Anonymous wrote:Emails are also not being responded to by Board of Ed, RTES, and MCPS central admin. If you had a child there, would this be acceptable?

They sent the Director of the Department of Facilities Management, a Councilmember, the BOE President, the Associate Superintendent, and various other MCPS staff to a meeting just two days ago, and you're bitching that they haven't responded immediately to an influx of angry emails from "outraged" parents?

You may belong at a private.

What, exactly, do you want them to say? That a new air conditioner will fall out of the sky? That all 880 RT kids will be bussed to Bethesda from now on?

Please check your "outrage" and try to be reasonable. It's a problem. They're aware, and they're on it. You may not get to know every single detail of the remediation process. Deal therewith. Honestly, how is knowing which classrooms were affected going to help? Can you imagine the shitshow this would become if the parents started trying to move all those kids just so that Dear Larla wouldn't suck up an extra six spores in her day?. They're doing the best they can with what they currently have, and trying to push paperwork through for more. This is not an overnight process. Be outraged when it's still not fixed next summer.

As for the "there was mold in August" bit, they cleaned it up. They probably thought that was the extent of it. It's back, and they're addressing it.

Calm your life down.

Anonymous wrote:If I was a teacher there, I would seriously be considering contating OSHA or a class action lawyer if I was getting sick.

Are any teachers getting sick?

Speaking of OSHA, here is OSHA on mold:

https://www.osha.gov/dts/shib/shib101003.html

RT Parent here. The outrage is due to the fact that mold was actually discovered the week before school started (but you had to attend the in-person meeting Monday to know this). As of today, parents have not been notified of which classrooms were impacted. If I was a teacher there, I would seriously be considering contating OSHA or a class action lawyer if I was getting sick. Teachers spend way more time exposed to the mold than the kids. In the course of 2 hours of a meeting, no one from MCPS spoke about health. The nurse was called on to respond to a question, but responded that fewer kids have been sick....but maybe this is because they are going to ERs, urgent cares, and other health care professionals.

Also discussed was that several other schools have mold, caused by moisture, but exacerbated by aging HVAC systems. For non-Rolling Terrace parents, you may want to reach out to MCPS to increase awareness about this issue and exert pressure on MCPS to be more forthcoming about which schools are impacted and in which classrooms mold has been found.

Emails are also not being responded to by Board of Ed, RTES, and MCPS central admin. If you had a child there, would this be acceptable?

Anonymous wrote:So:

9/3 mold problem discovered at school
9/4 mold remediation begins
9/5 no school, mold remediation continues
9/6 parents informed, mold remediation continues

Which means that:

9/3 "Oh, crap! Mold?! What do we do? (basic research begins)"
9/4 "Clean what we can see and call in backup/pros/higher ups"
9/5 (bust ass cleaning)
9/6 "Now that we have some actual information collected, typed up, xeroxed and ready to distribute, let everyone know what's up. (remediation continues)"

Still not seeing where the outrage comes from. Unless MCPS is expected to have magical beings waiting in the wings so there's zero lag time between problem and solution, this seems like a pretty damn timely response. I'm sure some parents would've loved a personal phone call and consultation, but I don't see what info could've been provided sooner, even if someone did have/take the time to make 880 personal calls.

Anonymous wrote:"What I don't understand is the outrage." RT parent here-
It is the fact that mold was a huge problem detected on 9/3/13, Around the clock mold remediation was taking place WHILE students with health problems like asthma were sitting in the classrooms, and no one bothered to tell the parents ANY of this until a brief letter went home in kids backpacks on 9/6/13 without any mention of the potential to cause health problems in kids with asthma/allergies/immune system problems. We have over 880 kids in our school. MCPS blew this one big time by not communicating clearly and effectively.

So:

9/3 mold problem discovered at school
9/4 mold remediation begins
9/5 no school, mold remediation continues
9/6 parents informed, mold remediation continues

Yes? Does mold remediation expose children to mold? Is it reasonable to expect that parents of kids with asthma/allergies/immune system problems will know, without MCPS telling them, that mold is a potential problem for their kids? What would you have wanted MCPS to do?

