SmartTranscript of House Education - 2025-05-08 - 11:10 AM

[Katie Sutton]: I know. I you are fine. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay. This is House Education, Thursday, May eighth twenty twenty five. The committee is now going to, go to what is an often frequent topic for me to want to make sure everybody is update on, and that is the status of our PCB testing program, and its impact on schools. And I've invited two superintendents to kind of update us in their districts largely because they are two places that have an intersection of sort of already planned school construction or renovation and significantly affected by PCBs. So welcome to our two superintendents here to give us an update as to what's going on in their district. I think if it's okay with you, I'm gonna begin right with Hartford because you have certainly been in the news lately. And maybe you could just give us a synopsis as to where you are and kind of the considerations going forward, any any other, testimony you'd like to provide. Yeah. So if you can introduce yourself, that'd be great, and go right ahead. [Katie Sutton]: Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here today. My name is Katie Sutton, and I am the superintendent of the Hartford School District. I provided testimony earlier, so you should have that in front of you. I will provide as short a synopsis as I can to give you the information that is most up to date. I did provide testimony earlier this year to you all. And at that time, I was able to tell you that after our testing last year, it was indicated that two of our schools tested positive and were at the school action and immediate action levels. Our middle school tested negative. Our technical our career and technical center tested positive, at the school action and the immediate action level. We had to relocate three programs. Two, we were able to keep on campus. And one, our culinary arts program, We had to relocate off campus, and those programs are still relocated to this day. Our Hartford High School also tested positive at the school action level for PCBs. Since my last testimony, our main concern continues to be a lack of funding to support our efforts to fully abate the PCB issues we're facing, as well as just the ongoing complexity of this issue. As act seventy four as written relies on air quality testing to determine the scope of contamination, which, you know, in our experience and research defies science and logic related to how we address the issue to ensure our community that students and staff are are safe from this hazard. So throughout the extensive testing of air quality and further testing of bulk sample materials, we know that the source of the PCBs are materials. So adhesives, caulk, paint, etcetera. And we also know that because PCBs are chemicals, they behave differently than mineral contaminant or or some other contaminant in our buildings. So we can't just remove and solve the problem because our testing has indicated that the extent of the permeation of the hazard into the concrete blocks that compose our buildings is between one to five inches depending upon where you test. And so without fully removing the concrete blocks that compose our walls because we can't shave between one and five inches off of them, we don't fully remove the hazard from our buildings. It should also be noted that act seventy four relies on air quality sampling to determine the scope of the issue. And, you know, in our testing and our further testing, areas of our schools that were built at the same time with the same materials are testing both negative and positive for PCBs. And as I think we know by now, that can be easily attributable to the ventilation in the area as well as temperature, humidity, whether or not those materials have been recently damaged causing the PCBs to outgas. So they can be detected in different rates depending upon conditions. But either way, what that puts us in the position of doing is trying to state to our community that because we had, you know, strong fans in those areas that tested negative, our students and staff are safe in those areas. So we need to remove the the the hazard entirely. And in order to do that, we need to remove both the source materials as well as the materials that are impacted by the permeation of the hazard. So we're currently in compliance with act seventy four as it's written, which is dependent upon, again, air quality sampling, but we're faced with the challenge of assuring our community that we're effectively mitigating and abating the chemicals in our schools and can't say with any integrity that the community is safe when we haven't removed the source materials and the hazard. You know, we know that construction costs are only going to continue to increase, and we're at a pivotal time as you noted where we have a bond that is that has been designated by our community to work on capital improvements and infrastructure. And so we're trying to determine how those funds will be used when they were, you know, voted on to be used toward very specific projects. But we have to really think about this now because we're still facing this this PCB challenge. We don't wanna kick the can down the road as far as, you know, involving ourselves with any abatement and remediation that has been proven to be ineffective. We know from our own pilots and from the experiences of other districts that strategies such as encapsulation or ventilation are not fully effective in abating the PCB issue that you really have to remove the source materials. And so we're we're not interested in doing anything that isn't going to remove the hazard fully, nor do we believe we can say to our community that we'll do anything other than than that. As, you know, the health and safety of our community is is too critically important to to bet on anything that's not gonna yield the results we need to yield, which is full abatement of the hazard. So we've already incurred costs of moving forward with testing in the last building in our district that was on the testing schedule that the state was not able to assure us would remain