Parents Voice Health, Transparency, Transportation Frustrations During Edinburg CISD Press Conference To Address Canterbury Remediation Efforts
Arnoldo Mata
Edinburg TX – While Edinburg CISD leaders held a press conference to explain their plan to fix flooding problems at Canterbury Elementary, a group of parents questioned the plan as well as the district’s response time to the issue. The contentious encounter highlighted the tension between parents and the district on the issue.
Canterbury Elementary has suffered from multiple instances of flooding during periods of heavy rains. The most recent happened on Thursday, March 27, when more than a foot of rain hit areas of Hidalgo County. However, according to school officials noted that the initial flood did not affect the school. The problem happened on the following Sunday afternoon as a problem with the city’s
And the reason that we’re here, I would like to first welcome and recognize our board members that are here with us today. Mr. David Thores, president of the board, Ms. Carmen Gonzalez, vice President of the Board, and Ms. Letti Flores, our secretary. Also joining us is our Superintendent of Schools, Dr.
Benjamin Castillo, ECISD, legal counsel, made the official announcement of the school’s partial closure. “During ongoing cleaning efforts, crews discovered that an area previously impacted by a flood and sewage overflow at Canterbury Elementary School. Required more cleaning and restoration than initially anticipated.”
“As a result, and out of an abundance of caution, Edinburg, CISD made the decision to close Canterbury Elementary for the day. On Monday, April 28th, an area of Canterbury Elementary School will remain closed for the remainder of the school year to allow for complete restoration. This area includes some identified classrooms for pre-K three and pre-K four, as well as kindergarten, first grade, and second grade.”
“Students and staff in these identified classrooms will be temporarily relocated to Freddie Gonzalez Elementary School beginning Tuesday, April 29th, 2025, until the last day of school classes in unaffected areas of Canterbury Elementary School will continue as scheduled on Tuesday, April 29th, 2025.”
“Those classrooms include third, fourth, and fifth grade. The district is taking every precaution to maintain a self, a safe and healthy environment for all students and staff members remaining on the campus. Transportation services and support staff will be provided to ensure a smooth transition for all effective students.”
“Parents can communicate with their campus principal and staff for updates. A website with additional information will be available as well. E-C-I-S-D will provide updates as they become available. The safety, health, and wellbeing of our students and staff maintain remain our highest priorities. Thank you for your continued understanding and support during this time.”
“And if you have any questions parents who are not here. Please contact Edinburg CISD information line at 956-289-2300, or visit the ECISD website for ongoing updates.
It was at this point that parents and others peppered the district representative with questions.
“Why is the district closing those sections for the remainder of the school year?” one person asked. “Parents have brought up concerns about possible mold.”
The attorney responded, “So we got testing done by a third party to check the safety of the air, to check the safety of the surfaces in the campus, and there were trace amounts of e coli in the floorboards on the bottom of the campus or on the bottom in some of those affected classrooms. However, those areas are being rehabilitated. They’re being addressed right now as we speak for the rest of the campus that remained open. We’ve collaborated with the city, and we’ve gotten our third party engineers to do testing to ensure that people who remain on campus in the unaffected areas are safe. So at this point, that’s where we’re at.
He also explained that the reason they to close it for the rest of the school year is because it is a total tear down of the affected areas.”
A back and forth exchange between Castillo and the parents started:
Parent: “You all were having water pulled out from the flood sewage into cafeteria sinks. That’s not safe for our children, and now this comes out. Our kids have been sick. My kid’s been sick.’
Castillo: “So what we can tell you is again, we had the city come and do a health inspection,” Castillo responded.
Parent: “But the health inspection passed,” the parent responded. “Now two weeks later, you’re saying that we have e. coli?”
Castillo: “We have trace amounts of e coli, in the floor.
Parent: “But, It’s still in there right?”
Castillo: “In the floorboards. Not anywhere else, but it’s still in there in the floorboards, but not anywhere else, and it has been ruled safe. The action that’s being taken today by the district is over an abundance of caution to ensure that your kids are a hundred percent safe.
Parent: “That should have been done two weeks ago when it happened.”
