Cross Calls Out Building Decay ​“Crisis”

Nearly 20 Wilbur Cross educators, parents, and students showed up to the latest Board of Education meeting to give the city’s public school district a failing grade for unsafe, unhealthy, and unsightly building conditions at New Haven’s largest high school.

That was the subject of public testimony at Monday evening’s school board meeting, which was held in person at John Martinez School and online via Zoom.

Cross’s school community turned out in dozens to the meeting to raise long-standing concerns that have gone unaddressed. They described the building as ​“rotting from the inside,” because of issues such as damaged ceiling tiles, broken flooring, and mildew-coated air vents, as well as air-borne mold spores that have closed the school library for the past three weeks.

Sporting jackets and shirts bearing the East Rock public high school’s colors, the speakers created a sea of red at Monday’s meeting, and made clear to district leaders just how unacceptable these building conditions are, especially at the start of the new school year.

“Is this respectful toward the staff and students at Cross?” asked one such testifier, Cross history teacher Brian Grindrod.

“We need to be respected at Cross,” he said. ​“Stop kicking the can down the road. The road has ended.”

In an email comment, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent that the district has been meeting with Cross’s principal regularly to identify needed repairs. He said the district is getting design recommendations to address the building’s groundwater flooding issues; it’s still waiting on air tests for the library and music room; and it’s working on roof patching and expects to upgrade the school’s chillers, as well as install a new cooling tower.

See Harmon’s comment in full at the bottom of this article. Watch Monday’s school board meeting in full here.

During Monday’s meeting, Cross staff informed the Board of Education that mold issues have rendered not just the library unusable; they’ve also closed the school’s music wing on the first floor.

Cross band director Eric Teichman said that despite school staff and administration spending hours disinfecting the school’s band room before the start of the school year, two weeks in, the dedicated music space was shut down due to high levels of mold in the air. Teichman’s classes have since been relocated to a different part of the building. Click here to view a Facebook post displaying the band program’s damages.

He added that while the program’s instruments and equipment were not permanently damaged this time around, the district’s lack of preventative maintenance could later cause for a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

“I’d hate to think what would happen if mold was growing inside every trumpet valve, on the pads of every clarinet, in the mouth piece of every flute, or colonizing in large white speckled patches on the beautiful marching band uniforms generously paid for by this very board,” he said.

The educators asked time after time what the district’s plans are to address the long-term neglect.

Many thanked the district for its action so far since the start of the school year but begged it to keep the vigilance up.

A total of 18 Cross parents, educators, and a student added to a laundry list of concerns throughout the public testimony portion of Monday’s meeting. Staff described having to perform daily ​“miracles” to keep their classrooms useable.

History teacher Brian Grindrod said while attempting to teach his students civic dispositions like respect, compromise, civil discourse, individual responsibility, generosity, patience, perseverance, and self-discipline, he struggles to convince his students they’re in a district that values those qualities when dealing with neglected facility concerns.

In January 2023, Grindrod recalled arriving to his Cross third-floor classroom only to find it flooded due to a collapsed and leaky ceiling. On the fly he had to find a new classroom and clean up damaged computer equipment and civics textbooks. A short time later his classroom was flooded again due to a lack of effort to fix the root problem of the damaged roof.

He said that over the years he’s also had to relocate classes due to rodent infestations in the building.

Wood-working teacher Mark CoFrancesco described Cross’ condition as ​“unsatisfactory.” He told the school Monday that the district does not have enough tradesman to address its many issues. He said over the years he’s spent his prep periods and hours after school replacing hundreds of florescent tubes in his own classroom and in the auto tech classroom by using his own scissor lift, 18 feet off the ground. He added that he’s lent tools like hammers, pillars, screw drivers, and drills to Cross’s building manager, and his shop vac has been used to clear out flooded classrooms. ​“Why? Because I want to help. Should it fall on me? I don’t believe so,” he said.

