PCBs delay start of North Country Union High School and move classes into tents

North Country Union High School students will start the school year learning in tents after testing registered high levels of PCBs in the school’s primary academic wing.

The polychlorinated biphenyls have also pushed back the start of school until after Labor Day as staff scramble to outfit outdoor classrooms.

North Country Supervisory Union first worked to combat the toxins — considered probably carcinogens by the Environmental Protection Agency and linked to a variety of adverse health effects — last year.

This summer, the district expedited an even bigger $5 million mitigation and abatement project.

And while some of those efforts appear to have worked in the school’s career center, the costly project doesn’t seem to have had the same success in at least part of the school’s academic “B-wing,” with test results indicating higher rather than lower levels of PCBs in parts of the school.

“The results came back not great,” Chris Young, the high school’s principal, told school board members this week. “In fact, they were really not good.”

The district will work to outfit tents with floors, electricity and internet, partitioning them into classrooms in time for 9th graders to return Sept. 3 and higher grades on Sept. 4. The high school will also use space at the nearby American Legion and classrooms at the Community College of Vermont’s Newport location, according to Young.

“We’re gonna ask teachers to do minor and major miracles over the next few weeks,” Elaine Collins, North Country’s superintendent, said at a board meeting this week.

Vermont’s first-in-the-nation PCB testing program requires all schools to be tested for the toxins if they were built or renovated before 1980. The initiative has upended school operations over the last few years, and leveraged millions of dollars for testing and mitigation projects that have had mixed results.

School leaders like Collins and Young have been forced to navigate the complicated science of PCBs, juggling the negative health implications of the invisible substances with the detrimental impact that disrupted class time has on students. This summer, schools in Hartford and Bellows Falls have also grappled with PCB contamination.

Vermont’s legislators and government officials have set aside tens of millions of dollars for PCB testing, mitigation and abatement, though the vast majority of that money is already spent or accounted for. School districts typically pay out-of-pocket, and the state reimburses in full.

But many fear what will happen when the state money runs out. Will the costs fall on local districts, or will lawmakers decide to re-up funding statewide?

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.

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. Last month, Seven Days reported that $870,000 was expected to remain in the state education fund for remediation work after North Country’s project.

The district’s leaders hope that given more time to “rest” after the summer’s mitigation work, some classrooms may show reduced PCB levels in future testing this fall. But for now, they’re preparing for the worst.

Jill Briggs Campbell, the Vermont Agency of Education’s director of operations, said this week that the state was actively discussing acquiring modular classrooms for North Country to use this winter. Should that temporary fix be necessary, the state is expected to foot the bill.

What happens if the state’s money dries up remains an open question.