Five classrooms at a private school in Lodi, California were closed earlier this week when it was discovered that the air inside may be contaminated with dangerous asbestos fibers.

According to an article in the Lodi News-Sentinel, the classrooms represented nearly a third of the rooms in the privately-owned Mokelumne River School, which serves 225 students from grades K-12 from the Lodi area.

The potential asbestos contamination, according to the school’s board president Clifford Goehring, may have been a result of some work that was done over President’s Day weekend to repair a leaky walkway overhang. During the repairs, asbestos may have been disturbed, notes Goehring.

In order to avoid exposure, the school’s elementary students moved into the 12 remaining, open classrooms and the high school students were moved to a church approximately five miles away from the school. The five rooms in question were sealed off.

“We don’t know how much if any got into the classrooms,” Goehring said.

He admitted to asking the workers whether or not he should be concerned about them disturbing asbestos during the repairs, but they said that it wouldn’t be a problem.

“That was a mistake. I should have pursued it,” Goehring said.

School officials ordered that a third party test the air near the bin where workers put materials taken out of the overhang, Goehring said. Preliminary tests came back positive. However, school officials have yet to receive the final results.

Parents of the students were informed of the situation via a mass email sent on Saturday evening. Goehring said that the reactions he got from parents were “a mixed bag.”

“Some parents are glad we’re following through. (There are) some that are not too happy,” Goehring said. “We’re doing everything we can to alleviate the situation.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 12:42 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.