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SANDY — Eastmont Middle School is temporarily doing remote learning while construction crews complete repairs to the basement flooring where small amounts of asbestos was found.
The school, located at 10100 S. 1300 East in Sandy, experienced flooding during winter recess, damaging the basement flooring. While making repairs, small amounts of asbestos were found in an old adhesive beneath some floor tiles.
"There were 22 people who possibly could have been in the building while there were particulates in the air before the building was closed to anybody coming in and out without the proper materials," said Jeff Haney, director of communications at Canyons School District. This included people who work at the construction contracting company and some Canyons District faculty and staff.
Canyons School District announced on Dec. 30 the school would resume classes through remote learning in order to protect students and staff from asbestos exposure and provide construction crew time to complete the repairs.
Canyons School District hired a certified company to perform asbestos monitoring and mitigation and crews are working "around the clock" to complete the mitigation and repairs as soon as possible, a news statement said.
The exposure could be as limited as just the hallway where the repair work was done or it could have spread to other areas of the building, Haney said. The district is working with environmental engineers to do sampling and testing of the building to determine the extent of mitigation needed.
An official date on when Eastmont will return to in-person learning has not been released. Haney said the school is preparing for a possible move to the empty Crescent View Middle School building if mitigation efforts are extensive.
Moving the entire school to a new building would be a lot of work, Haney said, but the likelihood of the move is "very high." Sampling and tests results will be completed in the next few days allowing Canyons District to determine how the Eastmont community will move forward.
It has already been determined that three programs now housed at Eastmont will start in-person classes at the Crescent View Middle School site on Monday, including Youth Academy and two special education programs.
"In the coming days, Eastmont families will receive more information about where students can obtain school meals and any needed Chromebooks and learning materials when classes resume after the holiday break," a Canyons District news statement said.
After-school classes are canceled until further notice, as well, and no one is permitted to enter the school building at this time. Canyons District said school personnel are working on a plan to return student property that was left in the building over the break.
