A Northwest Portland synagogue’s plan to begin asbestos abatement work next Monday has upset families whose children attend a Portland Public School district charter school that leases space in the congregation’s building.
Tara Herivel, whose son is in fourth grade at the Emerson School, said she’s frustrated that Congregation Beth Israel won’t push back the work until school lets out for summer.
“I am a working, single parent, who now has to wonder if my kid will go to school when the abatement project starts, or if it’s unsafe and he has to stay out,” Herivel wrote in an email to the synagogue’s administrators. “We will lose family income, he will lose the end of fourth grade.”
Emerson, which enrolls about 140 students in grades K-5, is planning a move to a new location downtown this fall after several years at Beth Israel, as the congregation begins building out a new early childhood education center, which is scheduled to open in early 2024.
But Emerson’s administrator Sunita Sandoz said the school has not yet signed a lease for the fall and may need to negotiate with Congregation Beth Israel to remain there until its new space is ready.
Josh Kashinsky, Beth Israel’s executive director, said he’s confident that the long-planned work does not present significant safety concerns to Emerson’s students or faculty, and said the synagogue wouldn’t be moving forward otherwise.
“None of the classroom spaces are adjacent to where the abatement will happen,” Kashinsky said. “There is a large auditorium and hallways that separate the classrooms. In addition to the distance barrier, safety barriers will be put in place, including the sealing off of all venting between the spaces.”
Additionally, he said the contractors that the synagogue has hired will follow all of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s recommended safety procedures.
Sandoz noted that Congregation Beth Israel was within its contractual rights to begin the work during the school year, and that she’d consulted an independent third-party contractor that also does asbestos abatement work about the scope of the project.
That firm’s assessment was that “the work is safe to do while operating school from our current locations within the building and that it does not pose a health or safety hazard to students or staff,” Sandoz said.
Nevertheless, Emerson’s after-school care provider, Champions, has decided to suspend its program once the pre-abatement preparations are complete and the mitigation work gets fully underway, Sandoz said.
Kashinsky said Beth Israel agreed to push the start date back a week to allow more time for Emerson families to get answers to questions they’ve raised. But with that week passed, he said he saw no reason for further delay, given the safety precautions that the congregation’s contractor, Portland-based PMG, will be putting in place. The overall construction project is a complicated one, long in the works and with many moving parts, he said.
Portland parent Rachel Sowray, whose child also attends Emerson, said part of her concern is that the state Department of Environmental Quality only requires monitoring of air quality at the end of a project, but has no similar requirement while work is underway.
— Julia Silverman, @jrlsilverman, jsilverman@oregonlive.com
