News
'Dream' Jobs Turn to Nightmares

Connecticut NEA members tell lawmakers of the need for cleaner air in their schools. The goal: Pass tough indoor air quality legislation.

They work, or once worked, in the state reputed for having the nation's toughest teacher standards, and their comments to state lawmakers in February reflected pride--even enthusiasm--in their chosen careers. This was Connecticut at its best.

"I can honestly say that teaching kindergarten has been as much a hobby as it has been my job," testified Milford NEA member Katherine Anderson, while member Ellen Ginter spoke of stepping into her "dream job" last year as a counselor and department chairperson at Amity Regional Senior High School in Woodbridge.

"I was very invested in a career I would have described as dynamic, multifaceted, and very fulfilling," added retired Fairfield special ed teacher Joellen Lawson of her 23-year career as a classroom teacher, seminar leader, educational consultant, and tutor.

But the bulk of these educators' remarks, made at a joint Education Committee hearing on a proposed "Act Concerning Indoor Air Quality [IAQ] in Schools," showed Connecticut at its absolute worst.

Anderson, Ginter, Lawson, and three other teachers took turns describing wretched school building conditions--caused by factors such as air and soil contamination; mold, asbestos, or lead exposure; or poor ventilation--that have made them and students ill.

This moving testimony, coordinated by the Connecticut Education Association/NEA, generated lots of tears in the usually staid hearing chamber.

Anderson and Nancy Carter, both five-year teachers at Milford's John F. Kennedy Elementary School--built with a flat, leaky roof on the edge of a swamp--described their transition from healthy athletes to physical wrecks, at the same time a handful of students and graduates were contracting rare illnesses such as scleroderma and Crohn's disease.

Anderson, who is allergic to mold, recounted how her symptoms, from vertigo to joint and muscle aches, got "tragically worse" after a "mystery smell" invaded the JFK school in November. Her white blood cell count dipped and her immune system weakened, before allergy shots and medications helped rebuild her immunity.

Carter wasn't so lucky. "Happy and healthy" when she started teaching at JFK, she experienced chronic sinus headaches and severe bronchitis within two years. In her third year, she was diagnosed with scleroderma, a chronic autoimmune disease.

"My skin began to harden and pull all over my body," Carter told wincing lawmakers. "My esophagus was beginning to dysfunction. I saw my life being stripped away from me before my eyes."

Carter, who today is being treated by an expert in autoimmune diseases, assured the panel she is now "on the road to recovery." But the mold in her building--to which she is allergic--is still there. "Both my allergist and rheumatologist believe that my school was a factor in my body succumbing to this disease," Carter said.

Veteran Fairfield teacher Joellen Lawson, who is on disability retirement because of severe mold exposure at the now-closed McKinley School (see NEA Today, November 2001), told the committee that she wished she and her doctors had linked her illness to the mold in her work environment when she first became seriously ill in 1998.

"If I had made that link," Lawson testified, "I would never have re-entered that building and re-exposed myself to the high levels of mold that were later identified."

Calls For a Bill With Teeth
This testimony helped humanize the Connecticut Education Association's case for meaningful, enforceable indoor air quality legislation.

A comprehensive bill, drafted by CEA last year with the help of environmental and occupational health experts, died without a vote on the last day of the last legislative session. In February 2002, a new, weaker bill--drafted without CEA input--surfaced in the Education Committee.

It'll take lots of lobbying and public pressure to toughen the current bill, but CEA and its allies--including parents, the environmental community, and other unions--are up for the challenge. Association members expect to return to Hartford for more testimony, and they'll be backed by an aggressive CEA media campaign urging legislators to "make all schools healthy."

By the end of the legislative session in May, no taxpayer in Connecticut--where the elementary student asthma rate runs as high as 14 percent in some districts--will doubt that CEA has made cleaner indoor air in schools a top priority.

One TV spot, sponsored by CEA and the state PTA, shows a sunflower shrinking under an onslaught of smoke and dust. The message: "Urge your state lawmakers to support indoor air quality legislation."

And not just any IAQ legislation. The Constitution State needs a "regulatory system that focuses on prevention," CEA President Rosemary Coyle told the Education Committee.

"This focus," she said, "extends from when we first consider building a new building or renovating an older one, to how we maintain our existing buildings. Regulation, appropriate training, planning, and monitoring should be the hallmarks of any environmental quality bill for public schools."

