The parent of now-former students at Staunton Montessori School reported repeated health issues being experienced by her children that she pinpointed to a mold problem after heavy rains last fall flooded a classroom.
The response from the school, after months of back-and-forth: “we did not identify a condition requiring additional remediation.”
“When concerns about potential mold in a classroom were raised, SMS took those concerns seriously and evaluated the situation promptly using its standard facilities procedures,” said Leanne Gray, the head of school at Staunton Montessori School, which currently operates out of a former office building for VEPCO and Dominion Energy in Fishersville, and is moving to the Statler Brothers Complex in the City of Staunton for the 2026-2027 school year.
ICYMI
“Based on the information available at the time, we did not identify a condition requiring additional remediation. We continue to monitor the area and address maintenance items as they arise, including routine coordination with the property owner,” Gray told me.
That’s the quick answer.
The story told to me by the parent who first raised the issue, Ashley Reist, fills in a lot of blanks.
Classroom flooded
Per Reist, heavy rain over the weekend of Sept. 30 flooded the upper elementary classroom, with damage including ceiling tiles falling to the floor.
The classroom continued to be used, Reist told me, with the remediation effort being the use of four air purifiers and one dehumidifier, which was concerning to her at the outset, that this was all that was being done.
Over the course of the next several months, her children talked about “an odor in the classroom” that smelled like “rotting cabbage,” and told their mother that when students would ask what the smell was, “the reply they would receive was that it was the mold in the ceiling.”
Reist noted this in an email to Gray on Feb. 20, and said she “asked about the possibility of moving the children out of the room until we could have it tested, to ensure there was not anything that could pose a health risk to our children,” but got no response.
On March 16, Gray sent an update to upper elementary parents detailing ongoing efforts to learn more about the situation in the classroom, and possible health impacts.
The next word from the school came on April 20, which said the administration had spent 30 hours on the investigation, including consulting experts on mold.
The conclusion: “we have found no evidence of a health risk to our students.”
“We now consider this specific inquiry closed so that our leadership team can return their full focus to our students’ daily education and our preparation for our upcoming campus transition,” Gray wrote in the April 20 email.
Health risks
Reist withdrew her children from the school on April 29, noting in an email to Gray and to fellow parents at SMS the health issues that they had been experiencing, which had abated over the spring break, when they weren’t in school.
“Administration has been exposing our kids to this on a daily basis for almost 7 months now,” Reist wrote in the April 29 email.
Separately, Reist told me that she looked at her children’s school absences since the Sept. 30 classroom flooding event, and found that “before our kids had became sick on multiple different occasions, we had either heavy rain or snow or ice, all of which would cause the mold to grow, which explains why the odor comes and goes.”
“They have abused the trust that we have given them with our kids being in their school and now have tried to intimidate our family into being quiet. But now it’s about teaching our kids to stand up for what is right,” Reist told me.
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Chris Graham
