'We need to do better': RPS shutdown over mold growth raises summer maintenance questions

RICHMOND, Va. — As students at Barack Obama Elementary are missing their first week of school due to mold issues in the building, some parents have asked whether Richmond Public Schools did enough to prevent the problem from growing out of control.

A few of those questions were directed at Superintendent Jason Kamras during an at-times tense town hall Monday night.

Watch: Richmond parents react to mold closing Obama Elementary indefinitely

"What is your plan to get staff with a skill set that can handle this issue? Because you obviously have not been able to make the correct decisions," one parent said.

"Let's just be honest, we’ve known Barack Obama's had mold issues from as far back as at least 2024, if not earlier than that," another parent said.

At the meeting, Kamras acknowledged the century-old building's history of maintenance troubles, including what he called "chronic HVAC issues." An RPS spokesperson said Tuesday the district believes the "HVAC failure was the primary contributor for the mold growth."

School board member Ali Faruk, who represents Obama Elementary's district, said the latest diagnosis points to a chiller that broke down in May, which caused temperatures inside to rise.

At the same time, water was leaking into the building through the basement amid a rainy summer, and the building was being painted — adding moisture into the environment.

All of those factors combined, Faruk said, caused the mold growth.

Faruk said RPS first alerted him to an HVAC concern on August 10. Six days later is when he said he received word of mold in the building.

At the town hall Monday, a parent suggested the district should have conducted a sweeping inspection of the school if it was already aware of these conditions, before the mold was discovered Monday by staff ahead of the start of the school year.

"You admittedly sat up here and listed all these things in this school this summer — higher humidity, all the rain, all the things, all the issues. I think common sense would say if we found [mold] in several places, maybe we should inspect the entire school, and our staff wouldn't have had to be in there [Monday] in the first place to uncover it again," the parent said.

When asked whether RPS conducted enough maintenance and monitoring of the school over the summer, district spokesperson Kylie Brown said RPS took immediate action when issues were identified in May to extend the life of the chiller and order a replacement. The replacement is expected to be delivered in October.

Brown added "maintenance and cleaning continued throughout the summer."

When asked a similar question, Faruk said his understanding was that custodial staff regularly enter buildings throughout the summer; however, he was unsure how often they visited Obama Elementary specifically.

Had someone inspected every room in advance, he said it's possible "we would have caught the mold earlier."

Faruk said the school board will now review the district's policies for frequency of building inspections, especially schools known to have mold issues. A larger discussion of that topic is expected to occur during a September 16 committee meeting, he said.

In an interview with CBS 6 Monday night, Kamras acknowledged the need to step up such summer monitoring has been a learning lesson from this experience.

“We need to do better about proactive checks over the summer, but the team is pretty strapped as it is," Kamras said.

Meanwhile, both Faruk and Kamras have said RPS' funding falls short of meeting infrastructure needs.

"Sadly, we are always trying to fix the worst — like we can only address the worst problem. So there is a lot of sort of mid to lower tier maintenance that sometimes just gets unaddressed that sort of leads to where we are," Faruk said in an interview with CBS 6 Monday night.

"I have received a lot of emails of, 'Well, why are we even here? Why wasn't the HVAC system replaced? Why wasn't the basement redone?' And that is the honest answer, because there simply is not funding to do all of those things in any given year," Kamras said during Monday's town hall.

A 2024 facility assessment of Obama Elementary identified "significant deferred maintenance issues" and more than $17 million in needed replacements, including a roof and unit ventilator in poor condition. Brown said there is no evidence the unit ventilator failed or was connected to the current mold situation.

The HVAC system at the time was found to be in "fair" condition.

According to a survey related to the facility assessment, the school was known to have prior mold growth or air quality complaints, inadequate heating, cooling, or ventilation, and wall, window, basement, or roof leaks.

"We have many facility needs, and we do what we can with the budget we have," Brown said.

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