The installation of a mechanism to limit the opening of windows in several dozen classes at the Saint-Jérôme high school as a safety measure concerns teachers who have seen the air quality deteriorate and the mercury increase in their rooms. class to the detriment of their health and that of their students.
Last November, a police operation launched after an individual was seen with a pellet gun on the grounds of the establishment led to the confinement of more than a hundred students from the Laurentides secondary school in their local for more than three hours. A student then slipped through the window of his classroom, on the second floor of the building, in order to leave it despite the confinement then in progress to ensure the safety of the students.
In the months that followed, the sliding windows of several dozen classrooms located in the oldest part of the building, built in 1963, were fitted with a stopper which came limited to less than 10 centimeters per opening of these. Several teachers then complained about this measure, which would have had the effect of increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in certain classes well beyond the recommendations of the Ministry of Education. The mercury would also have increased in several of these classes where opening the window was the main way for a teacher to control the temperature in their room.
“It’s a health issue”
However, “it’s not just a question of heat, it’s a question of health”, says a member of the teaching staff of the establishment who requested anonymity, not being authorized to speak to the media. In an interview, this source said he had “never seen [ses] students as sick as this year”, several of them suffering from “migraines” due to the heat in this class, where it is regularly around 27 degrees Celsius. A photo provided to Duty of a CO reader2 present in a class of the establishment also reports a concentration of carbon dioxide in the room of nearly 2300 parts per million (ppm) at the time of this photo, a rate significantly higher than the threshold of 1500 ppm that the Ministry of Education recommends not exceeding.
“Last week, it wasn’t hot outside, but it was 27 degrees in my classroom. It doesn’t make sense with around thirty students,” says our source. “All the teachers are complaining, all the children are saying it’s hot, it’s humid […] When it comes to the June exams, it will be unbearable,” continues this member of the teaching staff.
Joined by The duty, the Rivière-du-Nord School Service Center (CSSRDN) reminds that the sliding windows of the classes “can always open and allow air circulation all year round” in the wings of the school which do not do not have a mechanical ventilation system. However, it confirms that the opening of these was limited by the installation of a stop “in order to meet the standards of the building code in force” aimed at “avoid accidental or voluntary falls of the occupants of the building “.
“This is nothing new; this is one of the standards that we have applied for several years. Checks of these devices are carried out during our routine inspection rounds and, when a mechanism is broken or missing, we change it or install one,” adds CSSRDN spokesperson Nadyne Brochu. Relaunched by The dutyshe adds however that inspections took place following the “November event”, which led the school to make “corrections” to the windows “which did not have a device or to those whose device was defective.
Fans expected
Following repeated complaints from teachers, the school service center has also committed in recent months to acquiring around forty standing fans in order to distribute them in classes where a mechanism has recently been installed to limit the opening of windows, indicated to the Duty the Rivière-du-Nord Education Union.
However, “the latest news is that the ventilators have still not arrived,” laments its president, Jean-Stéphane Giguère. “We will continue to monitor the service center to ensure that there is no problem of excessive heat in these premises,” he adds.
The union representative also underlines the importance of acting on this issue before summer temperatures set in in Quebec. “It’s an old building that doesn’t have air conditioning, so the best way to ventilate is to open the windows. As summer approaches, teachers’ fear is that it will be too hot in certain premises of the high school,” he notes.
The CSSRDN had not responded to teachers’ concerns at the time of writing.