Reminder of Annual AHERA Notifications to Employees and Parents
The federal Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) requires all public and nonpublic elementary and secondary schools to ensure that all school employees and building occupants, or their legal guardians, are informed at least once each school year about all asbestos inspections, response actions, and post-response action activities, including triennial reinspection and visual surveillance activities that are either planned or in progress. This notification must be made in writing and a copy maintained in the school’s asbestos management plan. Notification methods may include the publication of an article in a school newsletter or through a separate written notice distributed to staff and sent home to a student's parent or legal guardian.
Public and nonpublic schools must also provide a written notification to all parent, teacher, and employee organizations of the availability of the school’s asbestos management plan for public inspection. A description of the steps to notify these organizations, as well as a dated copy of the notification, is to be maintained in the asbestos plan. The asbestos management plans are to be made available for inspection to representatives of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the State, the public, including parents, teachers, and other school personnel within five working days after receiving a request for its inspection.
For more information on the federal Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response
Act, please go to http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/pubs/asbestos_in_schools.html 
or
contact the Office of Facilities Planning at emscfp@nysed.gov or 518-474-3906.