Overview
- The school will remain closed at least through this week while Richmond Public Schools completes expanded remediation and room-by-room air-quality retesting following additional mold found by staff on Monday.
- Remediation teams identified a moist supply pipe above ceiling tiles as the likely primary source of the mold and traced growth to an earlier HVAC outage and wet, hot summer conditions that stressed the building’s systems.
- Crews are using industrial air scrubbers, dehumidifiers, antimicrobial fogging, HVAC and duct cleaning, and moisture checks, and officials have removed porous items such as some library materials, instruments and affected electronics.
- The district has hired an exterminator after rodent reports, is staging Clark Springs Elementary as a temporary receiving site, and is working with community partners to arrange childcare and seats at nearby schools while families wait for test results.
- Parents and staff have voiced health and equity concerns, citing prior mold episodes and a constrained maintenance budget for century‑old buildings that complicates long-term fixes and could affect services such as IEPs and school meals.