Furious parents rebuke School Committee over fire alarm failures

Tuesday night’s School Committee meeting began with apologies from Superintendent Philip Thornton and Building and Grounds Director Steven Gothberg, but it was not enough to mitigate the anger of parents. Parents’ feelings were palpable as some of them, along with School Committee Member Karen Bachus, asked for Thornton’s resignation.

In a statement shared with the Beacon Wednesday morning, Thornton didn’t express intentions to do so.

"I completely understand the concerns of our parents and teachers. As Superintendent, I want to assure them we will do better. We had a breakdown in our internal communication process. Specifically, we failed in relaying information about the fire alarm system to staff and the community,” he said. “We have addressed that at all levels and we are implementing new protocols to ensure that when we have these mechanical or facility failures, we communicate them internally and externally. I am committed to do the best job I can for the students of Warwick and will continue to do so."

During Tuesday night’s boisterous public comment session, which went on for about an hour and a half as opposed to the typical 30 minutes allotted, a handful of parents also suggested School Committee Chair Beth Furtado resign.

The calls for the school department members to step down came after schools were hit with a slew of issues in the past few weeks: a septic backup in which half an inch of wastewater leaked into an art room at Warwick Vets; an air quality report on Vets indicating rooms had levels of carbon dioxide that could make for uncomfortable conditions; and, most notably, fire alarm system failures at Norwood and Holliman that not all parents and teachers were informed of until about a month after the initial failure on February 24 (Holliman’s teachers were said to have been notified, but not Norwood’s).

Per Thornton’s office, the Norwood alarm system is now working and Holliman’s should be working again on Friday. A fire watch had been in place previously. The School Committee also voted to have a discussion with the Warwick Sewer Authority about connecting Vets and remaining schools to the city sewer system –the leaked wastewater had been cleaned and a “jet cleaning” last week revealed a blockage that was cleared. On the Vets air quality tests, a representative from Environmental Consulting Management, the firm that conducted the test, said mold testing in the Vets building will begin early next month.

Despite plans in place and assurances from the school and fire departments that buildings were safe, the public remained unconvinced. Members from the Norwood PTA read a lengthy letter they’d written to the School Committee in which they asked for the installation of a parental notification process in the case of safety issues, a backup safety protocol, and for spending on “superfluous projects” to be put on hold until fire safety systems in all schools were repaired. In the letter, PTA members also asked for the resignation of Gothberg, Thornton and an unnamed administrator who they said told parents over Facebook, “Relax. When is the last time a school caught on fire? How about never.”

“No parent should ever feel the fear and anxiety that we have in sending our children to school in an unprotected building,” the PTA members concluded in the letter.

Pilgrim teacher and parent of elementary school children Peter SanGiovanni said the apologies and new communications protocols were “great,” but that they come “too little too late.”

“Schools are old, stuff breaks. I get that. But I do think we have a serious problem when people on that stage want to avoid negative press so much that they put that in front of the safety of staff and children,” he said. “And since this deception occurred for about a month, it might be time to get off that stage.”

Though many comments centered on the fire alarms, others did touch on other issues. Vets parent Kelly Powers said her daughter’s health issues, which she believes stem from being in the building, have gotten worse.

“Every time she goes to the doctor, she has chronic infections of her sinuses,” she said, citing conditions listed in the air quality report she said could have contributed to her daughter’s ailments.

The School Committee will have a special meeting on Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. at Vets for a presentation of Thornton’s recommended budget of $167,016,695 for fiscal year 2018. That budget will be put to a vote on April 12.