Capital High will be closed the rest of the week after test results, received Monday, showed high levels of mold and carbon dioxide in a little less than a third of the school, said Kanawha County public schools Communications Director Briana Warner.
Warner said the goal is to reopen the school Monday, following cleaning from Charleston-based ASTAR Abatement & Insulation.
"The reason for the closing is basically so that our abatement crews can get in here and do their work as quickly as possible," Warner said.
She said there hasn't been an influx of students reporting issues.
Warner said air testing was done Aug. 29 and Sept. 6-8, and Teays Valley-based Pinnacle Environmental's results came in late this morning. Capital students attended classes Monday and were dismissed at their regular time.
She said Pinnacle Environmental will do testing again at the end of the week, and Capital's principal will inform parents by Sunday on whether the school will reopen Monday.
Athletic practices and other events are expected to continue throughout the week.
Warner said the school system currently doesn't know the reason for the mold and carbon dioxide issues, but the first thing that's being checked is the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
Capital was among 14 Kanawha public schools that were still undergoing or in need of work on their HVAC systems just three weeks before the start of this school year, according to a July 20 report.
Terry Hollandsworth, the Kanawha schools maintenance director who deferred all comment to Warner Monday, said July 20 that the chiller at Capital is about three decades old and uses a type of freon that's very expensive to replace.
"We have to rebuild the chiller every 10 years," he said. "The gaskets inside of it start leaking. We're in the process of rebuilding 50 percent of it at a cost of $75,000."
At the end of the first week of last school year, Kanawha closed seven schools, including Capital and three more of the county's eight public high schools, due to AC and power failures, meaning about one in 10 Kanawha public schools were closed that day.
Reach Ryan Quinn at 304-348-1254, ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.