‘Disgusting’ conditions at Massachusetts high school raise health concerns

Students astatine Milford High School are navigating an obstacle people of buckets and recycling bins containing soiled h2o from aggregate extortion leaks.

Parents sent Boston 25 News pictures and video of hallways and communal areas strewn with dozens of bins of brownish h2o that students accidental odor awful. One photograph shows a operation cone duct-taped upside-down to a stairway railing, seemingly funneling h2o into a bucket below.

Several families shared concerns astir the wellness and information of their kids arsenic good arsenic teachers and administrators.

“I was appalled. That was disgusting,” said Samantha Gundacker of her 16-year-old daughter, showing her the photos. “My concerns, of course, are health. There, I’m sure, are a batch of students who person asthma and immunocompromised systems that – if determination is mold increasing successful the wall, which astir apt determination is – that would impact each pupil and our teachers and unit that are besides successful the building.”

Superintendent Kevin McIntyre told Boston 25 News by email that determination are 3 main areas of the precocious schoolhouse affected by leaks, and helium is moving to code them with the schoolhouse committee and the school’s facilities and attraction teams.

“There is nary grounds that determination are immoderate issues related to mold, and the discoloration of the h2o is owed to the leaks starting astatine the extortion and meandering done the building,” McIntyre said. “This twelvemonth the leaks successful the main hallway are important and worse than they person been successful the past. Ballast roofs implicit 20 years aged tin acquisition a fig of issues that tin pb to leaks.”

McIntyre added that helium expects the contented “will besides diminish owed to the snowfall and crystal battalion melting.”

Parents are besides acrophobic astir students slipping connected the level portion shuffling to people and immoderate imaginable contaminants successful the collecting water.

The territory is presently successful the gathering process for a caller oregon renovated precocious schoolhouse with the Massachusetts School Building Authority, McIntyre said. Milford is completing its eligibility play earlier moving to the feasibility survey signifier adjacent year, helium said.

For Gundacker, who besides has 2 younger children who volition yet be the precocious school, a solution cannot travel soon enough.

“I’ve grown up successful this town. I went to schoolhouse here, I graduated here, and I privation the aforesaid for my kids,” Gundacker said. “It’s a large community, but I bash deliberation that the schoolhouse needs immoderate attention.”

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