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.
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