Nine months after students and faculty reported to being affected by levels of carbon monoxide at Cranston East, Pauline Belal is still awaiting answers from the city as to why her daughter fell ill with carbon monoxide poisoning even though it was not detected by multiple sources.

In early November of 2017, many students were tested and found to have high levels of carbon monoxide in their systems during a blood drive that afternoon. This led to the school being closed for two days while inspections were made and tests were run to detect any possible gas.

Belal’s daughter was one of the students most affected by the carbon monoxide. She has openly spoken in her daughter’s defense to city, school and state officials.

Currently, she has an ongoing lawsuit against the city of Cranston because of their “refusal” to admit the problem to the public and the victims. She said that it has been a constant battle with the school district and that her daughter has been “disheartened” by what has happened.

“On November 1, she was a high school student,” Belal said. “She’s not going to graduate with her peers, she’s not going to walk the stage.”

She also said that her daughter returned to the school during the fourth quarter into an alternative learning program (ALP).

“Ultimately, they failed her on every class including orchestra,” she said.

Her daughter will not be attending Cranston East in the fall because of the way she said things were handled and she had to stay back a whole year. Belal said that the city told her she should get an attorney to attempt to fix things with the situation.

When asked about how the city has tried to help resolve the issue, Councilman Steve Stycos said that he believes there were two carbon monoxide detectors installed at East.

He also mentioned that there was also legislation passed at the State House. Both pieces passed the Senate and the House of Representatives, which called for detectors in schools.

The Senate Bill was sponsored by Senator Josh Miller and the House Bill was sponsored by Representative Joe McNamara. Councilman Stycos said that he “did receive a report from the fire department.”

“They claimed that because there was a lawsuit it had to be discussed in an executive session,” he said. “The public has every right to that information.”

Councilman Christopher Paplauskas, who chairs the Safety Service Committee, could not be reached before press time.

Gail Harvey, who is running for Cranston City Council, said that when she heard what had happened, it made her “so enraged and we went up and testified at the State House.”

Cranston Public Schools chief operating officer Ray Votto said that they were not commenting because of pending legal action.

When asked if she would drop the lawsuit anytime soon, Belal said she “cannot” because they need to admit there is an issue, fix the system and clean the whole school.