After rust and mold found at Indio's James Madison Elementary, district to test all schools
The Desert Sands Unified School District is testing every school it operates to ensure that health and safety concerns raised by a structural engineer at James Madison Elementary School in Indio aren't present elsewhere, a district official said Monday.
Madison Elementary was closed over the weekend after rust and mold were found. Students will have the week off until Adams Early Childhood Learning Center in La Quinta is prepared for additional students. Madison student will now attend classes there.
Speaking to The Desert Sun, district spokeswoman Mary Perry said every school in the district is being tested for similar problems.
"We don't know if there's any particular school with any particular concerns," Perry said.
An engineer for LPA Inc., the architectural design firm working to modernize Madison Elementary, uncovered several metal support columns that were corroded. Mold also was found at the school, which opened in 1980.
The mold isn't dangerous, Perry said. Rather, it's the type of mold one may find in the average household, she said. Structural rust is what district officials are concerned with.
But she said "thorough testing" will be conducted to keep students and staff safe.
In a followup email, Perry wrote: "We are taking sites with similar designs into consideration as part of the District’s due diligence after the notice received late on Friday afternoon.
"As we have only just found out about the concern at Madison, we don’t have any concrete facts to report," she added. "However, we are taking the notice at Madison seriously and are looking into any other site simultaneously.
Perry's disclosure came before two separate meetings with parents of children at the school, where school district officials explained the problems contractors had found. In the afternoon, a professional interpreter provided simultaneous interpretation of the meeting for Spanish-speaking parents.
Officials outlined the district's efforts to relocate nearly 500 students to a nearby preschool facility in La Quinta. Parents peppered officials with questions about how the move will affect bus schedules, school start time and extra curricular activities like sports.
Superintendent Scott Bailey said analysts are evaluating how to incorporate the additional buses needed to transport children and will be providing updates throughout the week. Professional movers are assisting teachers and staff move their classrooms to the temporary site. Bailey said he anticipates students will likely be at their temporary home for the rest of the school year.
"The bottom line is you're going to have your Madison returned to you as soon as we get this situation rectified and it will be a safe, nurturing learning environment," Bailey told parents.
Bailey said the district is petitioning the state to avoid making students make up the week of missed school.
Bailey assured parents that while the move is a big one, officials are doing everything they can do minimize disruption to parents and students. Perry, the district's spokeswoman, said she hopes employers will be understanding of parents inconvenienced by the situation.
Alicia Murrillo, who attended the afternoon meeting with her son, Rudy, a fourth grader at James Madison, said the sudden week off from school left her scrambling Monday. She only heard about the closure midday Sunday and took Monday off. She said she had been looking for child care options this week for her son because family members were unavailable to step in to help.
Rachel Villarreal, a mother of two James Madison students, overheard Murrillo as she told a Desert Sun reporter that she was looking for help with her son. "Oh, he can come over and play with me kids," Villarreal offered. "I'll be home."
The district of about 30,000 students has about 22,000 children listed as Hispanic or Latino in the 2017-2018 school year, according to Ed-Data.org, which compiles and charts data for all school districts from public records.
At Madison Elementary, 474 of the 511 pupils at the school during that academic year were listed as Hispanic or Latino, about 93 percent of the student population there.
Mayra Perez has a fourth grader at Madison who is excited to miss school for a week. She left the meeting early to do her own research.
"I’m worried about why the other school closed," she said in reference to the school where Madison students will now attend. "What if there are problems there too? What are they not telling us?”
Perez is skeptical that the mold isn’t harmful. "All mold is bad," she said, "I’m in the insurance industry you can’t sell a house with mold. Why put kids in a building with mold?"
She said she was concerned about transportation to the new school and the fact that her son would miss a week of classes. "It’s a pain for us parents, too."
Earlier Monday morning,Madison staff met and district officials said teachers could return to their classrooms to pick up personal items and materials needed for when classes resume next week, a district statement said. But they were allowed in only after signing a waiver of liability.
Fourth-grade teacher Brian Schreiber, whose favorite subject is science, returned to school to retrieve his favorite teaching tools, which he will need in his new classroom at Adams — tools like his skeleton, Mr. Freddy, or his angel fish, Ms. Bubble-Wubbles.
Schreiber said he planned to integrate this incident into his science curriculum, to examine health effects of mold or engineering challenges.
“This is a real-life problem that can be used to help teach my students about cause and effect.” He said.
Decision made over weekend
Desert Sands Unified School District officials held a special board meeting Sunday night and unanimously voted to declare an emergency, according to Jordan Aquino, the district's business services assistant superintendent. This allows the school board to bypass the formal competitive bidding process to quickly move forward on work that is needed.
Aquino said there is no project timeline and officials do not know when the school will be able to be occupied again. The district will first need to contract a company before it is known how long it will take to fix the building's structure.
Scott Davis, James Madison Elementary principal, said he believes the action was necessary and is happy with the district’s proactive approach.
He said that while Adams will be a bit cramped due to the combination of two schools onto one campus, that also means there will be twice as many administrators make sure things run smoothly.
The Indio campus was being renovated as part of the $225 million Measure KK, passed in November 2014.
The structural engineer for LPA Inc. found the corroded metal and determined some areas of the school should be closed for further inspection.
Traffic concerns
Classes will resume for all students on Monday, Oct. 21, at the La Quinta campus, about 5 miles southwest of Madison at 50-800 Desert Club Drive.
Perry said the district will provide buses to transport students from Madison to Adams. Classes will remain at the La Quinta facility for the "foreseeable future," according to a district press release.
The district based its decision on an "overabundance of caution," the news release said, after a contractor informed officials Friday of concerns about the structural integrity of the campus' main building. Perry said the building houses administration, a library and a number of classrooms.
"We're trying to impact kids as little as possible," Perry said. "We'll take care of transportation."
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Nicole Hayden and Christopher Damien contributed to this report.
Desert Sun reporter Gabrielle Paluch wildfires and the environment. She can be reached at gabrielle.paluch@desertsun.com.
Ricardo Lopez covers the eastern Coachella Valley cities of Indio and Coachella. Reach him at Ricardo.Lopez@DesertSun.com or 760-778-4637.