Richfield reports no radon exceedances, outlines mock OSHA fixes and facilities backlog

At the June 2, 2025 Richfield School Board meeting, Facilities and Transportation Director Dan Kreutzinger and health-and-safety consultant Faith Breeden briefed the board on district facilities operations, radon testing and findings from a mock OSHA inspection at Richfield Middle School in Sheridan.

The update matters because the district is responsible for maintaining 98 acres and a little over a million square feet of building space, providing daily transportation and ensuring building health and safety for thousands of students, staff and visitors.

Kreutzinger said the district employs roughly 80 people (about 70 full‑time equivalents) in facilities, custodial, maintenance and transportation roles and that custodians in some buildings are responsible for about 52,000 square feet each. He described tools the department uses, including CCAP (from Hilliard) for staffing and Limble for maintenance work-order management, and said the district manages roughly 745,000 cleaning square feet (excluding basements). He reported roughly 7,100 total maintenance tasks recorded in Limble to date, nearly 1,000 annual work requests from staff and a pattern of overdue tasks: “we’ve had 2,300 on‑time completions, 7,000 overdue ones, and then 2,905 that went past,” Kreutzinger said. The facilities and transportation FY25 budget was listed as just over $18,700,000.

Breeden summarized health-and-safety work. The district tested radon in January in every occupiable space at or below ground level and 10% of floors above ground, for a total of 574 tested locations; she reported, “all of them didn’t have any rooms that tested above the action limit of 4 picocuries per liter,” so no follow‑up mitigation was required. Breeden also reviewed a mock OSHA inspection at Richfield Middle School, where inspectors documented items including a missing guardrail at a location with a greater-than-4-foot fall risk, expired items in a first‑aid kit near the pool, missing machine guarding in the wood shop (table saw), and an eye‑wash station with expired solution. At Sheridan the mock inspection flagged blocked exit routes, storage within 18 inches of sprinklers, missing ladder labels and damaged extension cords.

On the mock‑inspection follow up, Breeden said she produces a corrective checklist for building leads and the custodial team and that many items are already being addressed. “Some of those items, like especially the guardrail, that will take some time to get that back installed, but I think they’re making pretty good progress,” she said. Board members asked how long corrections take; Breeden described routine items being handled quickly and structural fixes taking longer because of procurement and scheduling.

Breeden also outlined required and recurring safety activities: annual indoor air‑quality testing required by the Minnesota Department of Education (during the heating season), lead-in-water testing required by Minnesota statute (action level 5 parts per billion), bleacher inspections, turf testing every other year and training requirements such as forklift re‑certification, lockout‑tagout training, respirator fit testing and audiograms tied to hearing‑conservation requirements.

She noted Minnesota OSHA’s recent requirement that K–12 employers develop an AWARE (Accident & Workplace Accident and Injury Reduction) program; Richfield is documenting and formalizing practices that largely exist now. Breeden said the district has been testing radon since 2010, earlier than many districts, and that the radon management plan will continue to guide testing and compliance.

Kreutzinger listed recent and planned capital or repair projects: completed work included high school EIFS repairs, tuckpointing at Central and door replacements; upcoming projects (subject to funding) included a storage shed at the high school stadium, new main entrance doors at the middle school, skylight replacements at the high school, additional tuckpointing and a gym floor replacement at Centennial.

Discussion versus decision: the presentation was informational; the board did not adopt additional facility policy during the presentation. Separately on the consent calendar the board later approved a three‑year contract renewal with IEA to provide health and safety coordination and services (fee‑for‑service; contract amounts presented as $25,000 for FY26, $27,000 for FY27 and $28,000 for FY28). The board moved the contract (motion by Director Palas; second by Director Cole) and voted to approve it.

Next steps noted in the presentation: continuing corrective work from the mock OSHA findings, implementing the AWARE program documentation and scheduling recurring inspections and preventive work; larger repairs and replacements will proceed as funding allows.