ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C. — It's been 52 days since mold was discovered at Andrews Elementary School in Alamance County.
Since then, more than 2,000 workers have been called out to clean 30 of Alamance-Burlington's 37 schools.
"Some of these schools, when they had to be remediated, it was only that they had maybe surface mold in two classrooms or perhaps it was an air quality issue in one wing of the building. A lot of what we saw was cafeteria impacted and needing to be cleaned thoroughly, gyms needing to be clean thoroughly," said ABSS Spokesperson, Les Atkins.
Atkins says remediation has officially been completed at every campus impacted.
He says it will be safe for students and staff to return to class on Monday.
Industrial hygienists have spent Sunday verbally clearing the last of the affected schools with the district while they wait for physical certificates to arrive later this week.
"It's been a long 52 days and we are excited to be able to provide healthy and safe learning environments for our students in our staff. The schools are clean now, so there is no more mold deal with," said Atkins.
Atkins says the district is also looking into long-term solutions to prevent these issues in the future.
That will include dehumidifiers, roof inspections, and HVAC monitoring.
In the meantime, some schools will still have dehumidifiers still in place in the hallways, just to help keep moisture down in the buildings.
As for making up the missed days, Atkins says they are still within the total instructional hours required by the state.
However, the board will likely make some additional changes to the calendar this week.
"We are still within the state calendar, lol fulfilling those instructional hours. What we will have to look at obviously is changing some of our teacher workdays over to student days. Our Board of Education will be meeting Tuesday afternoon to revisit the calendar and look at that and actually finalize an updated calendar," said Atkins
The district will continue to update the mold remediation dashboard on the ABSS website.
Including posting the air quality certificates for each school as they are made available.
"The schools are clean now, so there is no more mold deal with, but we will continue to communicate with our families," said Atkins.
Alamance-Burlington Schools will operate on a 3-hour delay on Monday morning to allow teachers to set up their classrooms.