Janitors, parents and community members will file complaints with five government agencies today detailing evidence pointing to possible mold in the New May Whitney School in Lake Zurich.  The complaints also outline concerns that previous air quality testing in the school may not have been reliable.

The witnesses are filing complaints because they fear students, teachers, and school service workers are put at risk with every day that passes without intervention.

School Janitors describe how their employer Aramark Corp., Lake Zurich School District 95’s cleaning contractor, sent them to replace ceiling tiles covered in what may have been mold in the New May Whitney School prior to the school’s reopening.  The janitors reported the substance made them dizzy and sick and that they could not work more than 20 minutes without breaking to get fresh air.

“When I started to remove the tiles, I noticed what looked like yellow and green mold on them,” said Fermin Bedolla, one of the janitors filing the complaints about potential mold in the New May Whitney School.  “My co-worker and I worked for 15 to 20 minutes on the tiles and then we left to go outside.   It was so dusty that I was sneezing.  It was hard to breathe.”

The janitors are joined in the complaints by parents and community members who witnessed problems they believe could be connected to mold in the school.

“I personally walked through the building in late August 2007 and saw stained ceiling tiles, towels sopping up water in window frames, fans blowing on wet carpeting, rust evident on metal doors and ceiling supports,” said Lake Zurich resident Virginia Johnson in her statement to the agencies.  “I also saw parent volunteers painting walls and cleaning with no apparent training in looking for the possibility of mold or other health-threatening conditions.  I would at the very least have expected the district to hire trained professionals to work in that building which they knew full well had not been ‘highly’ maintained for several years.”

Though District 95 said it has tested the indoor air quality in the New May Whitney School, the District hired an unaccredited testing firm to perform those tests, and some parents say those results raised more questions than they answered.

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“Because the test results did not make sense to me, I turned to the Illinois Department of Public Health for their expert help in evaluating these recent indoor air quality surveys,” said Carolyn Fitzgerald, a Lake Zurich parent who removed her children from District 95 schools after her questions about mold in the New May Whiteny school were not adequately answered. “Some of the issues raising red flags were:  the suspected miscalibration of their equipment as they recorded indoor relative humidity as 99.9%, basically fog through both buildings, the fact that the lab was not accredited, and the final comment and I quote, ‘It looks like the school district appears to be following their own private consulting firm’s recommendations rather than that of governmental agencies.’”

Because no one government agency has clear jurisdiction over mold in schools, the community members and janitors filed complaints with two federal agencies—the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Disease Control—and three state agencies—the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Department of Labor.  Information about the health risks related to mold is available at www.osha.gov/sltc/molds and www.cdc.gov/mold/.

Parents and other community members began raising concerns about the indoor air quality at the New May Whitney School in 2007 when the formerly closed school, which had been used as a storage facility, was quickly reopened to house students displaced from the connecting Old May Whitney School after the discovery of toxic mold.  At least one parent who questioned the district’s testing says she was banned from the school.

Recently, parents, with the help of State Senator Ed Sullivan, began a petition campaign to call on the school district to hold a public hearing on the mold concerns.  So far, more than 100 Lake Zurich residents have signed the petition.

School service workers have been doing their best to improve the quality of cleaning and food services in Chicago suburban schools, but without a voice in the process, they have faced steep obstacles in bringing about change.  School service workers who provide cleaning, food preparation and other services to Chicagoland schools are working to form a union with SEIU Local 1 to be able to raise their concerns without fear of being fired or disciplined and to improve working conditions, end poverty level wages, and win access to quality, affordable health insurance.

For more information, visit www.cleanandhealthyschools.org.