07/11/08 Reader Submitted Comments - The BOE Needs To Be More Transparent - They Should either confirm or deny the rumor

Dear Members of the Board, etc.

There is a very solid rumor circulating that under current consideration is moving Hamilton Avenue School students to the Glenville School and moving Glenville School students to the modulars because the construction will not be complete on the new Hamilton Avenue School building.

To remind everyone,

Glenville School has been found to be educationally unsound with poor air quality by TWO Boards of Education and TWO superintendents;

At a meeting of the current Board of Education, this option was removed from the list of options devised by the "facilities" committee that was formed to look into options;

At a meeting of the Board of Education, a member stated that it would be unfair to have Glenville staff move more than once in a given year, yet for the second year in a row, it is again an "option" for Hamilton Avenue Staff.

This Board needs to listen to the community, in total, not just those that will agree with them. There are many parents of Hamilton Avenue students that DO NOT AGREE with this option.

Not only is Glenville School educationally unsound, it has leaked, unchecked, for years, thereby a virtual petri dish for mold. Our children and staff and parents have had to contend with mold for far too long. It is criminal to expect them to do so yet again.

Put more effort into getting our new school completed and Glenville construction started. Do WHATEVER it takes to get this done, but DO NOT put our children in a building that has been deemed educationally unsound.


Laura J. DiBella

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04/06/08 - "My son was in the hardest hit classroom," Laura DiBella said. "I want to find out what they found in there."

Leslie Moriarty, speaks from her board of education throne.

Quote:

"If they are going to limit our tester to places that we need to have tested, we have a concern with that," said Laura DiBella, a Hamilton Avenue School parent who had lobbied for an independently hired expert to perform the tests. "Our tester should be allowed to test where their tester tested."

Story:

Parents' expert to run mold tests

Reversing a decision that earned them much criticism, school officials have agreed to allow a parent-hired expert to run environmental tests on the Hamilton Avenue School modular buildings.

The Board of Education, which has hired its own environmental hygienist, recently told Hamilton Avenue School parents that their own expert would be allowed to run tests in the modular building. But their hygienist will be restricted to certain areas, a condition that does not sit well with some parents....

Betty "You Can Trust Me" Sternberg And
Leslie "I Am Full Of Crap" Moriarty
Are Continuing To Mishandle And Cover Up The Hamilton Avenue Classroom Contamination Situation.

Leslie Moriarty, a Board of Education member, said that disturbing mold-infested areas, such as in the roof eaves or inside the walls, in order to perform tests could help to spread the mold. Officials don't want the mold spores to spread to other parts of the modular building because they want to leave open the possibility of remediating the situation and reusing the structure.

"The concern is that when you open the wall and disturb the space, it comes into the building," Moriarty said. "An option is to reuse the building and so we don't want to make that job more difficult."

But parents, such as DiBella, said that the whole point of the resetting was to confirm that the earlier tests done by the school-hired hygienist were accurate and that the mold infestation presents no health hazards.

Please Read More About Leslie "I Am Full Of Crap" Moriarty....

Full Story

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A true terror alert, would be to wake up one morning and to find out the Greenwich Board Of Education is running the country.

- Reader Submitted Comment

03/14/08 - More testing is needed to determine the safety of the classrooms before architects and engineers will go in to investigate the mold

The Little Children Of Hamilton Avenue "Were Never In Danger", But The Big Strong Architects And Engineers Told School Officials That "More Testing Was Needed" Before They "Can Go In And Investigate" The Cause Of The Mold.

Betty "You Can Trust Me" Sternberg Knows What's Best For The Little Children Of Hamilton Avenue And Glenville Schools.

The Insensitive And Patronizing School Superintendent Betty Sternberg Thinks That Hamilton Avenue Parents Are A Bunch Of Silly Little Cry Babies For Standing Up And Protecting Their Children.

Quote:

“I don’t want to minimize the disruption and the hardship, but I also want to say that sometimes I have found that children are more easily adaptable to this kind of thing than our adults,” Betty Sternberg said. “It’s incumbent upon the adults involved in this to make the best of a difficult situation.”

For The Record:

If A Small Child Says No To Betty "You Can Trust Me" Sternberg, Then That Child Would Most Likely Be Suspended From School.

With Return of Mold, Students Are Displaced
New York Times

By SARAH N. LYNCH

FOR nearly three years, students at the Hamilton Avenue School have been reporting to class in temporary buildings while their school was being rebuilt after an outbreak of mold prompted the district...

