“Hello All: For the next two weeks Advanced Precalculus will be relocated to room 485,” read the email from the registrar Matt McCaw on the afternoon of Friday, September 26. While the sudden move from the math wing sparked fear in the Upper School, it was made clear that the reason for the room number modifications, mold, wasn’t harmful for the student body.
“While all mold can be dangerous, we are not dealing with Black mold in this situation,” head of facilities Joe Simonetti said in an email to the Parker community.
While the mold spreading throughout the math wing isn’t the dangerous, health-risking mold, renovations were still necessary on the first floor. For the math department, this meant packing up materials from their rooms, finding a new space to teach their classes, and quickly adjusting to their new, temporary, classrooms on the fourth floor.
“I hope it’s not impacting the students because we just have moved to a different classroom space,” Upper School math teacher Steven Tyler said. “Teachers are having to now, though, adjust to different projectors or different setups, but all the teachers have been very accommodating to let us move desks or try to make the space, while we’re in there, our own space.”
“You have to adjust your teaching style to accommodate the new space,” Tyler said. “In one room, the projector doesn’t show graph paper, which has made it interesting to teach calculus. But again, we’ve kind of just had to adapt and be more specific when I project the notes. Another room has big, long tables, which I’m not used to in a math setting, but we’re working hard to make sure that the kids are getting as much of a learning experience as we can provide them.”
Tyler wasn’t the only teacher who had to make sudden adjustments. Math and humanities teachers alike had to adjust to new spaces and new routines. However, math teachers are still making sure their students continue to learn. “I think the initial reaction was a little bit of fear, just of an unknown of really, how long has this been there, and are there health implications that could be due to the mold. But the response is now, again, we’ve got a job to go do, and our job is to go teach kids, and that’s what we’re going to go do,” Tyler said.
Upper School history teacher Jeanne Barr, however, has found the silver lining in this chaotic situation. “It’s been weird having a math class taught in my classroom but really interesting at the same time. I get to see students in an element I’ve never seen, dealing with numbers instead of historical facts or court cases. Overall, I’ve actually liked having math classes in my room, but I definitely understand why the math teachers are eager to return to their classrooms,” Barr said.
Although the mold in the math wing was a problem that affected students and teachers at a rapid rate, the problem was growing in the walls over time. What started as a minor leak during COVID-19 lock down has spiraled into the issue that is affecting the Upper School every day now.
Though the math wing mold has been a problem for several years now, maintenance is working as quickly as possible. “Affected rooms will be remediated as soon as possible,” Simonetti said. “Once all contaminated material is removed, housekeeping will deep clean all the rooms and additional air quality tests will be conducted.”
While teachers around the building are trying to adapt to the issue at this time, they are also looking into the future to see how a chaotic situation like the current one could be avoided in the future. While teachers don’t have a specific answer to how to solve maintenance issues about the mold itself, they have hopes regarding further organization and communication in the future. “The school has been very generous to us and has stayed aware that we have been moved out of our rooms,” Tyler said. “We want our rooms to be fully functional and clean when we move back, and we hope to not have to repeat this process again.”
