Helena High has gotten a new upgrade. After a long four-day weekend this fall, the students and teachers of Helena High came back to see carpet in the language and history halls. However, this wasn’t the first time Helena High had carpet installed. With the new 2023-24 school year, the art hallway got its carpet upgrade over the summer from its previous cracked floor.  

Our biggest question is “Why is Helena High school getting carpet?” Brad Gjerde, one of Helena High’s janitors stated, “Due to the materials used to build the school, parts of the floors have asbestos in it.” Mr. Gjerde claimed with all the wax put on the floors throughout the years, it would be hard for the asbestos to seep out. However, District Facilities Director Todd Verrill wanted to get ahead of the issue by adding carpet.   

We decided to go straight to the source of this decision and speak with Todd Verrill directly about why and how these decisions were all made. He said that as of right now there are no further plans to carpet any more areas of Helena High because the district has covered the areas that mainly needed it—the art wing, language hallway, and the computer lab in the library. As said before, this wasn’t urgent, but the district decided that it was best to get ahead of it.  

Mr. Verrill wrote in an e-mail, “There are two ways to deal with asbestos. First, you can remove it (this is called asbestos abatement), which is very expensive and requires an abatement specialist to do the work. Second, you can encapsulate it and leave it in place. The encapsulation process seals the material in place and removes the threat of the asbestos fibers becoming airborne.” They had decided to go with carpet because it “looks and feels nice” along with being “noise dampening.”

Verrill explained how this was the most cost-effective solution to the asbestos issue, and that carpet is fairly easy to take care of and clean/replace. We couldn’t get exact answers on the actual cost of the carpeting or how the cleaning works. As far as we know, there is only one carpet cleaner in the school, and it operates manually, so this makes it difficult for the night janitors at times and takes longer.  

District officials did not get back to us on additional questions addressing other concerns about the carpets. From what we have researched about this, sometimes carpet isn’t always the best thing to have. Because carpet can hold onto fibers, dirt, and allergens much easier than tiles, this can cause allergy flare ups and people to get sick. Also, let’s take into consideration the wintertime. What will happen when the carpet starts to get trampled on with all this snow and dirt? Our concern is mold and, again, the cleaning aspect: If the carpet is getting soaked throughout the whole day with no time to breathe for months, how will nothing go wrong?

There seemed to be a disregard for mobility as well; it seems that people that may be on scooters or chairs have a hard time getting through these carpeted areas, although it might be less slippery for crutches. But it doesn’t seem that much can be done about it because the district has no plans to change the carpeting in the foreseeable future.  

Installing carpet was the easiest and the cheapest way to fix the asbestos problem, but is it a permanent solution? Most people don’t seem to mind the carpet, but if they knew all the details would it then be an issue? 

 Our next question for Mr. Gjerde was, “How did Helena High afford the new changes?” Mr. Gjerde said, “Our school has a tight budget, but for now they are adding a couple of sections of carpet, but they make it work with the money they have.” 

We interviewed teachers down in the art hallway and an English teacher on their points of view on the carpet.  

Mrs. Van Alstyne said, “I am concerned that the carpets will hold dust and allergens, such as animal dander, pollens, molds, plus lunch crumbs and spills. Our family allergist told us that the most important thing we could do to help our son was to remove all carpets from our house. I think it will be difficult to keep the carpets vacuumed. It would be good to keep this school as healthy as possible for our students.” 

Mrs. Leik personally doesn’t like the carpet. With culinary, art, and ceramics all in this hallway, she believes carpet isn’t effective. She said the carpet can get extremely dirty in a short period of time; however, she understands why they added the new carpet. The carpet also reminds her of an airport or the carpet of a casino.  

Mrs. Jaynes personally doesn’t mind the carpet; she thinks it isn’t the prettiest carpet, but likes the fact there is no echo anymore, and she appreciates that the janitors keep it clean.  

Mr. Scanlon secretly likes the color of the carpet just because of the blue in it. He jokes about the carpet looking like it’s from a casino with Mrs. Jaynes. He even created a sign for Mrs. Jaynes room: “Jackpot Jaynes.” However, there are some things he doesn’t like about the carpet. He says it could get messy and will stay dirty due to the carpet being harder to clean.

He also thinks it slows down the silverfish.  

Overall, there are mixed feelings about the carpeting at Helena High, but future months and years will reveal how well it is working.