Digital Extra: The Station Fire

New safety regulations are requiring educators to remove materials from their classroom walls -- tools that they say are crucial to helping students learn.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, September 10, 2004

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

East Greenwich Schools Supt. Michael Jolin walks into Peg Hjerpe's second-grade classroom at Frenchtown Elementary School. The walls are alive with charts of vocabulary words, letters and numbers. The colors are bold.

Jolin is accompanied by Richard Hilton, the School Department's facilities director. It is at least their third visit to Hjerpe's classroom in two weeks.

Her door is plastered with shiny red nametags shaped like apples. Hjerpe nods at the tags: "Do they have to go?" When Hilton nods his head, she begins to pull them off the wall. She looks resigned.

On the back wall, Hjerpe proudly points to the row of vocabulary words, the spelling tips, the math strategies and the Halloween-colored calendar.

"What about these?" she pleads. "Can they stay?"

Hilton shakes his head no.

"But we talk about these words every day," she says. "Every picture has a purpose. Even the colors have a purpose."

That may be true, but the state's new fire-safety code says that artwork and teaching materials cannot be placed on more than 20 percent of the wall area in a classroom without sprinklers. With sprinklers, the code allows 50 percent of the walls to be covered.

Jolin says he appreciates the time and energy that Hjerpe has put into her classroom. But he says the law is the law.

This is not about decoration, Hjerpe tells Jolin. It's about helping students build their vocabulary and work out math problems. This is their room, their wall.

FROM WESTERLY to Woonsocket, schools are scrambling to comply with the tough new fire-safety regulations that were retooled in the wake of The Station nightclub fire in West Warwick in February 2003, which claimed 100 lives.

The new restrictions have riled teachers, who say the law is not only needlessly restrictive but interferes with their teaching. It has created headaches for principals and superintendents, who have their hands full, filling vacancies and getting the buses rolling.

And it has put local fire inspectors in the role of the bad guy, ordering teachers to tear down what they have spent hours, and, in some cases, a considerable sum of money, building.

"What's happened here is that the fire code is clashing with good educational practice," saysSchools Supt. James Halley of North Kingstown. "Unfortunately, I don't think any educators were consulted when the codes were being developed."

As with so many laws, enforcement seems to be a matter of personal discretion. In Middletown and East Greenwich, the schools are cracking down on the plethora of paper in the classroom. Other districts are following the spirit, rather than the letter, of the law.

There is even disagreement over what the law means. Can teachers cover 20 percent of the total wall area or only 20 percent of each wall? Richard James, chief deputy state fire marshal, says the code refers to 20 percent of the total wall.

Halley says he won't tell his teachers to remove anything from the walls until he sorts things out with the fire inspector.

"We haven't reached any final conclusions," he says. "We're still in discussions. We're hoping to find a common ground."

No one wants schools to be unsafe or children to go unprotected. But, superintendents say, the state needs to revisit the fire code and take into account the very real needs of the classroom.

"It's possible we will need legislation on this," Halley says. "The state needs to set a different standard that's more realistic for education."

IN PROVIDENCE, where $3.8 million has been set aside to address fire-code violations, the School Department has focused on correcting more pressing problems, such as installing sprinkler systems in four schools.

"We're using common sense," says Stephen Tremblay, the Providence schools' director of facilities. "They may have more than 50 percent of the wall covered, but a lot of it is education related. It all depends on the material that's up there. Many times, a lesson plan may be up there one day and down the next."

Compare that to East Greenwich, where Jolin discussed the new regulations with principals over the summer, put notes in every teacher's mailbox and then discussed the code with teachers during their orientation.

"I've been a superintendent for 10 years," Jolin says, "and I've spent more time on fire-code issues this year than I ever have before. It's nerve-racking to know that you are responsible for the safety of all of these children."

Johnston Schools Supt. Margaret Iacovelli concedes that she is having trouble keeping up with the flurry of new regulations. One elementary school had to move a first-grade classroom to the ground floor to comply with the new fire-code laws; another had to install two new doors.

"I think we mentioned the 20-percent rule last year, but I don't remember," she says. "The state says, 'Post student work, post rubrics, post expectations.' Then the fire department says you can only do it on 20 percent of the wall."

Elementary teachers have long prided themselves on creating cozy, nurturing environments for their students. That has become even more true with the standards-based movement, which urges teachers to display examples of student work and encourages students to work independently or in small groups.

At the Forest Avenue Elementary School, in Middletown, teachers adorn their rooms with rocking chairs and bean bags, curtains and construction paper. Telling them to strip their walls runs counter to the values that they hold dear.

"I understand the awful tragedy," says Carol Hutchinson, a fourth-grade teacher. "However, schools are the safest buildings in our state. Tell me any other building where the people are as well trained as in the schools."

Hutchinson points to an empty space. "My math problems used to be posted there. My vocabulary words were over here. My rug was there.

"All the literature says to make the classroom warm and inviting," she says. "But we're told to take out this and take out that. We're forgetting what schools are here for: to encourage children to be the best that they can be."

Meanwhile, some teachers and administrators say they didn't find out about the new regulations until last month, when local fire inspectors toured the schools before the first day of class.

Beth Perrin, Middletown's director of school facilities, says she wasn't aware of the paper regulation until late August. Last winter, she asked the former deputy fire chief if there were limits to the amount of material allowed on the walls and he said no.

Lately, Perrin says she has been staying up late researching how to help teachers do their jobs. She has ordered fire-retardant paint and located where teachers can buy fire-retardant materials.

But this is no consolation to Beth Spooner-Willis, a guidance counselor at the Forest Avenue School.

"Every teacher spends $200 to $300 getting their rooms to look nice," she says. "So then the fire marshal comes in the third week of August and says take this down and that down. It's absurd. We're not setting off fireworks in our building."