Mold forces major changes for Illinois school district

MOUNDS, Ill. -- This time last year, the small boy sitting on the floor outside a classroom at Meridian High School, eyes downcast, pulling his arms out of his shirt sleeves, would have been in another building, drawing another administrator's attention.

On Thursday, he caught Terrance Gaddy's eye.

Gaddy, middle- and high-school principal for the Meridian school district, was leading visitors on a tour of the building when he noticed the youngster serving a timeout in the hall.

"Hey, T. Rex!" Gaddy greeted the boy, who gave him a solemn look and drew his arms further into his screen-printed Tyrannosaurus T-shirt.

Gaddy, who is more accustomed to riding herd on teenagers, coaxed the child into putting his sleeves back on and stepped into the classroom to tell the teacher he was taking her young charge with him.

After a lighthearted conversation about the boy's age -- 6, the boy said, explaining he used to be 5 last year -- Gaddy grew serious.

"I'm going to need you to act like a 6-year-old when you're in class," he said.

The little boy assured Gaddy he would.

Before Gaddy could escort the boy back to class, he had to stop to direct several men who were moving the wrong cabinet full of books out of the building.

Wayward 6-year-olds, books on the move, media attention -- Gaddy's job has become considerably more complicated since May, when grade-school principal Brent Boren's discovery of a potentially dangerous strain of mold in a closet at Meridian Elementary School forced the district to close the building.

Sixth grade teacher Tamara McCutchen, left, and Pre-K coordinator Kim Tucker pose for a photo inside a classroom at Meridian High School, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013, in Mounds, Ill. (Laura Simon)

The closure left administrators with little choice but to move the elementary classes into Gaddy's building, where the district's 575 students now attend school in two shifts.

Logistics

Students in prekindergarten through second grade and seventh through 12th grades attend classes from 7 a.m. to noon; third- through sixth-grade classes meet from noon to 5 p.m.

A waiver from the state allowed Meridian to reduce its daily instructional time to 4.5 hours -- 30 minutes less than the standard requirement for Illinois schools -- so students could attend classes in shifts and still have time for lunch, interim superintendent Terry Moreland said.

The schedule was designed to maximize instructional time while accommodating classes and extracurricular activities, Gaddy said.

Boren said some parents initially were "worried with the little kids and the big kids being in the same building," but administrators worked out scheduling and traffic flow issues to minimize interaction between older and younger students in the halls, going so far as to have buses drop off different age groups on opposite sides of the building.

Prekindergarten through second-grade classes have their own rooms, because their furniture is too small for older students to use. Those classes are confined to one wing of the building, administrators said, while the other wing houses grades seven through 12 in the morning and grades three through six in the afternoon.

Three weeks into the semester, "I think the parents are more at ease," Boren said.

Trudy Morris, whose 17-year-old daughter attends Meridian High School, confirmed that.

"I didn't think it was going to work at first, but it seems like it's doing pretty good," she said.

Sharing

Despite the logistical challenges, the situation has had unexpected benefits as classes share space and classroom resources, Gaddy said.

"They're getting the best of both worlds," he said.

For instance, in one classroom, high-school algebra problems filled a whiteboard, while fourth-grade arithmetic posters covered part of the wall below.

"It just reinforces previous skills," Gaddy said.

Sixth-grade teacher Tamara McCutchen shares a room with a high-school social studies class.

McCutchen said her roommate gave her carte blanche to decorate the space as she saw fit, so she chose posters that would benefit both classes: copies of the Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation and a display on the Underground Railroad.

"I know what it's like to share," she said. "I grew up with sisters."

Classrooms aren't all teachers share.

"Planning is a little bit different. We all have a common planning period, and before, it was according to grade level," McCutchen said. "That's actually kind of a positive. … We get to actually confer with our co-workers and find out where they are with subjects."

Until new machines arrived Thursday, all the teachers in the building shared a single copier. With one copier and one planning period, traffic jams were inevitable.

"It's those types of things that are the most challenging," said prekindergarten coordinator Kim Tucker.

Family matters

For working parents, the schedule has raised another challenge: child care, Tucker said.

Some families with older and younger children on the same shift have solved the problem by asking teenagers to watch their siblings in the afternoon, she said.

In other cases, Tucker helps match families with older students who need baby-sitting jobs.

"It's given several of the high-school kids jobs," she said.

Because of district policy, students could not be interviewed or photographed, but several parents said their children seem unfazed by the schedule.

"My 14-year-old loves it, because he gets out of school at noon," said Teresa Patrick, president of Meridian's Parent-Teacher-Student Organization.

The schedule has created extra legwork for Rebecca Word, whose second-grader and third-grader are on different shifts.

"To kids, it's not really too big of a deal," Word said. "…It's us grown folks that it's just a little bit of an adjustment. The kids, they're just happy to see their friends."

Waiting

The district is considering bids for portable classrooms that will allow a return to some semblance of normalcy while it waits for state officials to decide whether to remediate or replace the elementary building, but a permanent solution is still a long way off, administrators said.

"We've heard anything from three months to two years. Your guess is as good as ours. We just wait," Moreland said.

While it waits, the district is looking for all the help it can get.

A notice in the Illinois Education Association newsletter drew assistance from other educators, McCutchen said, and Patrick and the PTSO have raised funds to provide supplies for displaced elementary teachers and their students.

The organization is planning a yard sale Friday at the Mounds Car Wash to raise additional funds, Patrick said.

"We're making the most of a bad situation," McCutchen said.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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