English teacher Kathryn Dadio raised concerns about the school’s HVAC system and its impacts on classroom temperatures. On Monday she said her classroom temperature throughout the day was 78 degrees. On Friday her class was 80 degrees.

She noted that the school’s staff hosted a meeting in the now-closed school’s library before the school year kicked off in late August. ​“I am a life-long asthma sufferer and while it’s normally well managed, I’ve been puffing on my respiratory inhaler more times than I can even count this school year,” she said.

Fifteen-year English educator Akimi Nelken recalled hanging up a wall tapestry at the start of the school year reminding students that in her classroom they matter, are important, valued, respected, and safe. ​“How can this possibly be true when for the first three weeks of school my ceiling and walls were covered in black mold and dust?” she asked.

“We need everyone in this school system to act like their child is sitting in our classrooms,” she demanded, adding that the district’s contracted facilities workers must be held accountable going forward.

Several educators who spoke up Monday urged for the district to offer its maintenance work to the district’s Local 287 custodial union staffers.

English teacher Dario Sulzman said the library closure had impeded his implementation of his new independent reading unit this school year. ​“What feels more honest is to tell them that their basic learning conditions matter less than the interest of Yale, or powerful real estate developers or other interests in our city that makes tens of millions of dollars while our schools continue to crumble,” he said.

Multilingual learner educator Kris Mendoza reported that on Monday she gathered that only six out of 18 light switches tested at the school were working. She said the district can’t continue to allow Cross to burst at the seams with increasing students and less and less physical space.

Mendoza also reported that in 2017, Cross had a student population of 1,458 students, including 287 multilingual learners. As of Monday, it had 1,802 enrolled students, including 576 multilingual learners.

Educator Melody Gallagher added that, on average, Cross has 1,750 students in its building daily, with an additional nearly 200 staffers. That student number is 400 more than the 1,350 capacity the building was initially built for.

Cross senior Henry Meed testified Monday that the problems at Cross have risen to the level of a ​“crisis.” He asked that the board allocate more money to address Cross’s upkeep, particularly its mold problems and water leaks.

Cross counselor Mia Comulada Breuler told the board that staffers’ hope is turning into despair.

“We are here to work for and with you, but we cannot do so under these dire circumstances,” she said.

NHPS Responds

Below is NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon’s full email comment to the Independent in response to Wilbur Cross building disrepair concerns raised at Monday’s school board meeting:

I am writing to address concerns raised in the most recent Board of Education meeting about physical conditions at Wilbur Cross High School. Our operations lead has been meeting regularly with the principal on site to identify needed repairs, and we are contracting for and scheduling the necessary services as quickly as we can. I will briefly outline the work that is completed, planned, or in process.

Carpenters and custodians have been working to replace ruined floor tiles and ceiling tiles. We are engaging an architect for a design recommendation to address the groundwater issues that have caused flooding in ground floor classrooms. We will install insulation to protect from condensation on ceiling ducts, which caused ceiling tiles to mildew in a number of locations.

We have remediated the sources of aspergillus mold spores that were found in the air in the library and the music room. We are awaiting the results of air testing and will reopen those facilities as soon as we receive confirmation that the cleaning has been effective. To be clear, we have not found any toxic mold in the building, but we are checking for and will remediate any additional mold that may be found.

We have heard reports that mice and cockroaches have been seen. We will work with our pest management contractor to address these reports. We also remind the community of the importance of keeping food safely and tightly stored.

We will replace the carpet in the library with tile, replace stairwell tread covers, paint handrails, replace and repair faucets in restrooms, and fix doors.

Teachers and others have expressed concern about warm temperatures in certain areas of the school. This year, we will upgrade the chillers in the building, at an estimated cost of $219,000. We also will install a new cooling tower, at a projected cost of $329,000.

There also has been widespread concern about the roof. We will continue to patch the portions of the roof that are above occupied spaces, as we believe the existing roof has a useful life of about five more years. We will not, however, repair the roof over the wing that contains the swimming pool, which is not currently in use. There the water damage is so significant that we must consider whether to rebuild that wing once funds can be identified.