The List Of Moldy Schools Grows

by Stoughton Marshall, Dealing With Mold Now

September 13, 2002 STOUGHTON, Wis. -- It's attacking school classrooms and budgets all around south central Wisconsin.  Watch Linda Eggert's report Mold has become a big headache for a number of school districts. Marshall is the latest. Officials found mold in parts of its middle school.

Other area districts to deal with the air-quality issue include DeForest,

Deerfield, Sun Prairie, Monona Grove, Stoughton, Lodi, Milton, and, of course, Madison.

As mold crops up in more schools, district officials find themselves wading through complicated, unchartered territory. News 3's Linda Eggert was in Stoughton Thursday to see how the school is coping. At Stoughton high school, a wrestling gym is now a science classroom.

Without lab facilities, experiments are more creative. Orange cones and cups test students on the metric system. "I set up a miniature golf course in the classroom and out in the hallway for them to practice estimating, and then practice putting too, for fun," said physics teacher Karen Blum. Blum's real classroom is behind layers of plastic and duct tape. Mold has closed eight classrooms in the six-year old science and agriculture wing, and two other rooms elsewhere. Crews are now taking out the mold found mostly behind baseboards and around emergency showers in science rooms.

Officials say they didn't have proper drains. Some staff and students will be stuck in places like the auditorium, for about a month. That's because in their classrooms, the bottom 2 feet of all walls have to be replaced with material that doesn't absorb water. School officials have no choice when it comes to mold. "We've discovered that there are no guidelines," said Superintendent Myron Palomba. "There are no state guidelines as to what an acceptable level or unacceptable level is. We've been working with some guidelines that the state of Minnesota has put out." That state says any visible school mold is a potential health hazard.