After mounting pressure from parents, Long Beach Unified has moved children out of several classrooms at Monroe Elementary School where they were repeatedly suffering unexplained symptoms like headaches, nosebleeds, and nausea.
In the week and a half since the district moved students, parents told the Long Beach Post their children’s symptoms have improved. But parents are still waiting for results from another round of environmental testing, which they hope may help explain what happened.
How did we get here
Long Beach Unified closed Monroe in 2013, but the Lakewood campus is currently being used as a temporary site for some Patrick Henry Elementary students while their campus is remodeled. Yet soon after moving into the Monroe classrooms in August, eight classes of fourth and fifth grade students housed in one building began complaining of a suite of symptoms including headaches, nosebleeds, nausea, fatigue and dizziness, according to parents.
Rosa Palacios, a teacher in the building, initially suspected the symptoms were caused by a major heat wave at the start of the school year, but when five of her students experienced nosebleeds within a few weeks, she wondered if there was some other unseen hazard, she said. As more children began reporting similar symptoms, some parents suspected the same.
In late September, LBUSD hired an outside company to examine one classroom’s air quality, which revealed high temperatures (as warm as 102.6 degrees on the hottest days) and higher than recommended humidity. Those conditions could explain the students’ symptoms, the consultants wrote in a report. Mold spores were low, the report read, yet the consultants recommended repeating the test because the room had been ventilated beforehand, which can alter results.
The district relocated the one classroom it tested yet said that, given the results, it did not plan to conduct additional testing.
What came next
Parents remained unsatisfied. They collected symptom data from more than 40 students across the eight classrooms, which showed pronounced clusters: 27 students had reported headaches, nine reported nosebleeds, nine reported fatigue, seven reported nausea and seven reported dizziness. Students also experienced coughing, eye irritation, feeling hot, pain flares and sore throats, according to self-reported data collected by Henry parent Katie Jakemer and reviewed by the Post.
Some parents were concerned enough about their children’s symptoms to seek advice from pediatricians, they said. One parent, Alyssa Gutierrez, said her son’s doctor ordered bloodwork, which showed inflammation and a possible allergy to his environment, Gutierrez said. Another parent told the Post that when she volunteered in the classroom, she began experiencing eye irritation, headache, fatigue and dizziness.
More than 150 Patrick Henry parents began pooling their observations, knowledge and expertise. They demanded the district remove all students from the building that many had come to suspect was causing illnesses. And they requested the district repeat and expand its panel of tests to look for asbestos, hydrogen sulfide (a toxic gas sometimes found in sewers and basements), methane, ammonia, formaldehyde, mold and volatile organic compounds (man-made chemicals found in paint and cleaning supplies), according to an email reviewed by the Post.
The district responded. It would test for formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds, conduct mold air sampling and use an infrared camera to check for moisture within walls, according to an email from the Henry principal, reviewed by the Post.
Beginning on Oct. 26, the district removed students and teachers from the classrooms where they were getting sick. Three parents told the Post that their kids’ symptoms stopped right away.
One mother, who requested not to be named to avoid identifying her child, had grown concerned about her son’s frequent nosebleeds and severe headaches, which began at the beginning of the school year. Since moving into the new classroom, those symptoms have resolved, the parent said, adding that she believes the old classroom was directly connected to her son’s ailments.
Parents are now awaiting the new testing results, which the district may share later this month, according to an email from a district administrator reviewed by the Post.