Letter: McLeod West tackles health, safety concerns

From Tom Hiebert
Superintendent, McLeod West Schools
I would like to explain a couple of health and environmental issues that the McLeod West Schools have investigated as ongoing measures to protect the students and staff.

Beef recall. Two weeks ago you may have observed through different media sources the announcement that there may have been bad beef in the Minnesota School Systems Food Program. An e-mail was sent to all sponsors of school nutrition programs regarding bad beef from Westland/Hallmark Beef Co. The memo did not indicate the specific problem so we only know that school districts were ordered to hold the meat and notify the Minnesota Department of Education if any beef from Westland/Hallmark was discovered in our inventory. Immediately our food service personnel investigated our inventory and even checked past supply records. McLeod West was not identified as having any of the bad beef being distributed through our commodity program. We take food safety very seriously and act upon appropriate information immediately.

Air quality testing. As a continual monitoring procedure, we periodically test air quality. This past month several air quality checks were completed to monitor airborne particles and basic air quality. The test was conducted by the district’s air quality testing contractor Musser Environmental. After doing a visual check for any obvious mold, the air was tested using an Ultra-fine Particle Counter. The test indicated normal ranges for airborne mold and particles for schools.

Room temperature fluctuations. One issue that we have been working on this year is the fluctuation of room temperature between the different rooms in the building. The extreme cold weather has caused most of this problem. The maintenance staff is striving to reach some consistency in the room temperatures. Obviously the biggest problems happen on days of extreme cold when the rooms closer to the heating sources are warmer than those some distance away.