By Andrew Martins, Managing Editor
District officials recently revealed that an unexpected flare up of mold at Hillsborough High School earlier this year and district-wide repairs to the districts’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems resulted in a hefty price tag., During the Hillsborough Board of Education meeting on Monday, Board President Gregory Gillette said the costs were outlined during the April 5 meeting of the district’s operations committee., “We had a question from the public about the costs incurred by the district … and [Business Adminisrator Aiman] looked into that,” he said., According to the district’s figures, the final cost for mold remediation in various parts throughout Hillsborough High School was approximately $512,000. Of that amount, Gillette said insurance covered approximately $187,000, leaving the school district responsible for approximately $325,000 of the final bill., The mold issue at the high school initially came to the forefront just as the 2016-17 instructional year was about to begin., Back in September, Superintendent Dr. Jorden Schiff reported that there were approximately a dozen areas throughout high school that had been barred from use due to the presence of dark mold spores., Officials at that time said they were immediately working to address the issue, but by the end of October, Mahmoud reported at a later meeting that some of the affected areas were still shuttered., Around that same time, officials reported that issues with the district’s HVAC systems throughout each of its schools resulted in rooms that were uncomfortably hot during the early weeks and frigid during the winter months., Near the end of the school year’s first week, educators were forced to employ different tactics to cool their rooms and the students under their tutelage when unseasonably warm weather pushed the temperatures up to 95 degrees in some instances., For some teachers and faculty, the best option was to cycle classrooms through existing air conditioned areas, such as school libraries or auditoriums. Much to the dismay of teachers at the time, that decision often disrupted instructional time., Gillette said on Monday that work has been done to the HVAC systems and that those repairs cost approximately $413,000. Unlike the mold remediation costs, however, the district was forced to foot the entire bill., District Community Outreach Coordinator Kia Bergman said the pair of unanticipated costs, which totaled approximately $738,000, was covered by the district’s surplus funds in the 2016 budget., With the district now turning its focus to the 2017 school budget, Hillsborough Education Association President Henry Goodhue wondered whether the district should look at the HVAC and mold costs when considering its buildings and grounds spending plan., “When we’re analyzing the budget, why aren’t we looking at [those costs] and comparing it to our buildings and grounds staff and looking to possibly replace the three people that we previously had,” Goodhue asked. “The annual costs of that would probably be lower than what we paid out.”, Gillette admitted that the district considered that option, but after speaking with Mahmoud, came to the conclusion that the additional employees would not have changed the outcome of both situations., “I don’t believe that this would have been prevented,” Mahmoud said. “What added to those costs was mechanical failures, so a rooftop unit would not be something that a staff member would necessarily [be able to handle].”, The majority of the costs, in relation to the HVAC repair and replacement, stemmed from big ticket items, such as the need for a crane and the units themselves., “Bringing a big crane and changing a rooftop unit is $100,000 at minimum,” he said. “Additional manpower would not have been able to stop that.”