Anonymous wrote:"What I don't understand is the outrage." RT parent here-
It is the fact that mold was a huge problem detected on 9/3/13, Around the clock mold remediation was taking place WHILE students with health problems like asthma were sitting in the classrooms, and no one bothered to tell the parents ANY of this until a brief letter went home in kids backpacks on 9/6/13 without any mention of the potential to cause health problems in kids with asthma/allergies/immune system problems. We have over 880 kids in our school. MCPS blew this one big time by not communicating clearly and effectively.

Umm - Lack of communication from the school and MCPS. Pretty common. At a "W" cluster elementary a few years back, we had a pipe burst during a blizzard. Kids came back to school with mold everywhere because the water had flooded two classrooms. When the heat came back on, but know one knew the pipes had burst, the situation caused the growth of mold. The water damage led the school to take out the ceiling tiles and floor tiles in the school. All of this was going on while kids were in school. The tiles were made of asbestos. So our kids and staff were not only exposed to lots (I mean the mold was growing all over the walls bad) but also they all were exposed to asbestos particles while in school. The school nor the cleanup crew did not have the proper equipment nor training on how to dispose asbestos materials. We were told after the fact by a little note on the front door.

You need to lower your expectations when it comes to communication from MCPS. They didn't drop the ball big time - they simply did what they always do: communicate poorly, vaguely, and in an untimely fashion. Mold, child predators, financial irregularities etc. etc. etc. They usually eventually get around to kind of letting parents know maybe a little bit of what is going on.

"What I don't understand is the outrage." RT parent here-
It is the fact that mold was a huge problem detected on 9/3/13, Around the clock mold remediation was taking place WHILE students with health problems like asthma were sitting in the classrooms, and no one bothered to tell the parents ANY of this until a brief letter went home in kids backpacks on 9/6/13 without any mention of the potential to cause health problems in kids with asthma/allergies/immune system problems. We have over 880 kids in our school. MCPS blew this one big time by not communicating clearly and effectively.

When my residential AC unit stopped working, it dumped water all over the place. This isn't uncommon. Water leaks are an invitation to mold. In addition to being an easy way to spread mold spores from room to room, an AC unit that's going haywire can create a temperature difference that creates condensation. Condensation = a breeding ground for mold. We live in a humid climate that is naturally full of mold spores. Any assistance from dysfunctional equipment just gives them a boost. Mix this with a few weeks of high heat and humidity and you get mold. This isn't hard to understand.

What I don't understand is the outrage. The visible mold was addressed quickly, the facility was thoroughly cleaned, measures have been taken to control the moisture levels and inhibit further mold growth and the situation is being closely monitored. Pretty much anyone who can be has been alerted to the issue, and there has been a sincere response to the concerns of the parents/teachers/administrators. What more are people hoping to receive at this point? Magical anti-mold fairies?

Anonymous wrote:Actually it was the a/c system that caused the mold, or at least that is what the Director of MCPS Facilities Management and the one pager to RT parents that another poster mentioned above explained. The mix of high humidity, HVAC control failure, and malfunctioning/changed settings in classroom thermostats were the cause. The facilities guy also admitted repeatedly that nearly all parts of the HVAC were already 'past their expected lifetime'.

And of course there's no need to complain about mold if a school doesn't have mold. Not sure how that would be relevant to the fact that this school had mold and parents were not informed until two weeks after it was discovered.

Another fact from last night's meeting was that there were other reports of mold in MCPS schools, but RT was the worst.

Well if high humidity was the problem, won't it go away naturally during the winter months? I think you misunderstood something because I never have heard of an HVAC system being the cause of mold. If it is the high humidity, just get dehumidifiers for the affected areas - simple and cheap fix. Schools lasted for decades without AC.