After another round of testing revealed stubbornly high rates of PCBs — a class of toxic chemicals — at North Country Union High, administrators are preparing to educate students in wedding tents this fall.
A state law passed in 2021 requires all schools, public or private, built or renovated before 1980 to test for the probable carcinogens. That’s 324 schools, according to the Agency of Natural Resources, which oversees the program.
Basically since its outset, school officials have complained about the program. While the tab, for now, is being picked up by the state, schools have worried they would eventually be saddled with mounting costs as funding set aside by the Legislature for the program quickly dwindles.
But most of all, educators have criticized the program for the profound upheavals it has caused on the ground when classrooms, gyms, and other spaces have been shut down. Exacerbating frustrations is that PCB remediation remains an evolving science, and administrators who have endured time-consuming and disruptive projects at their schools have often found they didn’t work.
The state has already spent nearly $6 million on remediation projects at the Newport high school. And while subsequent testing in parts of the high school found that PCB levels did go down, they’ve had less success elsewhere.
Administrators received preliminary results for the school’s B-wing — where most classrooms are housed — this week, and “none of the results got any better, and some got worse,” said North Country Union High principal Chris Young.
Both school and state officials say there is a possibility that further testing next week will see levels drop below levels of concern. But in the absence of certainty, and with the start of school just around the corner, administrators are moving forward with contingency plans.
For North Country superintendent Elaine Collins, the Newport school’s experience is further evidence that lawmakers gave “zero thought” to “what might happen if we actually found PCBs in schools.”
“We're right on the heels of the pandemic, and the thing we can afford the least in terms of educating our kids is more disruption to learning,” Collins said. “And here we are.”
The Vermont House, whose leadership was hesitant from the start about the program, has twice passed a bill to halt the testing program — and the Vermont Senate has twice gone on to kill that legislation. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark is suing biotech giant Monsanto, which once manufactured PCBs, in hopes of recouping cleanup costs, and has said she is worried stopping the testing outright might hurt the lawsuit’s chances of success.
House Education Committee chair Rep. Peter Conlon, a Cornwall Democrat, was complimentary Thursday of the Agency of Natural Resources’ attempts to minimize disruptions to schools in its handling of the mandate. But he argued it was also clear that Vermont had bitten off more than it could chew.
“The program itself is collapsing under its own weight,” said Conlon, who has long argued the program should be scrapped.
PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were once widely used in construction materials but have been banned by Congress since 1979. Vermont Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore said Thursday that while she’s keenly aware of the disruptions the testing mandate has created for schools, that shouldn’t overshadow the public health benefits of the mandate.
“As much as we hate to — I hate to — say it, and I know as much as they don't want to hear it, North Country is exactly the reason we're running the testing program,” Moore said.
Whether or not lawmakers take action to formally halt the program, for all intents and purposes, it is already on pause. Moore said Thursday that the state has “effectively wound down new testing,” so that all remaining funds — roughly $5 million — can go to remediation.
About half of all eligible schools have already undergone testing, and officials say they’ve detected concentrations of the chemicals exceeding action levels established by the Vermont Health Department in a little over one-third of tested schools.
Vermont has already allocated about $40 million to PCB testing and remediation, according to Moore. Asked if her agency would be asking lawmakers, when they reconvened in January, for additional funding to finish testing, Moore said she did not know.
“We are in the early stages of budget development, and I don't want to get out in front of (Gov. Phil Scott) on what form that may take,” she said.
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