A northern Iowa elementary school is being shut down after asbestos levels were found to be one-thousand times what’s considered safe. Students at the North Kossuth School District Bancroft building will not have school for two days because of air quality problems.
Superintendent Mike Landstrum says arrangements will have to be made to house those students in Swea City for the last 19 days of the school year. Landstrum says test results for asbestos levels were returned with high sample levels and the school district was told not to return the students to those classrooms.
The North Kossuth School Board has already voted to move students to Swea City starting next school year. The space will be freed up because of a sharing agreement entered into with Sentral that would send high school students to the Swea City building and middle school students to the Sentral building at rural Fenton.
There are 170 students from pre-kindergarten through 5th grade housed at the Bancroft building that is shared with Saint John’s, on the side of the building that does not have air quality issues.