Remediation wraps up at Laurel Highlands Middle School
In-person classes resuming for most
Remediation work has been completed at Laurel Highlands Middle School after the discovery of mold and mildew inside classrooms that has delayed the start of in-person classes.
Firewater Response of Pittsburgh notified the district it had concluded work on Thursday after verifying the effectiveness of the remediation based on visual inspections, remediation activities, and analysis of samples taken in affected areas through the building.
The final area to be remediated was the eighth-grade lower floor hallway, Firewater said.
Air quality testing conducted Thursday in the most recent areas to be remediated indicated they were “now representative of a normal indoor fungal ecology,” Firewater said in its letter to the district.
“They don’t need to do any more testing, and now it’s just an issue of restoration and reconstruction of the area that are affected to pre-loss condition — just trying to make it look like a school building again,” Superintendent Jesse Wallace said Friday.
Teachers and staff returned to the building on Monday. That night, the school held an open house for students to help them navigate the school and find their new classes.
After three weeks of remote learning, in-person classes were scheduled to resume Tuesday.
Two learning support classes will continue to be taught at the high school until Sept. 21. Classes in other affected areas will be temporarily held in other areas of the building.
Crews were scheduled to work all weekend to bring the school space back to normal, Wallace said.
After students had to start the year online, Wallace is happy to get them back into “their best learning environment possible,” he said — with a teacher in front of them at a brick-and-mortar school.
“They’ll be able to have the full school experience with not just learning academics, but also the socialization with their friends, and moving through the building and participating in all the activities that are associated with middle school. We’re very pleased to have that back and ready to go. And we’re even more pleased that we’re in a situation where it’s a safe, viable environment, and that’s what we were aiming for from the very beginning of this.”