Richmond Public Schools has shut down Barack Obama Elementary School indefinitely after inspectors and district officials confirmed mold has spread throughout the building, just as the school year was set to begin. Rodents reportedly have shown up, too.
Richmond Public Schools chief operations officer Patrick Herrel told everyone in the building to leave Monday, and the district announced the closure that same day. Parents and staff who had been inside described mold creeping across the school, including on laptops that had been sitting in storage all summer.
RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras said in a Monday afternoon statement that the district discovered additional areas of mold growth earlier that day. "Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to send everyone home so we could thoroughly re-clean the newly identified areas and perform additional antimicrobial fogging," Kamras said, adding that every room in the school will be retested. Kamras said the cleaning will take several days, and he hopes staff and students can return next week.
According to Kamras, no one was ever in an area where air quality tests showed elevated mold, and the latest contractor report found only one room still had elevated levels, a room staff had already sealed off before going back inside.
Richmond Public Schools scheduled a town hall on the closure for 5:30 p.m. Monday at Frances W. McClenney Elementary. Parents, meanwhile, were scrambling to find last-minute child care, since Tuesday was supposed to be the first day of class. Kamras said the district is working to use Clark Springs Elementary School as a temporary space for displaced students.
Kamras acknowledged how disruptive the whole ordeal has been for the community. "I know that this has been extremely frustrating for families and staff, and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and anxiety it has caused," he said.
Flashback: Open Letter to School Boards Everywhere: Stop Renaming Your Schools After Obama
But this closure didn't come out of nowhere. It followed a series of mold tests over the prior week, and apparently the school had experienced mold issues a couple of years earlier.
A school named after Barack Obama shutting down indefinitely because of mold is kind of a perfect metaphor for his presidency. The students there have been let down, and they’re the real victims here.
When the Richmond school board first voted to rename the school, seven options were on the table, five of which honored actual people. Of those five, every name but Obama's belonged to a local figure: Oliver Hill, the civil rights attorney who helped dismantle "separate but equal"; Barbara Johns, a civil rights leader; Albert Norrell, a longtime educator from a family that has taught in Richmond for more than a century; and Henry Marsh, another civil rights leader who became the city's first African-American mayor. It cost money and required a fundraiser — for a name change that clearly didn’t address the bigger problems facing the school.
This is a community that clearly values civil rights leaders who left a real, lasting mark on African-Americans. Yet, it chose the one name on the list whose impact is mostly symbolic and whose actual record did more harm than good. Perhaps Barack Obama himself could donate some money to the school to help turn it around.
I'm not holding my breath.
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