Charles H. Hulse school 'disappointed' parents by spraying pesticides
An Ottawa mother doubts she will send her two children back to school on Monday after the administration failed to notify parents that the building's cockroach infestation led to unapproved outdoor pesticides being used indoors.
Mellissa Rutledge said she didn't find out that Charles H. Hulse Public School in Alta Vista had been sprayed over the weekend until Wednesday night — a day after her six-year-old son David fell ill.
"My kids had been going to school all week and I had no idea that the school had been sprayed prior to then," she said. "I'm a little disappointed in that."
"I felt like my tummy was hurting — like I had a stomach ache," David said.
The school was shut down on Thursday after about 30 children and seven staff members complained of watery eyes, itchy ears and nausea.
The school is expected to re-open Monday to 450 elementary students after the building is cleaned and ventilated.
The Andrew Fleck daycare, which moved into the school in February, was not notified that the school had been fighting a cockroach infestation for a year and a half, said executive director Kim Hiscott.
"This doesn't make us feel good because we want to make sure we're always providing a safe environment," she said. "Obviously, we would have appreciated the school being more forthcoming so we could have been communicating with parents. That's all parents ask for — 'Is this the right space for my child?'" Hiscott said.
The product sprayed in the school was a class 4 pesticide, said Peter Giuliani, the president of the Ottawa-Carleton Elementary Teachers' Federation.
"If you check out the handling of it, [the] instructions, it's pretty clear: don't use it around people — and it highlights children," he said.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is looking into why the school was sprayed with a product that wasn't approved by the board, said associate director of education Norah Marsh.
She also said the school has a history of informing parents and teachers when spraying occurs and that the board will look into why it took several days to share that information in the most recent spraying.