on the schedule in a timely manner. At this point, we knew that we had to test that building as well, so we moved forward and did that, incurring that cost, with the state telling us that if funding is available, we'll be reimbursed. But the reality is that since the model changed early on in our experience from upfront funding to a reimbursement model, we have not received any funding from the state. So right now, we've spent four hundred and twenty four thousand six hundred and sixty two dollars and forty nine cents out of our local budget, which is being incurred by our taxpayers, and it is a cost that is totally unanticipated to us. So on behalf of our community, what we're hoping for is funding support to abate this harmful chemical and to tell our community that their students and staff are safe in our learning spaces. Thank you. I [Chair Peter Conlon]: appreciate it. Thanks very thanks very much. And, yeah, very challenging situation in your area. The four hundred and twenty four thousand you're talking about, is was that strictly testing cost? Okay. And and you have been, I would say, assured, but you've been told that if and when money becomes available, you'll be reimbursed for those costs. [Katie Sutton]: Correct. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Okay. So for the committee to sort of understand, there was this, PCB money that was proposed, in the governor's budget. It half of it sort of was removed in the house version of the budget. That was restored in the senate version of the budget. And either way, there will at least be, I think, five point five million, if not nine point five million available. And I think the question is what is the purpose of that money if it is not to continue to pay for testing? It was not the money was to help districts already affected by PCBs. It was not to do any new testing in other districts. So we'll we'll keep an eye on that, and, hopefully, that money will come through. And, we'll certainly lobby that that this testing, which is required, and especially key in your area, gets gets reimbursed. But you have not other than fans and further testing, you haven't taken any more steps construction wise toward abatement, have you? [Katie Sutton]: That's correct. We we're right now trying to explore where we're gonna find the funding for soft costs related to more bulk sampling of materials in the high school and technical center so we can really precise more precisely identify the scope of the project work that will need to occur. So that's gonna be, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue that testing and to get an accurate picture of the issue as well as draw up plans with architects and and engineers, which is also, you know, what we need to do in order to determine what the overall costs will be. But, I mean, as I'm sure you know, we're talking about millions and millions of dollars to, reconstruct the portions of our school that are that are impacted. [Chair Peter Conlon]: And I apologize. I said that have you only used fans and testing. You've also actually had to take kids out of the school and have their classes elsewhere. [Katie Sutton]: Correct. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Would that bulk testing that you're talking about doing, in anticipation of a construction project be required anyway? [Katie Sutton]: That's I it's debatable, what we're being told from the state versus, you know, this conflict that I noted between truly understanding the hazard versus what is in compliance with x seventy four in terms of air sampling. We're we're in a very tough position with our community to say, yes. Perhaps those error samples didn't indicate that there's a hazard, but the bulk samples did. And so that's the that's the issue that we're faced with and the conflict we're in in trying to justify the costs that we're incurring to the state. Yep. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thank you so much, Katie. Sure thing. Andy, you're up. You're muted. Oh, yeah. You're muted, Andy. [Andy Haas]: I'm the one who's supposed to tell everybody that, so it's [Chair Peter Conlon]: up to [Andy Haas]: you. So, Mandy Haas. I'm the superintendent for, Wyndham North East Supervisory Union, and, I I a lot of myself would echo what what Katie has talked about, but just to recap, real quick. You know, two years ago, we found out that we had, PCBs in the high school, that were pretty high levels that shut down the gymnasium and the auditorium. But then, we're an open concept high school, and so, the inaccuracy of air testing, like, we were having rooms that were right next to each other with no walls. One was testing high, and the next one next to it has got zero. So it was like the a lot of inaccuracy happened, and we ended up beginning school that year with kids in tents outside and trying to kinda work our way through that. And then when they came back and retested in late October when the weather got colder, all of a sudden, the numbers inside our gymnasium dropped to the point that we could actually go back into it. And so we spent a we spent a year and a half with fans all over the school to a point that you could you couldn't even hear. And, during that time, we also had, planned a project, to revamp our entire HVAC system as of a five million dollar project using ESSER funds. That entire piece, it got put on hold because of the PCBs and and what was gonna happen. We ended up doing, you know, a lot of testing to figure out where the sources were, and we were able to move forward with the HVAC system while we still had the fans going because we were able to source out the the bulk parts of the PCBs. Once the HVAC system was up and running, our PCB error level dropped to almost undetectable in many of our areas. There's still a couple areas where it was, and it's been you know, we had to we also had to we had a bond, a two million dollar bond to redo the roof at the same time. We had about seventy eight holes in our roof. We had to pause over the gym because the undercoating of the, the gym, the spray paint that was used had PCBs in it. So if you think about it, if you're