The parent also added that they were told that all the furniture and carpet had to be removed. She added that parents donated to get new furniture and other items, including air purifiers and wax warmers to help with the smell.
Castillo: “So we understand the concern and we really do and want you to know that the district. Is committed to ensuring that all students are safe with respect to those concerns. All the information that we’re going on is official reports done by experts in this area. So the official reports that we got from experts have all told us, have all told your district officials, your superintendent and your board, that the campus is safe. This action is being taken because the district wants to do a total gutting of those classrooms. And in order to do that, we can’t have students present. It’s not a safety issue with respect to what you’re stating.
Parent “It’s like the facilities manager told us that it was fine two weeks ago that everything was okay and told the school board that it was fine.”
Castillo: “It is okay. That’s what I’m trying to reiterate.”
Another parent: “I have a question. So what are we supposed to do now that our kids are sick? Because this is three, four weeks later. My son, it’s not even recommended for him to come back to school at all,t all, because of how bad he’s So in three, four weeks you got this.”
Castill: “So as far as the levels that we’re being told.”
Parent: “The levels don’t matter. They’re kids. Kids don’t go based off of levels.”
Parent: “So Canterbury Elementary is safe. That’s what we’re telling you. It’s safe.”
Parent: “It was safe last week, but how long you’re shutting down.”
Castillo: “We’re not shutting down. We’re closing affected classrooms and relocating those.
Another parent spoke up: “I have a student here. I think a lot of the parents are just concerned about their children once they’ve been affected. I just think there needs to be more of an understanding of their concern. Yes. I understand you have a job, you’re the attorney, you gotta represent the school district. I think a lot of them are just frustrated. And so I think we’re just asking for that compassion of the concerns that they have. Transparency and transparency, concern. I understand their frustration because I have a key. Here. I went to school here. My wife went to school here, so this is our school. I think there’s just a lot of concern of the transparency that was there. We had certain board members that posted up that put a Facebook post and said, oh, the school’s clean. And it wasn’t true. So that’s the concern. That’s where everything arose, because we had one person saying, oh it’s clean.”
Castillo: No, I understand, but let me reiterate. The campus is safe.
From there, the parents voiced a host of other concerns with student health and having to take students to two different campuses with the same bell schedules.
Superintendent Dr. Mario Salinas stepped in to explain that buses will run from Canterbury to Gonzalez Elementary to take kids at the start of the day and return them at the end of the day. For those students still on campus, physical education classes will be held outside, not in the gym. The library will be closed. Meals will be brought to the individual classrooms from Robert Vela High School.
Isael Posadas, SDI Engineering, was called on to explain what work is being done to prevent the sewage backflow from happening again. “ We do have a plan in place right now. We actually opened bids today to find an alternate route for the sewer,” Gonzalez explained.
According to Gonzalez, the sewer that came back into the school was not sewer generated by the school. It was sewerage from the offsite sewer that came from an overloaded, not on district property., but from the city sewer system, which backed up into the school’s sewer pipes. It happened on a Sunday when there was nobody on campus to alert anyone. So the sewer that came up into the, through the drains actually is the sewer from the offsite.
“We’ve done some short-term things, and we’re doing some long-term things,” Gonzalez said. “The short-term thing, so that this occurrence doesn’t happen again is we covered all the floor drains. It didn’t come out of toilets, it didn’t rise out of somebody doing a flush. It came out from the floor drains and the rest. So that’s where it originated. The immediate thing that we have done to mitigate was cover those drains. The second thing we’re doing is we’re rerouting the sewer to a system that is more reliable off to the west of the campus. Right now we rely on a system that’s on Canton Road.”
“That system. We know from historical data that system is less safe than the system that we’re gonna reroute to. We’ve already met with the city to go over some of the technical information so that we can put it into a system that’s a little more reliable as opposed to the system that’s on Canton Road. That has been an issue for the city for many years. So we are doing our best to try to do that. In the future, should we have a storm and the water rises the system that brought the sewer back into the school. We are not relying on that one in the future. Matter of fact, we opened, its today, we think we will have it completed by the middle of May.”
When a parent asked about a virtual option rather than in-class lessons, Salinas said they would explore that option with the Texas Education agency today.