Canary Committee Works For Environmentally Safe Schools

By Kaaren Valenta 

Joellen Lawson keeps a map in the kitchen of her Newtown home to track the cases of students and teachers who have been sickened by mold and other environmental health problems in unhealthy school buildings.

Each time she gets a call from a teacher or a parent, she posts another sticky note on the map, which now has notes stuck to states in New England and as far away as Florida and Oklahoma. The map helps Ms Lawson keep track of her contacts and also helps overcome the short-term memory problems she developed after being exposed to mold in the elementary school where she was a special education teacher.

The Fairfield school Ms Lawson worked in, before her health problems forced her to take a disability retirement two years ago, was later torn down because of those environmental problems. But she has continued to lead a campaign to have a bill passed in Hartford to provide healthy school legislation.

In what is becoming an annual ritual, members of the Legislature’s Education and Environment committees held a joint hearing last month on bills to create indoor air quality standards in schools and require them to be better maintained. Each attempt has come close but failed to win full legislative support.

Thirty members of the Canary Committee, a grass-roots organization founded by Ms Lawson to promote policies that will protect the environmental health of school occupants, were among those who testified in favor of House Bill 6503, An Act Concerning the Environmental Qualify of Our Schools.

Fourteen sates have indoor air quality laws for schools. Some studies suggest that as many as 68 percent of school district’s have “sick” buildings ranging from mold to asbestos, radon, pesticides, and the use of improperly ventilated areas as classroom space. For the past five years, teachers in Connecticut have had the highest rate of occupational asthma when compared to other professions.

 “I’d like the General Assembly to answer the following question: How many more children have to get sick and how many more teachers have to be placed on disability because of indoor air qualify offenses?” Ms Lawson said.

Ms Lawson said that when legislation failed to get approved last year, she was told that the missing component was grassroots support. “So I learned to be an activist,” she said. “The Toxics Action Center sent someone to my house to train me.”

The Toxics Action Center, which has offices in four New England states, was founded in 1987 to teach people the basics in how to draw attention to a cause and share the lessons of other successful campaigns to remove public health threats from the environment.

“After I was trained, Claire Barnett, the executive director of the Healthy Schools Network, invited me to go to hearings in Washington, D.C.,” Ms Lawson said. “I didn’t see how I could go, but then I met Ann Robertson of New Canaan, who is with the Children’s Health and Environmental Coalition. She took me and told me she wanted to help me become a nonprofit group.”

“This has been a very life-affirming process,” Ms Lawson said. “My testimony became part of the Senate record.”

The Canary Committee co-sponsored a forum at Danbury Hospital last October to address issues affecting the environmental quality of schools. National advocates, health professionals, teachers and parents came together to share their experiences, expertise and solutions to the growing problem of indoor pollution in schools.

 State Rep Bob Godfrey, a Democrat from Danbury, and State Sen John McKinney, a Republican who represents Newtown, worked behind the scene to help craft Bill 6503.

“This bill addresses the problems with low- or no-cost solutions to save future schools from potential problems,” Ms Lawson said.

Pervasive mold contamination cost taxpayers in Fairfield $28 million when McKinley Elementary School had to be torn down and replaced. Other significant costs were $41 million at Masuk High Schol in Monroe, $18 million at Tomlinson Middle School in Fairfield, and $74 million at Darien High School. Four schools in Brookfield were closed for remedial work last year because of asbestos; mold problems were found at Staples Elementary School in Easton as well as at schools in two dozen other Connecticut communities.

“A federal Environmental Protection Agency analysis of repairs done at one elementary school showed that if $370 had been spent annually over a 22-year period on preventative maintenance, $1.5 million could have been saved,” Ms Lawson said.

“I feel that education is the key,” she said. “People have to understand that complacency and waiting too long to fix these problems is not the way to go. Taking action now saves money in the long run, makes healthier schools, and as a result, children will learn better.

“I’m still very optimistic about the future,” she added.

On April 7 the state legislature’s Environment Committee approved Bill 6503. The bill would tie state grants for school construction and renovation to adoption by the district of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s “Tools for Schools” program. The program outlines practical steps to reduce hazardous chemicals and organic substances in schools.  The legislature’s Education Committee has approved a separate bill.

Once state legislation is approved, Ms Lawson said the Canary Committee plans to become a nonprofit organization known as the Connecticut Foundation for Environmentally Safe Schools.

 She said a rally is being planned along with a major fundraiser in the fall. Anyone who would like to help, or who needs more information, can check the website www.canarycommittee.com or call 426-2954 and ask for Kirby the Canary.