Mukilteo school to vacate classroom as precaution

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A third-grade class at Mukilteo Elementary School will be moved out of its portable classroom Monday after air-quality tests revealed a higher-than-expected concentration of a certain kind of fungus.

The testing was done at the prompting of the doctor of the class teacher, who is ill with a lung condition and has been teaching half-days, said Shirley Andrews, president of the Mukilteo Education Association. She said it is unknown whether there is any connection between the teacher's condition and the classroom.

"There's no indication that the room is causing anyone to be ill," she said.

The concentration of amerospores — a generic category of fungi that includes the common molds of aspergillus and penicillium — was "not nearly into the danger zone," Mukilteo School District spokesman Andy Muntz said. "We're doing this for the sake of the teacher and her delicate health situation."

Muntz said there had been no reports of illness among children in the classroom, and several parents said they thought the school responded quickly and appropriately. The school principal sent a letter to parents earlier in the week notifying them the class would be moved to the school's computer lab as a precautionary measure in case the teacher is sensitive to the spore.

The school district asked the state Department of General Administration to test all six of the portable classrooms, and except for Portable 5, the classrooms showed a normal range of airborne particles, school officials said. The classroom, which the district has owned for years, will now be used for meetings and other short-term purposes, Muntz said.

Portable 5 is among the district's portable classrooms known among school officials as the Bhagwan portables because they were once used by infamous Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, who took over the tiny north-central Oregon community of Antelope in the early 1980s.

They are best-known for the "salad-bar poisonings" of 1984, when they dripped a fluid containing salmonella bacteria onto food at restaurants, making about 750 people sick in and around The Dalles, Ore. — an incident considered the first bioterrorism assault in the United States.

Muntz said the district did not purchase the portables directly from the cult. He said he wasn't certain where they were obtained.

He stressed there was no connection between the cult's ownership of Portable 5 and the air-quality issue.

The classroom has been refurbished and thoroughly cleaned many times over the years, including after the testing, he said.

"That was almost 20 years ago," he said. "If there had been problems connected with that, I would think they would have shown up before now."

Janet Burkitt can be reached at 206-515-5689 or jburkitt@seattletimes.com.