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School facing overcrowding issues

By Christie Ileto - Bio | Email

LORETTO, TN (WAFF) - There's a WAFF48 News update to a story we first brought you last summer.

We told you about moldy classrooms that *could* be making students sick at South Lawrence Elementary in Loretto, Tennessee.

Now there's a new problem. 

Students affected by those moldy portables have had a clean bill of health since they were shut down last year, but now school administrators are facing a different kind of beast.

WAFF 48 News introduced you to Nicolas Rivera last year. He has to use a nebulizer to help him breathe.

But flash forward to today, and he's active, healthy, and no problems breathing.

"I can stay outside all day if I want, I can do everything I wanted to do," said Nicolas.

For his Nicolas' mother, she can now store the old pile of her son's medication and save around 50 dollars a month.

The space lost for South Lawrence as moldy portables were closed is making classrooms more cramped.

Jamie Kersteinn comes to the school once a week to do physical therapy.

She says the rooms are unbearably tight.

The numbers aren't as easily avoidable.

County Executive Paul Rosson says they're working on getting permanent classrooms, but that would cost about 4 million dollars.

"We actually had some of the stimulus money out of Washington to be used for that have been used for those purposes, however the final version of that money we weren't allowed to use that money for new school construction which I was disappointed in," said Rosson.

It's back to square one for a commission and school board, and classrooms that are still as tight as ever.  

There is no definitive timetable for when this may be resolved.  

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