Dear Editor:
Monday on page A3, you ran a short article on the award the
Gilroy Unified School District received from EPA’s Tools for
Schools Coordinator Shelly Rosenblum from San Francisco.
Dear Editor:
Monday on page A3, you ran a short article on the award the Gilroy Unified School District received from EPA’s Tools for Schools Coordinator Shelly Rosenblum from San Francisco. Shelly is the west coast contact person for implementing EPA’s Indoor Air Quality “Tools for Schools Kit” for school districts, and the program is nothing short of superb!
Congratulations to GUSD for implementing such a user-friendly program that solves many indoor air quality problems for all employees and students in the district. The proactive aspects of this employee/student interactive process quickly resolve acute and potentially chronic indoor air problems in classrooms and employee workspaces.
Consider some facts:
• Students and teachers spend 90 percent of their time indoors.
• 50 percent of the 115,000 schools in the U.S. suffer from indoor air problems.
• Asthma in children has increased by 60% in the past 15 years.
• Daily 55 million people spend time in schools.
• Indoor pollution can be two to five times and sometimes 100 times higher than outdoor pollution.
• The majority of classrooms built since 1975 have few or no operable windows. (Tight building engineering as an outgrowth of the 1970’s oil crisis)
School districts implementing this program see reduced absenteeism by employees and students (both saving money on substitutes and positive base revenue fund generation), increased student achievement, and increased trust between employees and employer as a result of safer working environments.
By proactive and interactive participation with employees, GUSD will generate savings for the district not only today, but also well into the future.
Congratulations to all who participate in this much under-published, unrecognized federal government program implemented at the local level.
Dale Morejón, Gilroy
Submitted Tuesday, Oct. 7 to [email protected]