Among CEA's specific goals:

• An environmental site assessment before the construction of any new school.

• Bonding money for any needed environmental renovations.

• A required maintenance plan for each school's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system--plus required training for maintenance personnel, a written record of HVAC maintenance, and guidelines for performing maintenance work while a school is occupied.

• A uniform inspection and monitoring program for schools--plus systematic review of air quality-related health and maintenance data by health authorities.

• School logs of health complaints--from adults and students--that might indicate a trend or be related to potential indoor health quality issues.

• State-offered training on school environmental health issues--plus state support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's successful Tools for Schools program.

Top Priority: Health of Kids, Teachers
Opponents of comprehensive air quality legislation will, predictably, complain about mandates and money.

But Robert Murphy, CEA's director of professional practice and government relations, stresses that "we need to get a bill that establishes the beginning of a strong regulatory framework around these issues.

"Almost every state has a budget deficit excuse du jour to not do anything about sick schools," Murphy acknowledges. "Our response is that time is not a renewable resource--there's no more important priority than the health of children and educators who teach them."

Counselor Ellen Ginter, who was on seven allergy and asthma medications per day by late last year--before staff, students, and parents forced HVAC system improvements at Amity Regional Senior High--left this thought with the Education Committee: "I ask you to remember that school is a place where we want our children to feel safe and supported. It is also a place of work for so many.

"Please think of all these individuals," Ginter concluded. "We do not want our children to fear coming to a building that will make them sick. We want them to learn, grow, and become adults to be proud of, not adults who will take an illness with them for the rest of their lives."

For a review of current state policies for improving school indoor air quality, go to the Environmental Law Institute Web site at www.eli.org. And for more on asthma and schools, go to http://asthmaandschools.org/.

Facts and Figures
A Problem Too Big To Ignore

Twenty percent of the U.S. population, nearly 55 million people, spend their days in elementary and secondary schools. Studies show that one-half of our nation's 115,000 schools have problems linked to indoor air quality.

Students are at greater risk because of the hours spent in school facilities and because children are especially susceptible to pollutants.

(Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program--www.epa.gov/iaq/schools/)

Your Dues Did It
NEAFT September 11 Fund

Last autumn, NEA and the American Federation of Teachers created the NEAFT September 11 Fund to assist children and other affected family members of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath.

As of February 11, the fund had raised approximately $715,000 from NEA and AFT appropriations, state and local affiliates, and individual members--and paid out some $323,000 in financial aid.

Check recipients are keenly aware that this money didn't come from a cold bureaucracy, but from caring fellow union members.

AFT member Alice A. Henry, a secretary at New York's John Dewey High School, wrote NEA President Bob Chase: "My son, firefighter Joseph P. Henry, died in the World Trade Center and I know he would be so proud to know that NEA and AFT formed [this fund]. Your kindness will never be forgotten."

Nancy Brennan, a Patchogue-Medford (New York) teacher who will use her NEAFT check to start a trust fund for her deceased brother's two children, wrote, "It's wonderful to be a part of such a caring organization."

And elementary teacher Steven O'Brien, who lost his twin brother, Scott, in the World Trade Center blast, wrote in a moving thank-you letter to Chase: "I relive the events of September 11 over and over again: teaching my fourth grade class as I first heard about the attack, excusing myself to catch a glimpse of a TV, being horrified but having to go back and teach--after being directed not to share the news with my children.

"I'm [now] back at my school and it is the support of my co-workers, and especially my fourth graders who keep me busy and engaged," O'Brien concluded. "Who ever thought I'd look to my students for sanity? Thank you."

Valerie Scott, a retired AFT member in New Mexico, used the fund money she received to travel to New York for her son-in-law's memorial service, while AFT members in New York City used the cash to help replace copiers in schools damaged by the World Trade Center blast.

Much more fund money will be distributed in the months ahead as ongoing needs are realized. In order to minimize red tape, the two unions are relying on local affiliates to help identify those needs.

Thus far, fund recipients--predominantly NEA and AFT members--have been able to use the money for basic needs such as grief counseling, financial planning, rent or mortgage assistance, health care, or higher education expenses.

Life slowly returns to normal for many of these NEA and AFT members, but the needs will continue to be there. You can help by sending a check to: NEAFT September 11 Fund, Dept. 0033, Washington, DC 20041-0033.