Conditions worsen at Jamaica school, students moved out

Although classroom temperatures at the Ida B. Wells School were frigid last week, drama heated up the building when the school’s carbon monoxide detector sounded, prompting the evacuation of the school’s on-site nursery.
The downtown Jamaica school for pregnant teens and new mothers is one location of the Department of Education’s Living for the Young Family through Education (LYFE) program. The program helps these students, who traditionally have high dropout rates, get their high school diplomas by guiding the young women toward social services, teaching parenting skills and providing on-site day care for their infants and toddlers.
Last week the The Courier Sun reported that because of ongoing repairs to the building’s rooftop heating system, the almost 30 students trying to complete high school there had been without heat in their third and fourth floor classrooms and cafeteria since at least December.
The situation forced the hardiest of students to sit through classes wrapped in winter coats and scarves, but mostly, the young women just stopped showing up, teachers said.
At the urging of United Federation of Teachers (UFT) union officials who claimed the DOE had at first been unresponsive to their requests, the DOE moved the students to its learning support center at 90-27 Sutphin Boulevard on Wednesday, February 7.
However, because the second-floor day care center remained heated, the decision was made to keep the children at the school.
But on that same day the building’s carbon monoxide detector went off, warning those who stayed behind of elevated levels of the odorless, tasteless, colorless and potentially toxic gas.
According to James Vasquez, a UFT high school representative, on the following morning, Thursday, February 8, independent testers found carbon monoxide levels of 26 parts per million on the empty third and fourth floors of the building. The second floor nursery had a much smaller concentration at almost 3 parts per million, Vasquez said.
DOE spokesperson Margie Feinberg confirmed that testing determined “elevated” levels on the upper floors, and “acceptable” levels in the nursery although she did not provide exact figures.
“At no time were they in any danger,” Feinberg said of the children.
“It’s not likely to elevate the amount of carbon monoxide in the blood enough to be a concern,” said Mark Ross, a spokesperson for the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, when asked if the carbon monoxide level in the second floor day care could adversely affect the children there.
Nonetheless, Vasquez said that the decision was made to move 12 adults and seven
children from the school to a new location at 90-01 Sutphin Boulevard.
“There’s the concern here of erring on the side of caution,” Vasquez said.
According to UFT spokesperson Stuart Marques, the students will relocate to the Queen of Peace pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade parochial school in Flushing following their return to classes from midwinter recess on Monday, February 26.