in the gym looking up, that roof decking is what was painted. What was discussed, we we discussed numerous things. We discussed tearing down the whole gym. It was about a fourteen million dollar endeavor if we were to do that to the point of do we just remove the entire roof and put in new roof decking? And that was about four and a half million dollars. And then looked at another one, which was to encapsulate the the paint. There were other ones with chemical peels. They were, like, twelve million dollars and stuff like that, and we were at a point where, with the bond, we needed to make a decision, so we made a decision to actually go with the the encapsulation project because we were originally told money is set aside for Bellows Falls Union High School. Don't worry about it. And by people at the AOE and other folks who guaranteed us that the money was there, that we knew we were one one school away from using up all of the funds, and Bellows Falls Union High School is that one last school. We're we're gonna take care of you, and in the end, we were then told, no. There is no money. It all went to all the other schools. I can remember sitting with members of the legislative body up in Berlin and asking the question, is this gonna be a race? And I was told flat out, no. It will not be a race. Everyone will be taken care of. We're gonna do the best we can, but it won't be a race. And I I I feel like we lost that race because we we listened to people, and we tried to do things right. We ended up we are one point one million dollars in ESSER funds due to the freeze. The majority of that is construction costs. Those were all delayed because of the PCB issue. So we have a compounded issue of not only do we have PCBs that need to be remediated out of our our building. Doing the work that actually is helping to alleviate the PCBs was delayed because of the PCBs work. And now with the federal government freezing the ESSER funds, we're we're now looking at another hit to our taxpayers. We've had to take the approach that we don't have a bond. We don't have a twenty million dollar bond. I barely got two bonds that were both two million dollars each, one for a roof and one for a driveway. Both were, like, original on the building, fifty years old and and and fifty years on the driveway. My community cannot afford to to to float any more bonds for construction. We know that to do the roof, it the roof decking, it like I said, it's about four and a half, five million dollars to do all of the we have the steel support columns that are actually expansion columns all around, and the fire retardant was spray sprayed on those. And so we know that that is a little over three million dollars to to remove all of that product. We did have a little bit of seepage into our cinder blocks on each side of those columns, but we had, like, the University of Iowa come in and do a lot of extra testing for us at no cost, And we were able to determine that we can go in and actually remove the fire retardant off of these columns and and then encapsulate, and and that would be an acceptable remediation plan in lieu of tearing down the whole building, which is about a hundred million dollars to rebuild. But what that is also hitting us with a cost is a hundred and thirty thousand dollars annually to do continuous air monitoring for the next twenty years. And as I said in my testimony, that's a cost that is gonna take away from education from kids. So I understand that PCBs are harmful chemicals. We don't know the full extent of of them. Obviously, they've been in that building for fifty years, but now with having to take a a an unfunded mandate that we're gonna put on the backs of our taxpayers is is gonna be a a a huge hit because a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, you know, that's essentially two teachers if you think about it. Just one to two teachers. And so we're gonna you know, my biggest concern and and the ongoing concern is with the all the talk around changing funding and how how we would get new funding. You know, are we just gonna take that off the top for and take away from our kids? And so I I if I have to take a hundred and thirty thousand dollars off the top, that's gonna be less teachers, less opportunities for my kids to have instruction. So that's kind of been our our our big plight as as we've gone along. I I would encourage any any funding that we can get. I glad to hear that there might be five million dollars, but I'm scared that I've never seen anything in writing that has said, Andy, you're gonna get any of that money. I did ask DEC what would happen if my school board said, we're not gonna pay that hundred and thirty thousand dollars. We're not gonna annually we're not gonna do this, you know, annual testing. And, d e DEC kinda came back a little shocked and said, nobody's asked us that question, and, you know, what what's the context of it? And I said, I don't have a hundred and thirty thousand dollars to do annual testing. And so I I don't know what the outcome would be, but I'm worried that we would be out of compliance because, you know, we don't have the funding for it, or do I shortchange my students? [Chair Peter Conlon]: Thanks very much. You raise a I would call a really important red flag about the ongoing annual expense of air monitoring and, frankly, how that would be funded in a world, in which we are using a foundation formula. Right. So thank you for raising that. It's a good thing for us to keep in mind. The how much unspent but obligated ESSER money are you sitting on that could potentially be clawed back by the federal government? [Andy Haas]: So so I wanna be clear. We've spent all of our ESSER funds, and and this was late liquidation of invoices coming in late, and so we so that one point one million dollars are invoices, as I said, mostly construction. About seven hundred thousand of it is construction, for the high school that came in after, the performance period because we finished up right in December, And so those invoices just lag on that time, and we had been approved for those extensions, you know, through the end of June knowing that we were gonna have this lag. And so [Chair Peter Conlon]: What's what's the potential hit if if the federal government were to say, sorry. This unliquidated amount, you don't qualify anymore? [Andy Haas]: One million one hundred twenty seven thousand dollars and some change. [Chair Peter Conlon]: So that's also a very big number. [Andy Haas]: Yeah. And Hey, [Chair Peter Conlon]: did you have do you have any situation? Are you facing that issue? I I you haven't done the level of work that they've done at at Bellis Falls. [Katie Sutton]: Right. We we don't have any late liquidation funding earmarked for PCB remediation. