Students at Morgan Hill Unified School District’s most sought-after elementary school are attending class in decades-old portables with constantly leaky roofs, saturated carpets and the smell of decaying matter, according to teachers at Nordstrom Elementary School.
District officials say they are doing all they can to repair and refresh the fifth-grade wing at Nordstrom, but any major overhaul projects won’t come until a school site master plan is finalized.
At the Feb. 7 board of education meeting, teacher Bethany VanAlstine relayed the details to trustees after her and her colleagues were not satisfied with their communications with the district office.
“Before Thanksgiving, we received face-to-face promises and we were told our classrooms would be immediately attended to; that if there was a problem it would be fixed,” said VanAlstine, filling trustees in on the “30-year-old decaying portables that have chronically weakening roofs.”
Nordstrom Elementary, which is located at 1425 E. Dunne Avenue, is always among the top performing schools within the district and parents have been known to wait in long lines during the priority enrollment period in order to assure their child gets into the school.
The heavy rains have caused “ongoing saturated carpets” in three portables, while “strong odors of animal feces and animal decomposition” emanate through two others, according to VanAlstine.
Assistant Superintendent Kirsten Perez explained that maintenance staff and/or contractors are sent to any site when a problem such as a leaky roof is reported and are instructed to “determine the source of the leak and repair it.” However, with little break between the recent storms, maintenance “has had difficulty in completing the necessary repairs….to caulk and seal the leaks,” according to Perez.
Staff was able to replace the header boards in the portables over the Feb. 10-12 weekend and will “continue to work this week on other identified repairs since we have dry weather,” Perez added Monday.
Teachers contend that these temporary fixes are not getting the job done and they want more permanent solutions to improve the conditions inside the portable classrooms, where students must spend a majority of their school day.
“We asked to be taken seriously (by the district office),” said VanAlstine to the school board Feb. 7.
Board trustees are prohibited from addressing community members during the public speaking portion of the meeting, according to open meeting laws. Board President Donna Ruebusch could not be reached for comment this week. Trustee Mary Patterson declined to comment as she has not visited Nordstrom since the damages were brought to light at the meeting.
Persistent problems with aging portables
This is not the first time in recent months that the condition of these fifth grade portables has been called into question by Nordstrom teachers.
Prior to Thanksgiving, with complaints over mold growth and other health concerns in the Nordstrom portables, the district contracted an environmental testing firm to assess the condition of each portable and then hired an industrial hygienist firm to review those findings. Two classrooms were temporarily relocated at that time, but teachers and students have since returned to the portables after tests indicated they were safe for occupancy.
But VanAlstine claims the conditions have worsened with each new storm passing through the area and have not been properly addressed by the district. She invited members of the school board to visit these classrooms and see for themselves.
Perez explained the district is in the process of completing a master plan “which addresses the portables as well as other site identified needs for the Nordstrom campus such as traffic congestion, multi-purpose room, etc.” Once that plan is complete, district staff will develop a timeline to replace the portables if that is deemed a priority.
Meanwhile, at the Feb. 7 board meeting, VanAlstine read comments from her colleagues regarding their current issues with the portable classrooms:
• “One teacher wants to relay that every time it rains my floor is flooded, my roofs and windows leak.”
• “Another teacher would like to relay that the leaks are back with a vengeance and one of the facility workers informed me that there is a pond on my roof and it’s getting far worse now.”
• “Another teacher wants you to know that water has been leaking through the acoustic tiles and dripping on my students’ Chromebooks.”
• “One teacher wants to say my classroom smells like a dead animal and when I approached maintenance from the district office and was told there is nothing else they could do for me, that he could not fit under my building.”
