Want to fix Whale Branch mold? It’ll take $3M, Beaufort County school officials say
Three weeks after mold was uncovered in the walls of Whale Branch Elementary and Middle schools, district officials have announced a $3 million plan to fix the damage and prevent future spreads.
Construction workers found the “high-water activity mold” inside the walls at both schools while replacing classroom HVAC units.
While the mold “was likely a result of faulty air-conditioning installations performed 20 years ago,” it was present only in walls adjacent to the units and not in the units themselves, district spokeswoman Candace Bruder previously told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Staff at both schools were asked to work remotely from Sept. 25-28, during which time Terracon, an environmental consulting firm, confirmed the presence of mold, and “confirmed that the mold has been properly sealed off and currently presents no danger to building occupants.”
The district held meetings with school staff and community members to discuss the issue and float the possibility of sending students to different schools while repair work was completed. However, students returned to both buildings on Oct. 5 for hybrid classes.
Robert Oetting, the district’s chief operations officer, said Wednesday that it would take $1.6 million to complete repairs and renovations at Whale Branch Elementary by:
Remediating two of the school’s three building pods, as well as the HVAC units in the third pod;
Replacing outdoor facades for the building;
Installing a drainage system for roof downspouts and HVAC condensates to empty into a new underground collection system to the nearby pond and marsh.
Oetting said Thursday that the district is assuming there’s mold in the walls of the third pod, where the district has not started the HVAC work that revealed mold in the other two pods.
“At this point, we do not know, and we don’t want to disturb the walls in case it is there,” he said. “But we’re going to go in really conservative and assume that it is.”
The facade replacement will raise the elevation of the building to avoid groundwater.
“As part of what happened, the wall lost some structural integrity, so we’re going to have to replace parts of the wall,” Oetting said.
Rather than trying to match the replacement to the current exterior, the district is planning to paint the new facades in primary colors to “add some character” to the building.
Oetting said repairs and renovations at Whale Branch Middle would cost $1.7 million to complete projects similar to the elementary school’s, minus the facade replacement. Those changes would affect four of the school’s six wings, along with roof and classroom HVAC units.
Despite the higher price tag, Oetting said repairs at the middle school would be less extensive than those at the elementary school.
“We didn’t pick up the same kind of presence we did at the elementary school,” he said. “We didn’t go in and tear up as much stuff as we did at the elementary, so it’s contained in the middle school.”
The additional work would move the planned completion date for work at both schools from June 2021 to November of that year, Oetting said Thursday.
The district would be able to use the same contractors currently completing work at the schools, Oetting said, meaning there would be no break between the current projects and proposed repair work.
Oetting proposed these projects be funded from the district’s 2022 8% funding pool. That funding is a yearly process that allows the school district to borrow up to 8% of the county’s assessed value for building maintenance.
This equates to about $20 million per year — an amount that is wildly outstripped by existing maintenance requests. The list of potential summer 2021 8% projects presented to the school board in May totaled $37.6 million. The projects that were approved represented $20 million of work.
The district’s operations committee unanimously voted to recommend Oetting’s plan to the full school board, which would have to vote to approve the funding shift. The school board’s next meeting is Tuesday.
What’s happening now?
On Oct. 1, the district announced students and staff would return to both buildings for hybrid instruction that started Oct. 5, after considering shifting classes to Joseph Shanklin Elementary School and Whale Branch Early College High School.
Currently, only the “yellow” pod of Whale Branch Elementary — about a third of the building, and the pod where HVAC work has not started — is open for classes.
Each grade level has just one teacher holding in-person classes, along with teachers for “specials” such as art and music, principal Melissa Vogt said Thursday.
The “F” and “A” wings of the middle school are closed, while the rest of the building is open.
Whale Branch Middle School has the lowest percentage of students returning to buildings in the entire district, with just 15% of students opting for hybrid instruction as of Oct. 1.
Approximately 30% of Whale Branch Elementary students opted for hybrid instruction, compared to the district average of 60% hybrid students.
Hybrid students are attending classes in person two days per week and online three days a week.
Oetting said Thursday that “salvageable” material from affected classrooms, such as supplies kept in bins, has already been moved elsewhere. The cost of other, unstored materials will be reimbursed by the district, he said.
He added that the pods at Whale Branch Elementary are separated by hallways, making it easier to divorce the construction work from ongoing classes.
“A student can’t go anywhere near the areas of concern, and there is no air mixing from that area to the rest of the building,” he said. “I think a student in another area of the building may not even know this is going on.”
This story was originally published October 18, 2020 at 7:00 AM.