Throughout this school year, the facilities staff has been working to control the recurring appearance of mice in various locations around Algonquin.
Multiple teachers and students have reported seeing mice in their classrooms since the beginning of the year. Fortunately, according to Facilities Director Mike Gorman, the presence of mice in the building does not pose a health risk, and the facilities staff have been able to prevent this from becoming a major issue this year and in years past.
Gorman says he has seen mice in the building each year since he started as Facilities Director in 2007. The department currently uses monitors such as slap traps and sticky traps, which are effective in catching the rodents so most students and staff don’t even realize the mice are there.
“Our department is doing a great job,” Gorman said. “We have monitors all around the outside of the building.”
According to Gorman, the period of time between fall and late December is when the mice are typically found within the school, and it is strictly a seasonal problem. It’s not something we like seeing, but it’s not entirely unusual for a building our size. For me, any mouse sighting is too many. — Sean Bevan, Principal
“It’s New England,” Gorman said in early December. “With the freeze coming up [after winter break,] they’ll be gone.”
The cold weather and warmth of the building isn’t the only reason mice find their way into the building. They are also drawn to the food teachers and students leave sitting around.
“The best practice is to ensure that our facilities are clean, and we’re not leaving things that can attract pests,” Principal Sean Bevan said.
The facilities team, which includes seven staff members and Gorman, have methods effective enough that the classroom sightings of rodents are few and far between, but the mice have made their presence known in several classes.
In H123, special education teacher Alissa Luippold has seen her fair share of mice in her classroom all year. The first signs of mice were close to the first day of school when she found her closet floor covered in droppings. After that, there have been multiple instances where her students had spotted mice running along the classroom floor.
In fact, there have been so many sightings in her room relative to other classrooms that sticky traps and slap traps have been set up in corners of the room.
“We’ve had four so far that we’ve caught,” Luippold said. “When we came back from break, we found one in the trap.”
Art teacher Danielle DeCiero’s room also had a recent sighting, when a mouse fell from the ceiling about two weeks before winter break.
“It came in the ceiling probably for winter,” DeCiero said. “It was running across the ceiling and didn’t see the hole above the projector.”
According to Gorman, it’s not unusual for mice to pop up here or there, as long as it doesn’t get to the point where they’re scampering across hallways all day. The facilities staff has worked all school year on the issue, and now, in early February, there will be fewer and fewer instances where rodents are appearing in classrooms.
“It’s not something we like seeing, but it’s not entirely unusual for a building our size,” Bevan said. “For me, any mouse sighting is too many.”