Story by Mike Myslinski
Crescent Elementary School in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District was so contaminated with black mold that teachers and parents alike fought successfully to have the old school demolished in 2003 and rebuilt elsewhere.
As a veteran of that and other toxic mold showdowns in her school district, Solano County teacher Joan Gaut is eager to help spread the word about CTA’s Healthy Air, Healthy Kids project, which aims to increase teacher awareness of the ways in which indoor air quality affects the learning environment.
CTA’s indoor air quality project will help educate teachers on how to police their own classrooms for such dangers, says Gaut, an asthma sufferer who chairs the health and safety committee for the 1,200-member Fairfield-Suisun Unified Teachers Association (F-SUTA). “By making our classrooms safer, this project will help students learn,” says Gaut. “And that helps everybody. If a health problem affects students, it can also affect teachers.”
F-SUTA President Melanie Driver, who had to file a grievance to get a ceiling leak in her classroom fixed, sees better district cooperation ahead on these issues, and has great hope for the CTA member training that the project will provide. “If teachers are trained on what to look for and how to get concerns addressed, then this will enable teachers to get common hazards corrected.”
 |
|
Dr. Robert K. Ross (above) is president and CEO of The California Endowment, which has given CTA a grant for the indoor air quality project. CTA Board member Lloyd Porter (below) co-chairs the Teachers for Healthy Kids steering committee. |
About one in six California children under the age of 18 has been diagnosed with asthma.
“Students are losing thousands of classroom days due to asthma and other problems linked to indoor air quality, and children of color are being especially hard-hit,” says CTA President David A. Sanchez. “Educating teachers about avoiding asthma triggers is a vital step in fighting this disease.”
CTA has invited environmental and health experts to a summit with teacher leaders Oct. 31 to explore issues and strategies vital to establishing good indoor air practices in public schools.
Healthy Air, Healthy Kids was funded earlier this year by a grant from The California Endowment foundation, which also funds CTA’s Teachers for Healthy Kids project. Now in its fifth year, Teachers for Healthy Kids involves teachers and state health plans educating parents about the public health insurance available through the state’s Medi-Cal, Healthy Families and Healthy Kids programs.
Both proactive endeavors, which are coordinated by CTA Human Rights/Community Outreach, demonstrate teachers’ commitment to keeping public school kids healthy and able to learn, says Orange County teacher Lloyd Porter, co-chair of the Teachers for Healthy Kids steering committee and a member of the CTA Board of Directors.
“We really have to educate our members,” says Porter. “The teachers who still have the old stuffed couches for reading in their classrooms, and hamsters, old stuffed toys and dusty books on countertops have no idea what kind of poor air quality is right there in their classrooms. This project will make a difference in the lives of thousands of students and teachers.”
In Sacramento County, the 2,700-member San Juan Teachers Association recently met with the district’s facilities manager to map out a clean air strategy that will benefit students, teachers, education support professionals, classified workers and administrators, says President Steve Duditch.
“We want to reach out to parents as well, and the PTA and principals,” says Duditch. “This has to be a partnership to really work.”
In addition to educating teachers, the project is linking CTA chapters with existing community coalitions that are fighting asthma.
The 2,600-member Oakland Education Association has linked up with members of the Oakland/Berkeley Community Action to Fight Asthma group, which is part of the Ethnic Health Institute at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, says OEA Second Vice President Rosenda Thomas.
Thomas, who has asthma and knows firsthand what it can do to students and staff, says the coalition is working to get the Oakland and Berkeley school districts to adopt comprehensive asthma prevention policies.
The CTA project is a catalyst for change, she says. “This is about taking care of our members and our students.”
Merced County teacher Anthony Parreira is promoting CTA’s indoor air quality kit and its classroom checklists at meetings of the CTA Merced-Mariposa Service Center Council, where he is the treasurer. Pesticides used on local farmlands have long been a concern for school indoor air quality in the region, he says, but teachers may not be aware “that we have so many other asthma triggers in our classrooms,” says Parreira, vice president of the Los Banos Teachers Association. “This project lets me show teachers how they can go back to their classrooms and make a difference.”
In the massive Los Angeles Unified School District, district health officials now estimate that about 14 percent of the students — 98,000 children — have asthma. A majority miss 10 days or more of school. District nurses are promoting an action plan to monitor students with asthma that includes touring “breathmobile” vans that offer free testing, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
The fact that CTA is committed to improving air quality at schools is critical, says Barbara Spark, an adviser to the Healthy Air, Healthy Kids effort. The Region 9 indoor air program coordinator at the federal Environmental Protection Agency, she describes the CTA project as exciting. “CTA’s involvement, we think, is the turning point for this issue in California.”
