Collins School Closes Due to Mold

Barnegat Township School District officials announced today that the will not open Tuesday for the first day of school after tests detected potentially harmful levels of mold in several classrooms.

Barnegat Superintendent Karen Wood said the district brought in an environmental consultant Thursday to test for mold, and preliminary results indicated levels high enough to prompt officials to close the school in the interest of students' and employees' safety.

The 300-plus students at Collins will attend their regular classes with their assigned teachers when school begins next Tuesday, said Wood, but will be bused or dropped off at one of the three other township elementary schools. Which children will go where will be determined by grade level, and has been communicated to parents, she said.

Wood said mold has been an issue at Collins in years past, and while staff has followed proper procedures to keep it at bay, an extra-wet summer likely contributed to the current flare-up.

"The ventilation system we have at the Collins School pulls in a certain percentage of fresh air from the outside, and with that comes humidity," said Wood. "That has promoted the growth of the mold, even though our people stayed on top of it."

She said it's believed the mold could have spread from room to room through the porous ceiling tiles in the school's dropped ceiling, making it difficult to detect.

"It becomes a pollutant that you can't see," she said, though she added it's not yet clear what kind of mold is growing in the school.

Still, said Wood, the district decided to take a proactive approach and conduct a total cleaning, which will require Collins be shut down for at least a week. The decision to close was made solely by the district, she stressed.

"It's our responsibility to keep our staff and students safe," Wood said.

At this point, she said, it's not clear how much the cleanup will cost or how long it will take, but the district will update families early next week on when students may be able to return to the school.