Lynn school board wants answers on Fecteau asbestos

LYNN – Several School Committee members want to know how and why janitors and perhaps students and staff were exposed to asbestos at the Fecteau-Leary Alternative School in December.”We haven’t received a word about this from the school administration or the city,” School Committee member Donna Coppola said Thursday. “I would have had a lot of questions for them at the meeting tonight, but it has been canceled because of the snowstorm.”Coppola said she would have asked whether students, staff and parents were notified, and if so, when.”It’s disturbing,” she said. “I understand our buildings are old, but we should be more diligent about keeping them up. These conditions can cause huge medical issues, especially in little kids whose bodies are still changing.”Janitors working a weekend shift last month found broken floor tiles amid a puddle of water on the building’s first floor. The mess was cleaned up and the damaged tiles stored in trash barrels in the basement near the custodians’ room.Michael Donovan, director of the Inspectional Services Department (ISD), said a steam leak buckled the floor tiles. Donovan said earlier this week he reported the incident to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which sent inspectors to Lynn to conduct air-quality testing.Donovan said the mastic or glue on the back of the tiles contained asbestos. The test results, returned Thursday, showed no presence of asbestos fibers in the air or surfaces. “The air and wipe tests came back clean,” he said, citing a report from Covino Environmental Associates.Three School Committee members said Thursday they knew nothing of the incident until details emerged in a Daily Item news story on Wednesday.The School Committee was belatedly informed of mold and moisture problems at Thurgood Marshall Middle School and at Classical High School last November. Information about the conditions at Thurgood Marshall Middle School was provided in a report by Richard Connick, the city’s supervisor of custodians, according to Coppola.”The report came in the packet we receive before a meeting. One report by Covino Environmental Associates showed they had taken samples at Marshall for fungal spores (mold). So of course it’s a concern. There are 938 students at Marshall and 141 at Fecteau-Leary, which also has staff, the attendance office and a school security officer,” Coppola said.School Committee member Vincent Spirito, a retired Lynn public school principal, said a procedure must be put into place to handle such situations. “If it was up to me, work would certainly not be done when kids are in the building,” he said. “Lots of old schools in Lynn still have these asbestos tiles. The thing is, now the custodians are out of the hands of the School Department. It’s all up to Inspectional Services to decide when things get done. Years ago, it was up to the senior custodian to make the call.”A 2006 Homerule Petition, sanctioned by the School Committee and voted by the state Legislature, transferred control of custodians from the School Department to the city.Spirito said protocols must be implemented in case suspect materials are encountered by the maintenance staff or others.”Inspectional Services would probably come down, totally seal off the room and not do anything until all the kids are out of the building,” he said. “We always have to worry about the kids first.”In the past, when asbestos was discovered on school furnaces, the remediation work was done during vacation breaks, he said.Spirito said he would bring up the matter before the School Committee’s Building and Grounds Subcommittee. “We are going to have to address a procedure for asbestos removal and have something there from Inspectional Services to tell them how we want it done,” he said.Donovan said 90 city employees have since attended an asbestos awareness class since the incident at Fecteau-Leary was reported.School Committee member Richard Starbard said he learned of the problem by reading t