"Been There Done That"
Why Doesn't School Board Member Leslie Moriarty Want The Hamilton Avenue School Parents To Independently Test The Contaminated Modular Classrooms?Gina DeMartis' son had constant headaches and occasional nose bleeds. Mina Bibeault's daughter complained of frequent headaches and burning eyes, while her son often had a runny nose. Donna Ortoli's son also suffered from similar health ailments.
These three Hamilton Avenue School parents are among those worried that their children's health symptoms are linked to conditions at the modular school building. Officials shut down the school last month after officials found a significant mold infestation in the roof eaves and crawl space.
"My child has a cold now, is it related?" DeMartis asked. "Maybe the mold spores are on the books they got from the classroom? You don't know what to believe anymore."
With Hamilton Avenue School students dispersed to different schools across the town, parents are calling on the Board of Education to allow their own experts into the moldy modular buildings to perform their own tests and investigation....
"If the Board of Ed has nothing to hide, they should allow us in," Mina Bibeault said. "Board of Ed, if you feel 120-percent confident in your results, you should roll out the red carpet."
...Another indoor air quality specialist also not connected to the Hamilton Avenue School testing said there are no hard and fast rules.
"It's very hard to comment because there's no one size fits all answer," said Paula Schenck, assistant director of the Farmington-based Center for Indoor Environments and Health at the University of Connecticut. "You have to look at the individual situation."
She said while mold is easily cleaned from some furniture, particularly metal, it is more difficult to rid from paper and other organic materials. Schenck said that while some small amount of mold can be naturally occuring indoors, it should be kept to an absolutely minimum.
"It's complicated because what you don't want is mold growing on materials inside," Schenck said. "Mold is a very normal part of our ecology but you don't want it growing inside. It's not a healthy environment inside."
In addition to mold, parents also fear the presence of formaldehyde in the modulars. Schwartz said the chemical is present in ultra-low concentrations, but parents also dispute that finding and want their own tests. Formaldehyde causes cancer in lab animals and may cause cancer in humans, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"What irks me about the formaldehyde is it could be a good five years before my kids get diagnosed," Bibeault said.
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For Greenwich’s worst public schools administrators, failure is not an option.
Literally.
Believe it or not, the Greenwich Board Of Education is considering a request to drop the label “underperforming” for failing school administrators . Instead the Greenwich BOE would declare these failing school administrators “Greenwich Priority” administrators.“When high paid administrators are labeled as underachieving, I don’t see what it serves other than just to call them out,” said School Board Of Education Chairman Nancy Weissler. “When the single family home owner hears ‘underperforming,’ school superintendent the average taxpayer thinks the students might be underperforming too.”
Gee, Nancy, I can’t imagine why.
If we could just keep Betty "You Can Trust Me" Sternberg around for at least ten more years, then we can have an entire generation of students being graduated who can’t read their own arrest reports or calculate their own bail, and then the single family home owners and taxpayers just might get the crazy idea that this is some sort of failure.
"It’s just not fair!", Nancy and Betty were heard to scream in a Board Of Education conference room.
Everyday people in what failed school administrators call the “dreaded private sector” can only shake our heads.
If only our job performance were judged by standards this low. If only we could get our boss to reclassify “losing the company’s top three most valuable clients” as “an opportunity to look forward in a positive manner.”
Alas, no. We’re stuck in the real world, where results matter far more than labels.
The world where, theoretically, our public school students will one day be expected to get jobs and pay their own bills. If not, they may end up on the unemployment line.
Or as it’s known at Greenwich Board Of Education, the "Opportunity To Look Forward In A Positive Manner" Line.
Maybe School Board Of Education Chairman Nancy Weissler Should Keep Our Incompetent School Superintendent And Her Failed, er, "Priority One" administrators around a little longer.
The word around town is that these high paid "Priority One" school administrators are refusing accept failure. Their strategy is for kids who can’t do basic math, will be refered to as “non-traditionally enumerated.
There are now rumors that Greenwich "Priority One" administrators are developing new alternative testing strategies - commonly known as “cheating”.
Next the "Priority One" school administrators will want to create a new and improved grading system.
Advanced (“smart”); Proficient (“competent”); Needs Improvement (“good enough for government work”) and Warning (“Fries with that?”).
Like a fish a school system rots from the head down.
Featured Greenwich Blog Post:
International Potluck Party
By claudette
...Some dishes on the menu were, curry goat, curry chicken, kugel, rum punch, rice and peas, black eye peas and short ribs Trinidadian roti, and many desserts that represent how sweet it is to live in the United States of America the country we now ALL call home.
The guests at the party were a wonderful reminder of how positive diversity is. There were guests from the Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Venezuela, Ireland, Italy, England, Canada, Greece, Holland, Puerto Rico, India and some other countries that I can not think of (too much rum punch). Most of the guests now call Greenwich home, which shows that Greenwich is more diverse than what some people think. This is another great reason why Gary and I chose to call Greenwich home....
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