Cumberland Schools Office Problem Less Than Expected

The Cumberland County Board of Education needs to make repairs to the central office basement after the system completed a building assessment.

School Board Member Sheri Nichols said the assessment took place after the building dealt with multiple flea infestations. Nichols said the basement part of the central office building is fairly old with little work done on it. That has led to water and fleas problems in the foundation.

“The basement needs to have a moisture barrier put down with some humidifiers in the area there to then pump that water out,” Nichols said. “And then that would close off those areas where I’m just going to say nobody saw anything but like a raccoon or a squirrel or something like that would get in that might have bugs or fleas on it.”

Nichols said she was relieved that the assessment results were not as bad as she expected. Nichols said the school board was thrilled to learn that a complete renovation or a new building was not going to be needed.

“As you know in a district with 12 schools we’ve got projects that really need to be done,” Nichols said. “It’s like you only get so much money and that money has to really stretch out and go to a lot of different places and so we already want to do that. Well, we want to take care of our kids far and above anything that we do. They are the most important their safety and everything is most important and then yet we also need to respect our supervisors because they deserve to work in a building without fleas.”

Nichols said the flea infestation affected daily operations and meetings of the central office. Nichols said she is glad to finally address the flea problem.

“It will be great cause I can’t imagine you know going to work and you get bitten by a flea,” Nichols said. “That’s never fun and it wasn’t really that it was a constant thing. They were gone they actually got rid of them but the idea of them coming back again was very annoying, especially for people who work there every day. We had to move a couple of our board meetings over to Cumberland County High School because of the issue.”