When Dana Starvaggi returned to work at North High School after Thanksgiving break, scattered piles of wet ceiling tiles littered her classroom.
“My ceiling was on my floor when I walked in, at least a couple panels,” the 9th grade physical science teacher said. “It’s a common thing, it’s an annual thing, … whose ceiling collapses.”
At Akron Board of Education meetings in May, North High School employees warned of the issue.
Brian Caperones, a counselor in the building, said there was one day when he could see through the subfloor to the classroom above.
Emily Rydzinski, a math teacher, said a ceiling tile landed on her desk, one of several that fell over a period of weeks as she felt her classroom crumble around her.
And Wyatt Daulbaugh, a history teacher, said when he started working at North, he “did not expect to see the ceiling literally fall in.”
North students, alumni and employees have been agitating for a new building; the district will likely need to pass a levy to be able to fund a new construction project, which Steve Thompson, Akron Public Schools’ chief financial officer and treasurer, estimated in the spring could have an $80 million price tag.
In the meantime, the district has taken early steps to replace the roof, an improvement that will keep the building operational if not do much to improve many existing issues.
Costs are more than brick and mortar
Starvaggi said there’s a cost to the continued issues in the building that goes beyond building materials/needed repairs. She had to throw away 20 textbooks after the saturated ceiling tiles fell and soaked their pages. She lost her planning period cleaning up the space so students could learn in it again. And she said such incidents have affected morale for students and teachers alike, making them feel as though their learning environment is not a priority.
Thompson said he’s aware of concerns about the building and has been making improvements when possible. But the district’s priority is to make sure the building is safe — not inspiring. He said that there’s often an indication that ceiling tiles are likely to fall and that teachers are urged to notify maintenance staff when they look precarious.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal,” Thompson said of the space. “It’s not the most conducive to learning.”
Jaimee Merrell, a math teacher who graduated from North and has taught there for 23 years, said the building has “absolutely declined considerably” since she was a student. Her ceiling tiles fell two years ago, and she keeps a piece of concrete in her desk drawer from the incident.
Merrell recalled putting Xs on certain desks to keep students from using them when the ceiling looked precarious. She moved her own desk out of the way. While Thompson suggested teachers could alert maintenance workers to tiles that looked likely to fall, Merrell said it wasn’t that easy.
“They’re not going to come down in one piece,” she said.
And that’s a problem because there’s asbestos in parts of the building, including in some ceiling tiles. Thompson said it’s only an issue if the asbestos is disturbed, but teachers said students kick asbestos floor tiles or knock ceiling tiles when pulling flags up and down during events at the school – not to mention the potential for falling pieces to contain the substance, a known carcinogen.
Thompson said an air quality test in the building this spring was clear. Pat Shipe, president of the Akron Education Association, said there have been no complaints regarding health issues from the school. While Shipe said the AEA agrees that North needs to be replaced, she doesn’t have immediate concerns about the building. New air conditioners in classrooms have gone a long way to help regulate temperatures, she said, and she continues to be open to staff concerns.
But Tuesday, it was the heat that was the issue. A spokesperson for the district, Mark Williamson, confirmed that preschoolers who are housed in the building were sent home early because temperatures in their classrooms were “colder than was comfortable” after one of four boilers in the building was offline for repairs. Williamson said parents of many half-day preschoolers were already at the building for a program in the auditorium and were urged to take their children home about 30 minutes before the day would have normally ended because temperatures in the classroom dropped to 65 degrees.
Lisa Lin, who teaches Chinese and English as a Second Language, said she’s concerned about the lack of ventilation in the building and uneven stairs that she said have led people to fall. She said there are tarps and buckets in classrooms and she’s afraid to hang pictures for fear of disturbing asbestos in the walls.
Students Frozan Azimi and Dev Bhujel told the school board this spring that they were concerned about safety in their building. Both are from refugee families – as are many of North’s students – and each questioned the effect of the poor environment on student health and learning.
And there are more issues, too. Janice Weaver, an academy coach at Akron’s specialty high schools who worked at North until this year, said she saw rodents, cockroaches, ants and even a bat in the building.
Starvaggi said the one perk of having her ceiling fall was learning that a yellowjacket nest that had been there earlier was really and truly gone.
Teachers also said stairwells had been closed down and bathrooms were sometimes unusable. Starvaggi expressed concern about a closet floor that was soft, making her think if she stood on it, she might fall through to the basement.
Working in that environment, Weaver said, made her feel less valued and less supported.
Lin, the Chinese teacher, said she’s concerned the district’s most disenfranchised students are learning in the worst conditions.
And Merrell, the math teacher, fears that students are internalizing the issues as the environment they deserve.
“We’ve all just gotten very used to it, but this isn’t normal, this shouldn’t be happening,” Merrell said. “It’s frustrating.”
Spending money, chasing problems
In the meantime, the district is spending money to keep North High School functioning while its future is determined. Thompson estimated it would cost about $10 million to ensure that North remained warm, safe and dry for those who come in its doors. That includes the board’s Nov. 6 vote to spend $73,000 for Mays Consulting & Evaluation Services, Inc. to inspect the roof and draw up plans for its replacement.
Work on the new roof, which is expected to cost $4 million, will likely begin in the spring and end in fall 2024. Thompson said the roof hadn’t been replaced for more than 30 years and foam coatings that were used to patch leaks weren’t up to the task of keeping water out. Additionally, he said, until the assessment is completed, it’s impossible to know how bad the condition of the building is.
Leaking air handlers, part of the school’s heating and cooling system, are responsible for some of the ceiling failures, Thompson said, and teachers blamed leaky radiators as well. New air handlers could cost between $60,000 and $200,000 apiece, and replacing boilers that are near the end of their life could run to $1 million. Plus, there are pipes buried in the school’s concrete walls and floors, so access to them to make fixes would be costly and invasive, he said.
While some improvements have been made to North High School in recent months – an outside door that would not latch has been replaced, loose bricks have been repaired – Thompson acknowledged there are concerns about the 1931 building.
“How much do we invest in this building we plan to take down?” he asked. “We have to worry about safety concerns [over] the next four or five years. No one can predict how long we’re going to be in that building.”
A construction commission in 2016 saw declining enrollment at the school and elected not to prioritize it on a list of proposed new schools; since then, the area that feeds North High School has become the fastest-growing part of the city.
“It wasn’t by design to skip it,” Thompson said, saying if voters agree to fund a new building in the future, it would be the last of the district’s planned construction projects.