Asbestos Removal Starts at St. Louis Park Schools

In what should be welcome news for anyone who sets foot in a St. Louis Park public school on a regular basis, last week the district began replacing thousands of asbestos-laced floor tiles in every school building.

February's degrading under the steady tread of sand-and-salt-covered shoes sent district administrators into crisis mode. Classes at —where the damaged tiles were first discovered —were canceled immediately, and the tense school board meeting scheduled for that night took on the air of an emergency command bunker, certainly not helped by its temporary re-location to the basement cafeteria of

While work is just beginning, assistant superintendent Bob Laney told the school board last month that the district would be pursuing "a very aggressive schedule."

That's putting it mildly.

Laney said every vinyl-asbestos tile in every school building—minus a few in broom closets and infrequently-visited areas—would be replaced by the time school opened in the fall. cafeteria, for example, is supposed to be done by June 20.  

The work of removing the tiles is being done by Mavo Systems, Inc., and will be paid for by money already set aside in the budget for new flooring, Laney said. They'll be using a different technique from previous tile-removal attempts, where workers used strong-smelling chemicals to dissolve the adhesive securing the tiles. Instead, the adhesive will be ground down, Laney said, dramatically reducing the time to complete tile removal.

Laney also told the board that testing would be done before school opened in the fall to make sure the asbestos threat was gone.