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Has in either of your cases, I'll ask you first, Katie, and then Andy. Has this situation that you're both facing prompted or contributed to discussions with your neighbors about moving towards some sort of regional high school or combining of high schools or vocational programs or anything like that? I I realize you're basically trying to put out a fire, and you don't have time to go and have those longer long range discussions. [Katie Sutton]: Right. I mean, I this no. I mean, this hasn't prompted us to do that. I mean, I think that we're uniquely situated in that we are a campus that has a high school, a career and technical center, and a middle school as well as a regional resource center. So we have a variety of buildings that serve students with very different needs. So in our mind, what we need to be very conscious of is as financial stewards of our local community, what is in the best interest of our students and our staff and our community members at large in maintaining the academic and cocurriculum programming for our students. So I think one thing that has been a real challenge in any conversations I have had with, you know, state entities, whether that be the DEC or the AOE, we can't just pause those experience those experiences for our students while we work on this. We've gotta figure out how we, in our case, phase out a really thoughtful approach and keep our students on campus and maintain and preserve their experiences. And that is a real challenge. So we haven't because as you noted, we're dealing with what is in front of us, and we're dealing with a community who very much, you know, as any community does, values the unique experiences that their students have in our respective school buildings and on our respective playing fields and in our performance arts spaces. So, no, we we we have not had the the capacity to think through that and to kind of incorporate whatever planning that might implicate on top of thinking about how we phase this and consider the funds, the the funds that we have that aren't spoken for in our bond, which is almost half of them, and think through how we think about those projects and what the community believed it was paying for with that bond and how we, you know, do the project management work necessary to abate this this problem. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Great. Thank you. It it kinda comes up in my mind just because you've got Woodstock sort of next door also looking to do a big build, but I realized we got there are some geographic issues there that are pretty significant. [Katie Sutton]: Right. [Chair Peter Conlon]: Yeah. And how about you, especially with having Green Mountain nearby that also is dealing with PCB issues in their school? [Andy Haas]: Yeah. The so I have had no direct conversations with Two Rivers Supervisory Union. I have had some high level conversations at the state level regarding that, and, specifically about Green Mountain, and and, like, would we have the capacity to take those students on, so to speak, or, you know, do you do you look at a regional high school somewhere in the middle between Springfield, you know, Green Mountain, and and Rockingham type of thing. And, you know, I I think that our campus, where it where it sits, it's uniquely, you know, situated right there off exit six, right on ninety one. It's a hundred acres. I mean, we've you know, so there's a lot of opportunities on on the campus currently for the high school. You know, I think one of the things that really concerns me is is even at those high level conversations, You know, we've now put almost nine million dollars into that high school, most of it in federal funds. And and by the by the time, I'll probably put eleven million because I'm gonna put a driveway in this week this summer. So so we're gonna put, you know, over eleven million dollars into that building. And if for some reason it were to close, the federal government has the right to come and ask for that money back. And who's gonna who's gonna reimburse them? [Chair Peter Conlon]: Yep. [Andy Haas]: Like, that that is that's a reality that that we know exists. You know, when you sign off on those those grants, you say that the federal government can you know, if you no longer use it, you have to notify them. And so if we're gonna say that that building isn't usable, you know, and and given the climate that we see every day out of Washington, I would worry that someone would come and say, we want that money back now. You know, I I think one of the things that we intentionally knew is the building itself, while we don't have the same level that Hartford is is having those conversations, because we knew we know where our PCBs are, is that for for very little money, that building can be renovated and could take on many more students. You know, we're we're probably just under half capacity for what that building can carry. So [Chair Peter Conlon]: Committee members or questions? Well, appreciate the update from both of you. And frankly, some of the issues you raised are ones that we need to keep in mind as we go forward with even broader discussions. Yeah. Great. Thank you. [Andy Haas]: Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. [Katie Sutton]: Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

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SmartTranscript of House Education - 2025-05-08 - 11:10 AM

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