It has been a tough week for the Mars School District. After a bus accident involving 40 students Monday and bed bugs making an appearance Tuesday, it didn’t seem the week could get much longer.

Until more mold allegations sprouted Wednesday.

Mars school officials are facing allegations that students and faculty have become sick due to mold in the district’s elementary school building.

Superintendent Wesley Shipley disputed those claims in an email Thursday.

“Our mold counts are less in the buildings than in the outside air,” Shipley said. “We do not believe we have a mold problem.”

Shipley said mold is “everywhere,” and mold was found through air sampling and testing done Sept. 19. A written report with the findings of mold spores was given to the district Sept. 21, though Shipley said school officials still can’t explain an odor that reportedly sickened students.

“We continue to look for the source of the odor that was reported,” he said. “As stated before, we are not concerned with mold being the problem anymore but continue to look.”

Shipley said the district sent a letter to parents when the testing was done, and the report was published on the district’s website.

Mold in two classrooms

Accredited Environmental Technologies (AET) performed the testing and found aspergillus/penicillium mold spores in classrooms 126 and 128.

Classrooms 126 and 128 are in the new addition at the elementary school, which is less than six years old. However, the company said it was unable to determine the severity of the spores because the rooms’ windows had reportedly been open for one to two hours before testing and the levels read close to those of the air outside, according to the report.

The true problem with illness in the classrooms, some concerned parents said, wasn’t the mold but the way the district tried to treat it.

Shipley said an antifungal/antibacterial deodorizer, which was intended to work with large building air handlers, was put into the school.

An air handler, Shipley said, is a large heating and cooling unit that sucks in air from the outside, warms or cools it, depending on the need, and forces the air through large filters before pushing the air into the building through a network of ducts.

‘A foul odor’

According to Shipley, the building’s air handler was turned off. But one parent of a second-grade student says their child and others were sickened by an unknown odor carried into the room through an air conditioning vent.

“Mrs. (Nicole) Kolson (a second grade teacher) had to take her students outside for part of the afternoon due to a foul odor in her classroom,” said the mother of a student in the class, who said she wished to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions for her student. “Students were getting headaches, coughing and having bellyaches.

“With the AC unit on, there was something blowing directly into her room, causing the papers on the ceiling to blow and students to cough and cover their faces (in) their shirts due to the smell as well.”

Four parents reached out to the Eagle to comment on the matter, but also requested to remain anonymous.

“I have fear of retaliation against my child,” one wrote Wednesday in an email.

“My child was having stomachaches at school and had red splotches on the face,” the parent wrote. “They reported a smell in the hallways and covering their noses to walk last week. I drove through the school lot several times over the weekend and never saw any evidence of the work the school said was done.

“My biggest concern is they ignored the recommendations of the air quality testing company,” the parent wrote. “Their communication to parents is very poor.”

Shipley said the district received complaints of illness but cannot confirm the cause.

AET recommended the district take “remedial actions,” including removing any affected insulation and cleaning the rooftop air handling unit, which would have to to be coordinated with the school’s HVAC vendor.

“Mold remediation/cleaning must be performed by trained workers with specialty designed equipment (such as HEPA vacuums) under controlled conditions incorporating work area isolation and detailed cleaning activity,” the report reads.

Following HVAC remediation and cleaning, AET recommended more testing be conducted, as the visual inspection was limited to exposed and accessible areas.

Shipley did not provide a timeline for these follow-up measures, but said the district is “taking action to clean the area, including the inside of the HVAC ductwork” and will schedule another air test with AET.

“Safety, security and healthy are most important here,” Shipley said. “We want our students to have a healthy, safe and secure environment to learn. When we have concerns with odors or reaction for an unknown reason, we begin to test to ensure our building is safe and healthy,” he said Thursday. “I would never intentionally put students and staff in harm’s way.”

Bed bug treatment

In an email response to questions, Shipley said the bed bugs were identified on a student’s clothing Tuesday at Mars High School.

Shipley said after the bugs were found, the district brought in an exterminator to investigate, and he determined the need for a non-toxic treatment of carbon dioxide. Parents were informed about this problem and the district’s handling of it through a letter.

Terminix, the pest control company, will conduct more extensive cleaning Friday, according to Shipley.

Students are expected to be able to return to the life skills classroom, which contains a fully-functioning apartment that includes a bathroom, laundry room, kitchen, family area and bedroom, by Monday morning.

Shipley said he could not provide numbers for how many students use the classroom.

“There are students and ‘buddies’ that provide help,” he said.

He said the students were using other classrooms in the meantime.