...long construction delays have continued to wear their patience as their children have had to make due without a gymnasium and other facilities that children in other Greenwich schools take for granted. This month, they received more bad news: The mold is back.

This time, it was discovered in the temporary buildings after the school brought in a consultant in February to fix a leak in the roof...

...The Greenwich Boys and Girls Club offered to take in 75 children for the week to help ease the burden, but none of the children received regular instruction ...

...Furious, parents staged a picket line outside the Board of Education building on March 3. That evening, they returned to the building for an emergency meeting where they were told that all Hamilton Avenue children would be dispersed by grade level and class to six schools throughout the town, possibly for the rest of the year. School officials hope the rebuilt school will be ready by the fall.

The solution did not please many parents.

“I think they are using our children like little pawn pieces in a chess game,” said Mina Bibeault, who has two young children in Hamilton Avenue. “They can just move the kids around without considering anything. They knew there were leaks in the building.”...

...But the series of incidents has revived long-held feelings among some parents that their school gets short shrift because it is in a poorer section of town. When they picketed, some of the parents held signs that read: “Rich town, poor school.”

Laura DiBella, the former president of the Hamilton Avenue School Parent Teacher Association, said officials were slow to respond from the beginning of the mold problem. “I’m not saying this particular Board of Education or this particular group of people under the superintendent feels that way, but a lot of people assume that poor people are stupid and that it’s easy to get things by them,” Mrs. DiBella said....

But Betty "You Can Trust Me" Sternberg Says Mima Bibeault And Laura DiBella Are Wrong...

...Sternberg said that in her year and a half as superintendent, she had “looked very carefully at issues of equitable allocation of resources” and that Hamilton Avenue had “received more resources because they have greater needs than other communities.”...

FOR ONCE BETTY "You Can Trust Me" STERNBERG IS RIGHT

FOR EXAMPLE:

Hamilton Avenue Children Got Exposed To More Contamination Than Any Other Greenwich School Child. In fact, They Got So Much More Contamination That School District Architects And Engineers Want More Tests Before They Can "Go In To" Investigate The Cause Of The Contamination.

....The Board of Education set up a committee to investigate the causes of the mold, said Nancy Weissler, the chairwoman of the board. Officials were told last week that more testing is needed to determine the safety of the temporary buildings before architects and engineers can go in to investigate the cause of the mold.

ALSO:

Schools didn't follow mold policy
Greenwich Time, CT - Mar 13, 2008
By Hoa Nguyen

Five years ago, when mold problems began surfacing at the old Hamilton Avenue School and other buildings, school district officials ...

03/05/08 - The Unionized (Teamstewrs) School District Custodial Staff Are Suggesting That There Might Be A School District Coverup At Ham Ave School.

MORE NEWS ABOUT FORMALDEHYDE IN TRAILERS:

Toll of toxic trailers
New Statesman, UK - Mar 13, 2008
Emails from its legal department advised that testing for the toxin "would imply Fema ownership of the issue" and that the agency would have no option but ...
FEMA knew its trailers posed a risk Canon City Daily Record
Documents Feed Debate on FEMA Trailers The Associated Press
Trailers don’t pass muster Helena Independent Record

Formaldehyde Exposure Standards

On December 4, 1987, the U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a comprehensive regulation covering occupational exposure to formaldehyde at 29 CFR 1910.1048. This rule reduced the permissible exposure limits (PELs) to 0.75 part formaldehyde per million parts of air (ppm) as an 8-hour time-weighted average (TWA), and established a 2 ppm 15-minute short term exposure limit (STEL).

The comprehensive standard also included an "action level" of 0.5 ppm, measured as an 8-hour TWA, and provisions for employee formaldehyde exposure monitoring, medical surveillance, recordkeeping, emergency procedures, preferred methods to control formaldehyde exposure, selection of personal protective equipment, & hazard communication. OSHA's ruling was based upon consideration of new evidence including animal bioassays and epidemiological evidence, and the recognition of formaldehyde as a potential occupational carcinogen and its irritating and sensitizing effects.

Shame on

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Free speech is about as good as cause as the world has ever known. But, like the poor, it is always with us and gets shoved aside in favour of things which seem at some given moment more vital.
- Heywood Brown, The Miracle of Debs, "New York World", October 23, 1926

03/04/08 - First Selectman Peter Tesei promised to address the issue of accountability later on.

Why Can't Greenwich Politicians Hear What
Hamilton Avenue School Parents are Saying ......

