A total of £36,000 has been spent on carbon dioxide meters and improving ventilation in Moray schools to prevent the spread of Covid.
From next week monitoring will begin of all classrooms and teaching areas in secondary and primary schools as well as early years settings to identify any issues.
Independent councillor for Speyside Glenlivet Derek Ross asked for an update on how much money Moray Council has spent so far on CO2 monitors and ventilation improvements at a meeting of the education, children’s and leisure services committee earlier this week.
Learning estates programme manager Andy Hall told members the overall spend to date was £36,000 including items on order.
He was confident all costs for the work would be covered by Scottish Government funding.
Mr Hall said: “There is some additional revenue spend that has been assigned to looking at ventilation issues and modelling of certain areas in schools. I’m still trying to assess the cost of that.
“That will have to come out of the £124,000 that has been set aside for Moray Council to address CO2 monitoring.
“There is an additional £83,000 that has been added as funding for the next financial year, to continue looking at improvements to ventilation in areas were problems are discovered that can’t be managed by standard opening of windows.
“We will put together a package of works over the next couple of months to determine exactly what that will entail, with works hopefully being undertaken before or during the summer holidays this year.
“We’re just about to start monitoring, from Monday, every one of our teaching spaces and classrooms at least one day a week, that’s in our secondary and primary schools and early learning provision both council and private and third sector.
Mr Ross asked that a full report on the topic come back to committee, and Mr Hall agreed to have that done for the next meeting scheduled for March.
