
teacher.
In May, the district began a two-phase cleanup that includes
replacing insulation within classroom ventilators and installing
industrial dehumidifiers in classrooms. The cleanup is expected to be
complete in time for the start of school.
Local residents will be asked in December to approve through a
referendum $5 million in bond funding to replace the ventilation systems
at Chestnut Ridge and
Orchard
Valley. If the referendum passes, work would begin next summer, school
officials said. The total cost of the projects is estimated at $10.5
million, half of which would be paid by the state.
"The referendum might not even go through," said Maureen Casey, a
plaintiff in the lawsuit along with her son, Phillip, 13.
Casey contends mold at
Orchard
Valley aggravated her son's asthma, causing him to miss several weeks of
school. This fall, Phillip will attend seventh grade at Friends School in
Harrison.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit also ask the district to create a
standing committee made up of parents and board members to address air
quality issues in the schools.
The district already has such a committee and the board is awaiting the
results of air quality tests before deciding whether to send affected
students to Bunker Hill in September, Betley said. |