When Are The Politicians Going To Listen To Common Sense:

We need to get rid of Superintendent of Schools Betty Sternberg and her very high paid administrators who have
failed our school children....

"Mr. Tesei, do not allow our children to be kicked to the curb for a third time by having their school family split up by a town that has for generations treated the western end in general, and Chickahominy specifically, as a trailer park and its residents as poor uneducated trailer trash," Laura DiBella, a Hamilton Avenue School parent said to loud applause.

"If it was a structural problem, why wasn't it fixed when we got it," said Sylvester Pecora, chairman of the Chickahominy Neighborhood Association. "Somebody should take responsibility for this fiasco and should be fired. This is the call I'm getting from the community and, you know, I have to agree."

Ham Ave. students to be scattered throughout district
Greenwich Time

By Hoa Nguyen

Hamilton Avenue School students will spend the rest of the year assigned to Old Greenwich, North Street, Glenville, Parkway, Cos Cob and Western Middle schools, officials told a packed audience at the Greenwich High School auditorium last night during an emergency Board of Education meeting.

Pre-kindergarten students will move to Old Greenwich and North Street schools, while kindergarten classes will be at Glenville School.

First-graders and those in a split first and second grade class will move to Parkway School.

Second-graders, third-graders and those in a split third and fourth grade class will attend Cos Cob School, while fourth-graders and fifth-graders will be in the Western Middle School building....

...Also, the Connecticut Mastery Test was to be administered starting today, but must be postponed for Hamilton Avenue School students because of the shutdown, officials said. The state requires the district to administer the CMT before the month is over, said Barbara Beaudin, the state's acting associate commissioner for assessment and accountability. Any postponement beyond March is highly unlikely, she said....

.... Additionally, the mold problems identified at the modular buildings will affect Glenville School. Students and staff had been hoping to move into the structures while waiting for their school to be rebuilt. The Board of Education expects to have an answer for Glenville School on where they will relocate to by March 27, officials said.

ALSO:

School officials scramble to put together relocation plan
Greenwich Time, CT - Mar 3, 2008
Board of Education officials said they are furiously working on a relocation plan for Hamilton Avenue School, with the goal of presenting an overview at ...

Parents protest school construction delays Greenwich Post, CT - Mar 3, 2008 With the modular classrooms closed for at least a week and the prospect of their children being dispersed to other schools, Hamilton Avenue School parents ...

What next for Ham Ave.? Board of Ed tries to keep homerooms ...
Greenwich Time, CT - Mar 3, 2008
By Martin B. Cassidy After closing Hamilton Avenue School for the upcoming week because of mold discovered in the walls of temporary classrooms, ..

03/03/08 - Parents Bring Protest To The "Oldie Moldie" School Administrators

Greenwich Roundup Photo

Headline:

Parents protest school construction delays

Reporter:

Ken Borsuk

Source:

Greenwich Post - Greenwich,CT

Quote:

“The Board of Education and town have failed us as a community,” PTA member Mina Bibeault told the Greenwich Post outside of the Havemeyer Building Monday morning. “They’ve failed us in so many ways. We want answers. Our kids mean something to us. We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, literally.”

Story:

With the modular classrooms closed for at least a week and the prospect of their children being dispersed to other schools, Hamilton Avenue School parents took to the streets in protest Monday morning.

More than 30 parents and children picked up signs and picketed outside the Board of Education offices in response to the news that the modular classrooms the students have been in since spring 2005 would be closed for at least this week due to mold concerns from a leaky roof. Hamilton Avenue parents and children walked with messages such as “Deja Vu, Shame on You,” “No More Lies,” “Rich Town, Poor School” and “This is Greenwich?”

An emergency school board meeting is scheduled for tonight at 7 p.m. in the Greenwich High School auditorium to discuss plans for the school. Nothing has been announced other than the school closure.

Ms. Sternberg and Board of Education Chairwoman Nancy Weissler could not be reached for comment before the meeting. The relocation plan is expected to be revealed tonight.

Parents have raised the point that the original building was deemed educationally unsound because of mold problems.

Construction problems have plagued the project since its inception and completion, which was originally expected in time to open the school last September, is now not expected until June, leaving parents visibly frustrated. Though the protest was not sanctioned by the school’s PTA, it was organized by PTA member Mina Bibeault. She said the effort was organized starting Sunday morning and a group of six parents made the signs....

