PCB test results jeopardize North Country Union High School’s upcoming school year

NEWPORT — Despite mitigation efforts, a surprise spike in PCB levels at North Country Union High School has district leaders worrying the school might not be able to open on time — or at all — this coming school year.

An expedited $5 million mitigation and abatement project is underway at the school over the summer. But whether those efforts will be effective, and what state health officials will ultimately decide about school operations, remains unknown.

“This puts the opening of school in person on time in jeopardy,” Chris Young, the high school’s principal, told VTDigger last week. “The most important thing to us is that we get kids back on time, in person.”

Last year, elevated PCB levels resulted in limited access to some parts of the school’s “C-wing,” part of the school primarily dedicated to North Country Career Center. The district undertook a nearly $500,000 mitigation project last Christmas that, based on later testing, appeared ineffective.

The more recent tests, from late this spring, showed elevated levels in “B-wing,” the academic hub of the school, stoking fear that students might have limited access or no access at all to even more classrooms.

North Country’s results reflect a frequent observation in Vermont’s first-in-the-nation polychlorinated biphenyls testing program: hot weather seems to cause higher levels of PCBs, and costly mitigation doesn’t always work.

Bellows Falls Union High School experienced something similar this summer , according to the Brattleboro Reformer. A Wilmington school reported even higher PCB levels after taking on a mitigation project, Seven Days reported.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers PCBs probable carcinogens linked to a variety of adverse health effects . The toxins are found in building materials in use prior to 1980, prompting Vermont three years ago to create a statewide school testing program .

This past legislative session, the state Department of Environmental Conservation recommended that Vermont slow the pace of PCB testing to match the remaining pot of state money available for mitigation. In January testimony, Secretary of Natural Resources Julie Moore, whose agency oversees the department, proposed sampling an additional 65 schools through June 2025, a rate that would use up the remaining money allocated to testing and initial mitigation and remediation if schools continue to discover the toxins at the expected rate.

At the time, the state had more than $10 million remaining for the PCB program. North Country’s $5 million summer project is expected to eat into a significant chunk of the available state funding.

As things stand, Young, North Country Union’s principal, and Elaine Collins, the district’s superintendent, say they are preparing for the new school year in a constant state of uncertainty.

“It’s such a colossal resource suck. In addition to just the money that is being wasted, the amount of time and effort and mental anguish that has gone into this has just been —  ludicrous is not too strong a word,” Collins said.

While Young and Collins said state officials have been helpful in dealing with the unknown, part of the district’s uncertainty is due to a lack of response from state government. North Country’s leaders say the Vermont Department of Health has yet to provide them a new ”occupancy letter” determining which areas of the school are able to be used.

They say they also believe that remote learning poses a potentially bigger health risk than PCB exposure.

“Nobody can say, if kids are in the building for six months, for six years, for 60 years, what’s going to be the effect on their health,” Collins said, “but when we close school, we know what the effect will be immediately.”

Young and Collins pointed to a slew of negative impacts after the Covid-19 pandemic prompted remote education: chronic absenteeism, a spike in bullying and harassment, decreased student resilience, emotional dysregulation and physical restlessness, to name a few.

The district is now scrambling to complete its costly construction work before school starts at the end of August. The consulting firm overseeing the work — which involves removing caulking and painting over walls potentially infused with PCBs — is billing the district in $1 million increments, and the state later reimburses North Country.

With that system, Collins said that any delay in reimbursement could require the district to take out a short term loan, because it lacks the cash on hand to make multiple payments of that size in a row.

Last week, leaders of the House Education Committee came to North Country’s defense in a letter to the heads of the state Department of Health, Agency of Natural Resources and Agency of Education that sought to spur a more robust response from the state government.

“We are writing to strongly urge your three state agencies to provide all needed attention to the PCB testing program situation at North Country Union High School and do all you can to support the administrators in that district,” wrote Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, the committee’s chair, and Rep. Erin Brady, D-Williston, its vice chair.

District leaders, the lawmakers wrote, are navigating “a rapidly approaching deadline to put in place school opening procedures and what seems to be a reluctance from state officials to provide clear, up-to-date information – in writing – that they can take to their communities and inform their citizens.”

Conlon has long been the most vocal opponent of Vermont’s current PCB testing program. The program amounts to an unfunded mandate, he has said, as a limited amount of state dollars to fund testing and mitigation have been set aside to deal with a problem of unknown cost.

“This has been plowing ahead with no real plan,” he said in an interview last week. “I think we’re probably looking at North Country wiping out the money that was set aside for PCB mitigation.”

While waiting for more information, North Country is scrambling to complete construction with the goal of opening school on time. Ideally, the project will wrap in mid-August, with a quick turnaround for testing, testing results and communication from state leaders. Ninth grade orientation begins Aug. 27.

Still, the district must plan for contingencies. Mobile classrooms and utilizing outdoor spaces could work in a pinch, they suggested, as could half days or classrooms in the gymnasium. But no perfect solution exists.

To Collins, there’s an absurdity to education leaders negotiating the scientific and logistical complications thrust upon them by PCBs. The invisible toxins absorb more and more time and money — money that, at a time in which the cost of education fuels political and community conversations, is more important than ever.

“This is just bad public policy and flies in the face of common sense,” Collins said. “I’m not sure that there’s anything more fiscally irresponsible than this program.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: PCB test results jeopardize North Country Union High School’s upcoming school year .