After year of operation, the BCPS Tools for Schools program sets standard for helping to keep indoor air healthy - 1/09/07

Cromwell Valley Elementary School Principal Jan Clemmens and BCPS Manager of Maintenance Craig Ebersole celebrate the school's performance in the Tools for Schools program.

With the average age of Baltimore County’s school buildings approaching the half-century mark, it’s a big job to ensure that schools remain clean and healthy places to teach and learn.  

But with the inauguration of the Tools for Schools program a year ago, Baltimore County Public Schools created a model for safeguarding and improving environmental conditions such as indoor air quality.  

That was the consensus at a recent meeting to review the past year of work incorporating Tools for Schools into Baltimore County’s public school buildings. “You are hitting the bull’s eye right on the mark on these issues,” Cristina Schulingkamp, an official from the Environmental Protection Agency in Philadelphia, told the group at its Nov. 8 conference. “You’ve taken the proper position that it’s always better to prevent [problems) than to react to them.”

The job is not always an easy one, which is why the Tools for Schools program was created. Launched in January 2006, the initiative partnered Baltimore County Public Schools with the American Lung Association to educate school principals and staff about how best to improve indoor air concerns at little or no cost, often by using straightforward activities and school personnel. The program was funded in part by a grant from the EPA. The program supports two of the central goals of the school system – the commitments to maintain and safe and orderly learning environment and to use resources effectively and efficiently.

Members of the Tools for Schools team met Nov. 8 to review the first year of the program and learn updates on keeping indoor air healthy.

Forty schools – eight from each of the county school system’s five geographic areas – were named pilot schools for the first year, with another 40 schools joining the program in January 2007.

At the November 8 meeting, representatives from the pilot schools, principals, teachers, parents, personnel from the BCPS Office of Physical Facilities, and others celebrated the first year of the program, listened to “best practices” used by other schools to keep indoor air healthy, and reviewed issues that developed during the year – the impact of students bringing in different hand soaps to school, for instance.

“You are a piece of a really big program, and you have a lot of support around you,” BCPS industrial hygienist David Glassman told the group. “Hopefully, we want to get out there in front of problems and prevent them from becoming bigger problems.”

Representatives of schools winning awards for their Tools for Schools efforts are (left to right): Linda Lee of Powhatan Elementary; Roberta Newnan of Perry Hall Middle; Craig Ebersole, Manager of Maintenance, BCPS; Jan Clemmens of Cromwell Valley Elementary; Ashley Morin of Hawthorne Elementary; Mick Walters of Glenmar Elementary; and Sue Biscoe of Fullerton Elementary.

The audience also heard from Michael Sines, Executive Director of Physical Facilities, who congratulated the group, and Jeff Ayers, a former Harford County schools environmental official who now is associated with the American Lung Association. He, too, commended those in the program for their diligence and work.

“You’ve got some really great things going on in your school system,” Ayers said. In addition to the school-by-school progress, the school system was recognized by the EPA for its work with Tools for Schools and for its development of a systemwide indoor air quality plan.

Spotlighting the efforts of individual offices and schools, the program’s coordinators also presented several awards as part of the November ceremony. The awards, which recognized criteria including communicating with the school community and program assessment and evaluation, were presented to:

• Great Start Awards: Glenmar Elementary School and Powhatan Elementary School.
• Leadership Awards: Cromwell Valley Elementary School, Hawthorne Elementary School, and Perry Hall Middle School.
• Excellence Award: Fullerton Elementary School

Story and photos by Charles Herndon, communications specialist for BCPS.