....
“This could have all been avoided,” Ms. Bibeault said. “I don’t think we’re being told the truth and we really want the truth and the answers about what’s really happened. We have been in serious violation of fire codes since the beginning of the school year and that has not been addressed... This is being covered up by the mold issue. The mold issue definitely could have been addressed. We’ve had leaky roofs for almost a year now. We were putting band-aids on it because we thought we would be going to the new building. Shame on the Board of Education. Shame for not taking us more seriously and not taking the risk to our children more seriously.”
Ms. DiBella said she felt the board was not listening to the community. She said the community had received no information other than the school was closed and the meeting will be held tonight.

“They’re going to do what they’re going to do and to hell with what everybody else feels,” Ms. DiBella said. “There’s been no consensus. There’s been no discussion. There’s been no agreement. They haven’t even attempted to get us on board with whatever plans they have.”

A special meeting was held Sunday morning to discuss the issue. The meeting was called by Ms. Sternberg and was neither an official board meeting (because of an absence of enough board members to make a quorum) nor an official PTA meeting though Hamilton Avenue Principal Damaris Rau and Glenville Principal Marc D’Amico and PTA members from both schools attended. Press was not permitted to attend.

Greenwich police officers kept a watch on the protest to make sure pedestrian traffic wasn’t impacted. Officers were also deployed to the modulars to make sure all parents dropping off children knew the school was closed. Public Information Officer Lt. Daniel Allen said there were no incidents.

More:

Mold closes CT school for week
7Online.com, NY

(WABC)

-- A school in Connecticut was shut down because of mold. The Hamilton Avenue School will be closed all week while school officials try ...

School officials scramble to put together relocation plan

Board of Education officials said they are furiously working on a relocation plan for Hamilton Avenue School, with the goal of presenting an overview at tonight's public meeting and the details by Wednesday and Thursday. "We've got people working around the clock," district spokeswoman Kim Eves said. "There are so many details to work out in order to be able to logistically pull that off."

What next for Ham Ave.? Board of Ed tries to keep homerooms, grades together

After closing Hamilton Avenue School for the upcoming week because of mold discovered in the walls of temporary classrooms, education officials will reveal a plan tonight to discuss their plans to relocate students to other schools for the remainder of the school year.

03/02/08 - Another Administrative Screw Up - "They let it happen again. Shame on them. They should be fired," said Laura Dibella past PTA president.

MOLDS FLOURISH, ILLNESS PREVAILS

Your Tax Dollars NOT At Work
Parents Are Infuriated And Outraged

Current PTA co-chair Dawn Nethercott says, "I'm appalled!"

Ham Ave. modulars shut over mold fears

By Christine Hall
Greenwich Time Staff Writer

Hamilton Avenue School will close for a week starting tomorrow, and relocate completely for the rest of the school year, because of mold found inside the walls of the temporary classrooms the school occupies at Western Middle School....

... The Hamilton Avenue School students and staff will be relocated for the remainder of the school year, a statement released by the schools yesterday states, but it isn't known where yet...

... The school has been operating in the temporary buildings for 31Ú2 years -- what was supposed to be 18 months -- while its old Chickahominy building is rebuilt because of its mold problems. The construction project has had numerous setbacks and is now well behind schedule. The most recent addition to the delays was just announced at Thursday night's Board of Education meeting....

...The temporary classrooms have had problems with water pooling and snow piling up on their flat roofs, Sue Wallerstein, assistant superintendent for business services said Friday....

...a special Board of Education meeting has been called for 7 p.m. tomorrow night at a location still to be determined, at which the public will be allowed to comment and ask questions.

MORE INFORMATION:

The problems with mold usually stem from the symptoms and health effects resulting from indoor mold exposure. There is public awareness that exposure to mold can cause adverse health effects, symptoms, and possible allergic reactions. Health professionals are often tasked with the investigation and/or assessment of these health effects on employees and/or the public.

The most common form of hypersensitivity is caused by the direct exposure to inhaled mold spores that can be dead or alive or hyphal fragments which can lead to allergic asthma or allergic rhinitis. The most common effects are Rhinorrhea (runny nose), watery eyes, coughing and asthma attacks. Another form of hypersensitivity is hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP). This is usually the direct result of inhaled large spores or fragments in an occupational setting. About 5% of individuals are predicted to have some allergic airway symptoms from molds over their lifetime.

Toxic effects from mold are produced by exposure to the mycotoxins of some mold species, such as Stachybotrys chartarum (S. chartarum). These are often referred to as “Toxic molds” These toxic molds are often implicated as a potential cause of Sick Building Syndrome.