DALTON, Mass. — The mold remediation in the Wahconah High School auditorium is complete, and the air levels are safe and meet the state standard.
During last month's School Committee meeting, it was announced that penicillium, a type of mold, was growing on the auditorium's walls.
The mold was "in different places" in the auditorium, but anyone would have to have been "pretty observant" to see it," said Superintendent Leslie Blake-Davis during last month’s meeting.
"It's not something that, if you just walked in, you would see right away."
Now that the mold has been remediated, the district is working on determining what went wrong to prevent this from happening again in the future, School Committee Chair Richard Peters said during Thursday's meeting.
The district is examining the hardware and digital controls of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems to determine what went wrong and who is responsible, Blake-Davis said.
At the same time, the district is also trying to repair those things that went wrong, she said.
"We're pushing for a timeline. We're pushing to get this repaired as quickly as possible," the superintendent said.
The HVAC system is not at a point where it can control the climate in the auditorium, so there are still commercial-grade dehumidifiers in the space to manually control it, she said.
"It's a safe space in terms of, you can go in there but it still has the commercial grade dehumidifiers in there," Blake-Davis said.
There were errors in a number of places, including the installation, commission, maintenance of the control system, and it is unclear what caused the mold growth, Peters said.
"It might have been also a combination of any of those errors and the extreme weather that we had this summer, and nobody in the building led to the mold," he said.
Given what was found during the investigation, the district will have to look at all the HVAC systems in the building to see how they are working, Peters said.
"There certainly are some issues that we've uncovered that would point to, maybe not our responsibility, somebody else's responsibility. Mistakes have been made, put it that way," Peters said
The system is not under warranty anymore. It went out of warranty a year after being installed, and now it is in its third year, he said.
"What's interesting is that it could have been like this all along, and we didn't know, and it might have been just because of the extreme weather that we had took it over the edge, and it happened in the summer. We don't really know, and that's an investigation that's ongoing right now," Peters said.
The district had an independent company download the system data, which has been moved to its protected servers, Peters said
The data will allow them to see when the humidity levels increased and what caused it to happen, he said.
Every week, somebody is working on the system. There are a lot of parties at play here, Peters said.
"Number one priority is getting the auditorium open again, but we really can't open it until we know we're in control of it, so we don't have mold come back," he said.
"So that's why the dehumidifiers are still in there. Hopefully that happens in the next week or two. The looking at the rest of the system is going to be ongoing, and also, the forensic is going to take a little while."
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PITTSFIELD, Mass.—State leadership recognized the collaborative spirit that drives Berkshire County to address hard-hitting issues with a multi-faceted approach.
On Thursday, Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Ed Augustus visited Pittsfield Housing Authority (PHA) and Berkshire Community Action Council's central office.
His overarching observation? The collaborative spirit that surrounds nonprofit providers, state, federal, and local government.
"It's not about turf, it's not about fiefdom, it's about who you're trying to serve and the difference you're trying to make with your targeted population," he said, adding that there is still a lot of work to do and they will need the state's help with funding and technical assistance.
PHA owns and administers public housing for over 200 families and more than 400 individual tenants. Augustus walked through Columbia Arms, which houses elders and disabled community members through income-based rental apartments.
Earlier this year, Tina Danzy was hired as the executive director. During a private meeting, she and other PHA representatives discussed the city's aging housing stock, CARES Act funding increases, and community coordinators' positive impact.
Augustus explained that both the housing authority and state are enthused about community coordinators, which track issues and assist with developing programs and events.
On Thursday, Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Ed Augustus visited Pittsfield Housing Authority (PHA) and Berkshire Community Action Council's central office. click for more
Berkshire County Head Start plans to demolish a Wahconah Street building and construct an early child-care facility near the people it serves. click for more
Director of Northeast Operations Allen Anderson notified the Licensing Board of the intent on Monday, a month after a seemingly abrupt closure of the Berkshire Crossing location.
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The goals of the walk are three-fold: to celebrate Down syndrome awareness, to educate the general public and to advocate on behalf of the thousands of Americans born with Down syndrome each year.
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