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Gene Kennedy reportingA Box Elder High School teacher whose students were potentially exposed to asbestos in his classroom has been placed on paid leave, but those students are rallying to the teacher's defense.
Pottery teacher Lee Burningham said, "I would say they're looking for a scapegoat, and they can use me as the sacrificial lamb."
Box Elder High School is old and has asbestos in some areas. The district says it has a plan to deal with it. But a letter from the superintendent indicates the pottery teacher and his students may have made the problem worse by removing tiles from a classroom floor.
The students say what happened was an innocent mistake and their teacher should not be to blame, but now he's fighting for his job. On Wednesday, the students cleaned up Burningham's classroom. They typically do that at the end of the trimester.
Student Tristen Vigil says, "As we went, we kept scraping. All the loose tiles kept coming up."
Burningham says, "I turned around and six of them went flying through the air. And I told them, 'If they're not loose, don't knock 'em off. Gather up everything that's loose and put it in the garbage can.'"
It turns out the tiles the kids were cleaning up potentially have asbestos in them. The superintendent says that violates the district's cleanup plan.
Superintendent Dr. Martell Menlove said, "We train custodians, if they come up, what they need to do, how they need to take them out, how they need to dispose of them."
Dr. Menlove wouldn't say why the pottery teacher is on paid leave. In fact, Burningham says he doesn't know for sure but is certain it all centers around his classroom, which remains on lockdown.
"We will do whatever the Division of Environmental Quality tells us to do so that students can be back in there," Dr. Menlove said.
But Burningham says the district should have taken action more than a decade ago. "Every student that's been in that classroom has been exposed to asbestos for at least 16 years. I think it's borderline criminal negligence."
Dr. Menlove told KSL he's never heard any complaints about the classroom, but Burningham says he complains "every time one of the maintenance people comes through."
Now, with Burningham on paid leave, students are signing petitions to bring their teacher back. So far they've gathered about 500 signatures.
Vigil said, "He's our teacher. He's everything we have at that school. If he leaves, we lose opportunities and the kids after us lose everything that we had."
The Utah Division of Environmental Quality is doing tests on the tiles in that classroom. The district is waiting on the results. In the meantime, the students say they'll be at a Wednesday night school board meeting to show support for Lee Burningham.
