Tuesday Afternoon
Safety First Safety Always
The safety of our students and our very dedicated and generous staff is always our highest priority. We want to bring you up to speed on what is going on, let you know what we’ve done, and what we plan to do as we move forward so that you can make any necessary arrangements.
The flood affected areas of our school are being cleaned as we type this. Anything that was wet during the flood is being discarded. They are following very strict cleaning protocols for events like this and the process is very involved.
Our school was built in 1957, and like every building built back then, it contains asbestos. We know where it is and have had years of testing and compliance reports to prove it. Most of the asbestos is safely encapsulated under the floors. The boiler room has been abated; there is no more asbestos there. Some of our ceilings have asbestos. It is inspected and monitored on a regular basis according to code and all of the reports are filed appropriately. We are on top of this. We are in compliance with all the regulations regarding containment and monitoring, and our compliance is documented.
We will not let the kids back into the building until we have a second negative test. Because the test results will not come back until 11:00 pm tonight, and we don’t want to leave you scrambling tomorrow morning, St. Peter School grades K to 8 will switch to distance learning tomorrow, Nov 15th. The teachers will be sending you and your students detailed instructions. Experience has shown that our little Pre-K students just can’t do distance learning so the teachers may email you an activity or video for them to watch.
If the second test is negative, we will let you know as soon as we can, and we will be open on Thursday morning; however, the Veteran’s Day celebration will be rescheduled. Your kids are so important to us. That’s why this email is so long. We want to be 100% transparent regarding the safety of our students and staff. We are very sorry for any inconvenience…Safety First - Safety Always!
Monday Afternoon
Dear Parents / Friends,
Sometime over Saturday night/afternoon a sink in the science lab on the second floor got turned on. Unfortunately the drain was blocked somehow and the water overflowed the sink flooding the science lab, the hallway and a small part of the library. Then as water does, it found its way through the ceiling and flooded the Kindergarten, the boys room, part of the office, the Pre-K 3 closest and the Pre-K 4 room next to the kindergarten. In both of those rooms there was substantial damage to children’s work and the teacher’s files and possibly some of our electronics. The water ran all night and the whole mess was discovered by a staff member on Sunday afternoon who was coming to do extra work. By then it was raining in the first floor hallway and water was running down the walls, it was also seeping from the science lab down the outside of the building. The plaster in the boys lavatory on the first floor was soaked and began to come down
A police report was filed and in roughly 3 hours from discovery, the Diocese of Trenton sent a professional remediation company. When they arrived, they did a complete environmental assessment and began the final remediation and clean up. Now the electrical system, the fire alarm system will be checked to make sure there is no damage.
We are still in the process of cleaning up the messWe have been assured that once we pay our deductible which is $1000 for the building and $1000 for the contents the rest of the cost will be covered by our insurance.
We are keeping you informed because we know that you love our school as much as we do. Rest assured, we have done everything in our power to clean up the mess and make sure the school is safe when we open our doors tomorrow for our children.