COVINGTON, Va. – After just over a month of virtual learning, students at Covington Middle School will get to go back to in-person learning on Tuesday morning.
The school originally shut down after an odor was detected inside the building. An investigation into the odor found that a natural gas oven in the kitchen had been releasing carbon monoxide.
“I feel very, very confident about what’s been done here since our incident in January has made this building a much safer place to learn,” said Melinda Snead-Johnson, the Assistant Superintendent for Alleghany Highlands Public Schools.
The school has since taken action, adding extra carbon monoxide detectors to the building, cleaning out the boiler room and radiators, repairing an older air handling unit, repainting the boy’s locker room and removing an older oven in the cafeteria.
School officials also took advice from outside experts, who advised the school on different actions they should take.
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Such actions included state and local safety inspections, air quality and building systems testing and a comprehensive deep cleaning.
“We used as much time as we could to do things like some interior painting and the cleaning process,” Alleghany Highlands Public Schools Superintendent Kim Halterman said. “Again, working with as many experts as we could to make sure that the building was just as ready as we could make it. That’s been a good process.”
After everything the school has undergone to make sure the school is clean and safe for its students, school officials promised to continue learning from the experience to avoid a situation like this from happening again.
“I think we learned how to continue to look to make this building better each and every day,” Snead-Johnson said. “We won’t stop looking until we know that we’ve done everything that needs to be done each and every day to keep this building clean and sanitary.”
