At school board meeting after school board meeting, month after month, year after year, School Board member Danny Blanton has sounded the alarm to the Cleveland County School Board that there was a serious mold infestation at Burns and Crest High Schools. Mr. Blanton has even identified the cause of the mold infestation-condensate water drain piping not being properly insulated or leaking and the water leaking onto ceiling tiles creating a perfect environment for growing mold. Relatively minor and cheap to fix issues at the worst. I have myself written many articles about this over the past year.
However, the School Board leadership, consisting of Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker and Roger Harris have led the other school board members (minus Danny Blanton) into a conspiracy to discredit Blanton and falsely deny that there are health issues with mold at Burns and Crest High Schools. This conspiracy goes well beyond simple fibs. Little white lies and even the chance of a mistaken identification of the problem. It goes well beyond stupidity and incompetence. It goes to the point of actively falsifying testimony and rigging test results. And outright lies after lies after lies. The October 12, 2020 School Board meeting was the same. Except, now, mold was found at Shelby High School!!
Here are some examples of the mold infestation problem cover-up effort. The high spots of the low-down behavior.:
• At previous school board meeting, the CCS Director of Maintenance Steve Boheler was purposely sent out of the School Board meeting room to a remote location just before Danny Blanton was thought to be (and did) bringing up the mold issue. The discussion of the mold was headed up by Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Wampler, Superintendent Stephen Fisher and Shearra Miller. Three levels of management with zero education, training and experience with mold or air conditioning principles, operation and maintenance. Much less with air quality requirements. Three levels of know-nothing management over the Director of Maintenance. (Is that top heavy management (or the lack thereof) or what?)
• At later meeting, Maintenance Director Boheler is purposely not invited to the school board meetings. And any talk of mold and HVAC was headed up by Wampler, Fisher and Miller. Again, three levels of know-nothing management over the Maintenance Director who don’t have a clue. And, it seems the Maintenance Director doesn’t have a clue either.
• NOW we find out that air quality testing has been performed and passed the acceptable levels of mold in the air. Unfortunately, those tests were rigged. Before the tests were conducted, contractors with qualifications in mold remediation were brough in and thoroughly cleaned the areas that were to be tested right before the FINAL air quality tests were conducted. And no efforts were taken to resolve the basic problems that contributed to the high concentrations of mold infestation in the first place. It is obvious that within 24 hours the high concentration of mold spores in the air would again be in the danger zone.
• At this October 12, 2020 school board meeting, right at the end of the meeting, Supt. Fisher does an about-face on the mold issue. Yes, Burns and Crest does have mold infestation and mold has been discovered at Shelby High School too. American Restoration and Crossfire air quality testing had been called in to help. The Fisher goes on and on about what a good job CCS Maintenance had done as he described problem after problem about the School having air conditioning problems and not working properly which Fisher attributed to hot summers and too much rain. As I sat there in the audience as a retired engineer with 40+ years’ experience in cooling systems at Nuclear Plants, I knew for a fact that Supt. Fisher didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about. Air Conditioning systems are designed for hot summers and to operate in the rain. I recognized immediately the problem was improper air flow through air conditioning system air cooling coils. Bout that time Danny Blanton picked up a picture of some air filters installed at one of the plants that was marked June, 2019. Blanton indicated that it was the practice to mark the date on air filters as when they were changed. That indicated that these filters were changed more than 16 months ago. I could see from 30 feet away that the air filters were totally blocked and totally blackened by mold. With the air filters totally blocked, the only mode of mold removal at Burns, Crest and now Shelby High Schools is with the lungs of our children, teachers and staff. And, with the filters totally blocked, air flow through the HVAC system is reduced significantly to the point that the AC system will not operate properly. And who does Fisher have called in, NOT anybody that knows anything about HVAC, but air testers and mold removers. Fisher goes on to deny that he had lied to the School Board in previous discussions about mold. And I had set there and heard him lie time after time
With CCS having a $165 Million budget and schools closed for six months and even the Air Conditioning filters do not get changed properly proved to me that there needs to be a big-time change in CCS management, beginning with the School Board on the November 3, 2020 Election day. Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker and Roger Harris have got to go.
Folks, this is not the first time that Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker, Roger Harris, Stephen Fisher and Jennifer Wampler have pulled such phony trick. Remember the 200+ School Credit card scandal a few years back? These same folks schemed to rig an audit by purposely selecting Credit Card receipts that were done correctly and then bringing in an outside auditor who was paid big bucks just to audit those particular receipts. Of course, the outside auditor’s report was that there was NO Problem with the school provided information. And now, this air quality testing has the very same MO. Crooked dealings clearly made to deceive the public.
Instead, the school board still refuses to acknowledge the mold contaminated school ceiling tile that Danny Blanton brought to the School Board meeting in a plastic garbage bag. NO EVIDENCE says Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker and Roger Harris. Only one person at the meeting asked Blanton to let them look closely at the ceiling tiles. That one person was ME. After the meeting was adjourned. The evidence of water damage and mold residue was obvious, although the water-soaked ceiling tiles had since dried up.
Another prime example is one of my recent articles’ implicating Roger Harris, Shearra Miller and Richard Hooker taking excessive “boondoggle” training trips at taxpayer expense. I sent Roger Harris and the others an advance copy of the article with specific instruction to “REPLY” to THIS email if they had comments or questions. Instead of following instructions, Roger Harris “REPLIED to ALL” on his email response, then purposely removed me from the email distribution before sending the email. Roger Harris’s statement on the reply, that was never sent to me, was that he had written to me was that my information was incorrect and that I had refused to make the corrections. Others on the email distribution forwarded Roger Harris’s false statements and I have confronted Roger Harris with his lies and Roger Harris has shut up because he is caught in his lies. But I am not shut up and will not be shut up by the likes of Roger Harris and his lies.
I have also submitted Public Records Requests for all records and documents of travel and training of, not only Roger Harris, but of Shearra Miller and Richard Hooker too. My preliminary understanding is that Richard Hooker is the worst offender in taking unnecessary trips at taxpayer expense, followed by Shearra Miller and then Roger Harris There will be more about this in other articles. In the meantime, I have frozen the original article on my website as well as on Facebook as of 2:00 PM Saturday October 10, 2020 until I receive the records and documents that I have requested from CCS. If Roger Harris, Shearra Miller and Richard Hooker were honest people, they will expedite those Public Records that I requested. I do not expect to see them in this lifetime as I believe my sources and the reports I received from them are materially correct. Stay tuned folks. I suspect things will get hotter and hotter as election day 2020 gets closer and closer.
In the meantime, my recommendations for the 2020 School Board Elections are as follows. Note that I do NOT recommend Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker and Roger Harris for re-election. Since they together have well over 100 years at CCS, you can blame just about every problem at CCS as beginning and continuing on their watch. It is time for a change. This is how to make that change: