The school has taken strides in its development with the addition of the T-Building, stadium parking lot and the anticipated Performing Arts Building. Although new innovations continue, remnants of dated facilities remain, the L-Portable buildings among these.
Despite regular maintenance, teachers in the L-Portables have reported to the district the presence of pests including fleas, skunks, opossums and cats in or around their classrooms, which has been a long standing,but prominent issue this school year. District response and the measures they’ve taken, although continuing, have only been partially successful as animals continue to appear and cause disturbances. With this, some teachers and students began to question the district’s priorities.
Two years ago, English expository reading and writing curriculum (ERWC) and English language development (ELD) I teacher Amanda Vivas made her first report to administration regarding a family of cats beneath her portable L-20.
“It took months to get rid of them, and they brought out the pest control people to trap them and they trapped a skunk and a mama cat and maybe three babies or something… I wonder if that’s where the flea problem started,” said Vivas.
Following that incident, Vivas had run-ins with a skunk and an opossum, but it wasn’t until returning to school last August that she began to feel itchy and notice bites on her skin. She considered possible sources of the bites such as her home; however, within the first month back at school she made her first official classroom flea sighting.
“You’re not putting the pieces together because you’re not thinking to yourself that you have a pest problem in your workplace because this is not a place where there’s animals or gross stuff right?” said Vivas.
Others in her classroom had similar encounters with pests and reported them to Vivas.
“I’ve had five students throughout the day who have told me ‘Oh, I did get a bug bite’. I’ve had all three adults (instructional aides) who have been bitten. So for a while I was going to L-22 because oh, this classroom has fleas so I went to stay away from the fleas,” said Vivas.
According to Vivas, district personnel were dispatched to her classroom multiple times to assess the problem and repeatedly claimed they could not precisely locate the issue.
“I felt like just because people aren’t hearing me. Because people were like ‘Oh you’re fine.’ When they come out from the district they checked and then they were like ‘Oh we don’t see any fleas’ of course you don’t see any fleas,” said Vivas.
Vivas made continuous reports to Assistant Principal and Head of Facilities Melanie Wong regarding the infestation of fleas in her classroom. From there, her classroom had been subjected to various treatments and she was temporarily moved to either L-22 or the Media Center.
Although Wong’s position as facilities administrator requires her to oversee the upkeep of campus facilities, the position was assigned to her through random distribution. Wong’s position as facilities administrator came from this process and she has no specific pest control training. Therefore, to satisfy the requirements of her position she reports issues to the district, who then use their resources to address it.
“My job is to make sure anything that’s happening I do share back… so that they can supply the support we need to address the problems. That’s really my role, right, to communicate the needs we have so that we can get the support that we need,” said Wong.
Vivas understands Wong’s position and expresses gratitude for her efforts; however, she remains frustrated with the lack of results.
“She’s super supportive and I feel really bad for her because she always feels so, so bad about it and I’m just like, it’s not exactly your fault… but then above her it stops somewhere…I know she’s doing her best but that’s not good,” said Vivas.
A student currently enrolled in Vivas’ 6th period ERWC class, who wished to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns, noticed the fleas starting last September when bite marks appeared on their body. Similarly to Vivas, they had initially thought that they were being bit at home until they noticed fleas in the carpet of the classroom and made the connection.
“I was grossed out and I did not want to sit in a class with fleas,” said the student.
They waited to report their bites under the assumption that it would be pushed aside, until one day when class was taught elsewhere so the classroom could be inspected.
“I did not right away because usually the school never does anything for ‘small’ issues like this,” said the student.
Vivas has not been the only teacher in that row of portables to experience pest issues. ELD teacher Emily Milon, in L-17, has had to manage teaching amidst the smell of the skunks’ spray.
“Luckily I haven’t had a problem with bugs, but the skunks were really bad this year, the worst in my 20 years. Umm and I guess on film they found there were about five skunks having a territorial war right out in the little alley so the smell was extremely intense,” said Milon.
Due to the intensity of the smell, students complain that the area smelled like marijuana or that they would get headaches. Administration responded by temporarily placing Milon’s class in the T-Building’s MPR and providing deodorizing bags to mask the smell.
“I even had students complaining about getting headaches or it being just too strong, but the admin has been really helpful and they found me a new place in the T-Building, they’ve boarded up underneath the portable to make sure they can’t get in, they’ve been actively putting out skunk traps,” said Milon.
District Chief Facilities Director Jeff Pietan has been visiting campus to oversee maintenance of the issue. He redirected Insight’s request for an interview and deferred all questions to Principal Charles Park, citing his position as principal as his reason.
“Everything at West Covina High School, everything that happens at West Covina High School rests with me. And in the case of facilities it’s the same…As far as me providing information on behalf of Mr.Pietan I’ve done that in the past with district officials and I am doing the same now,” said Park.
Park explained that, from an administrative perspective, he has been aware of the pest issue since early this school year and efforts to handle the situation were made on a trial and error basis. Previous steps included boarding up entrances to the bottom of the portables, installing traps, providing deodorizing bags to teachers, performing unspecified treatments to the rooms, relocating teachers, and mandating regular maintenance such as daily vacuuming.
“I know that probably towards the start of the year we knew that there was a skunk smell coming from one of the rooms. When we get something like that we addressed it immediately and I think we took small steps at each step to try and resolve it and now we’re at a point where we are at the biggest step to resolve it. From there I think we also had probably things regarding the classroom itself because it’s a portable classroom,” said Park.
Park explained that they are now taking their largest step towards resolving the issue by redoing the insulation and carpeting within some of the affected classrooms to get rid of the remnants of pests.
“You can see right now if you are in front of Milon’s classroom you have construction workers who specialize in modular classrooms…when we opened it we smelled the concentration of the skunk smell so by that, by deduction, we deduced that the smell is inside the insulation…We removed all the wood paneling, all the insulation, repanelling the 4 sides again, putting in new insulation, putting in new boarding, and then putting in new carpet. In my mind, I think that’s probably a big step,” said Park.
Park confirmed that along with Milon’s classroom, English II and III teacher Lucie Pelleriti’s classroom is next to be recarpeted. He could not verify the same for creative writing and English IV teacher Kimberly Whitten and Viva’s portables.
Due to the issue remaining unresolved for an extended period of time, Vivas expressed that there seems to be a disconnect between the district and the campus.
“The farther away they are, they don’t care, they don’t know us, we don’t make sense to them right, this is not a lived experience for them. Well what can you tell someone unless they experience something? You can use your words but it won’t matter. I think they would have to actually be in it and feel it. Like okay why don’t you bring your laptop and you can have your office be in our classrooms instead,” said Vivas.
She also believes there is a culture of “don’t tell” present on campus, which has allowed the situation to persist and the situation became a norm within the school.
“It seems like everybody kind of knows. Like another teacher was like, ‘Oh you’re having that cat problem again? Your classroom is cursed.’ So we all just kind of know these things? We’ve reached that level of tolerance,” said Vivas.
In response to these concerns as well as that of the student’s, Park expressed that the administrative team is open to further communication with students and teachers.
“With the students and the quotes from the teachers, um yeah I think it makes me sad. I don’t think we should have students who feel that way or teachers who feel that way and I have no problem. Next time there’s an issue, I’ll set up shop there. I have no problem taking in the laptop and getting in the environment. I think we try our best to do that um so I hope that we’ve been available to students and staff as an administrative team so that if there’s an issue students feel comfortable to find us,” said Park.
As both administration and district work to resolve this issue, Milon expresses that regardless of present struggles the campus is resilient and hopeful for resolution.
“I was really impressed with how they (students) adapted… I think it’s really helpful that we have an extra space for teachers to go when there’s an issue with a classroom,” said Milon.
