by Maria Houser Conzemius
During the last two years of former Iowa City Community School District Superintendent Lane Plugge’s tenure, a number of serious safety violations occurred on ICCSD property. And it appears the Iowa City school board and current superintendent are doing little to reverse this trend.
Dave Gurwell, who served as assistant director of the district’s physical plant from 1987 to 2010, told me of safety violations on school district property in which the district was in violation of the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act. During that time and before, Gurwell was the district’s designated person for ensuring compliance with the act.
Gurwell was also the district’s safety-committee chairman and primary contact regarding safety in the district. However, he was not allowed to control work conditions or procedures. Former safety coordinator Bob Porter said he was not allowed to control work conditions or procedures, either. To do his job, Porter had to drive around the district and ask for reports so he’d know what was going on. He, too, was left out of the loop.
In the fall of 2009, Iowa City Community School District physical-plant director Paul Schultz directed a renovation project in which asbestos was disturbed at City High, Gurwell said. Work was stopped upon discovery of asbestos contamination. Under asbestos-act requirements, the room should have been sealed. But instead, it was left open for more than a week, contaminating second-floor hallways. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources required an immediate wipe down of the second-floor hallways or possible shutdown of the entire school. The district failed to notify all City High occupants, as required by the asbestos-act, of abatement activities on the second floor.
Asbestos exposure usually occurs at a work site and can cause mesothelioma, a deadly cancer.
At Southeast Junior High, Schultz approved dangerous friable asbestos removal by plumbing contractors not certified for asbestos abatement. Contractors working under Schultz’s direction improperly contained and stored asbestos in the gym and then the loading dock, which exposed building occupants and the public to asbestos.
The Department of Natural Resources also identified violations and imposed fines after district staff at Lucas Elementary dumped caustic, floor-stripping waste onto the parking lot. Staff hosed down the area with water, and the runoff reached the storm sewers and Ralston Creek.
All three incidents took place after the school district eliminated Bob Porter’s safety-coordinator position. Porter was laid off in March 2009, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure.
In the ensuing 19 months, without a knowledgeable safety coordinator ensuring district compliance with local, state and federal regulations, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources identified numerous violations and imposed fines on the district.
The district’s attitude toward school safety was perhaps best illustrated when in early 2010, Schultz brought a gun to the school district physical plant to show staff in a work environment that at least 12 former and current employees have described as extremely hostile.
A weapons offense like this would get a student expelled immediately, but apparently Superintendent Plugge, Executive Director Paul Bobek, and the school board felt that no disciplinary action was required.
When Ed Stone, a concerned parent, asked school board president Patti Fields if a gun had indeed been brought onto school property by a district employee, she acknowledged that an incident had occurred but did not name the employee. It is a felony in Iowa to bring a firearm onto school grounds.
However, County Attorney Janet Lyness responded that the school district’s physical plant is not a school — despite the fact that Stone informed her that a home-building program for students had been based at the physical plant in the recent past, a fact corroborated by school district staff. Until June 2010, students had free access to the physical plant for materials and to use the bathrooms.
To date, the school district administration, the school board, and the county attorney have treated the firearm incident on school district property as a “private personnel matter.” Other serious safety violations also appear to be sufficiently acceptable to district leadership that they have left Paul Schultz at the helm of the ICCSD physical plant.
About the author and the article
Maria Houser Conzemius received her B.A. in English Literature in 1972 from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. In 1992, she received her Master of Social Work from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. She was a member of the Writers' Group of the Iowa City Press-Citizen from 2006 to 2011 and currently blogs for the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the Des Moines Register. Maria originally submitted this article to the Iowa City Press-Citizen who edited it to remove any mention of the firearm incident and all references to Paul Schultz by name or title. When she vigorously argued to have the article restored to its original form, she was fired from the Writer’s Group. She then submitted it to the Daily Iowan and it initially seemed that it would be published there. The editorial page editor sent her the final version of the entire op-ed virtually intact, and told her that it would be published the next morning. It wasn't published at all in the print edition but was published for a few hours "by mistake" in the online edition (you can see what the Daily Iowan online edition looked like here). Somebody pulled the article at the last minute from the print edition. Maria never got an explanation for why that happened. She then sent the op-ed to the Cedar Rapids Gazette editorial page editor, Jeff Tecklenburg, who acknowledged receipt and communicated with her about it in a timely, respectful fashion. Unfortunately, the Gazette showed little further interest in following up with the news department or publishing the piece. Finally, she sent it to Randy Evans, the Des Moines Register's new editorial page editor, who did not even have the courtesy to acknowledge receipt of the submission, much less publish it. Their loss is ICCSDLeaks gain.
