Initial estimated cost to abate asbestos exceeds $10K
By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news
An estimate for the cost to abate asbestos found in the shuttered Lincoln School recently should be available as early as sometime this week, according to Steve Mitzel, operations director for Ashland School District. The cost to remove asbestos would be separate from the as yet-unknown cost for structural repair.
Lincoln School, located at 320 Beach St., was shuttered in late August, right before alternative education classes were set to begin for fall term in the 100-year-old building. Ashland School Board learned Thursday at the board’s regular meeting that asbestos was discovered in the ceiling and floor tiles, a discovery that will delay the process to shore up the 1948 wing of the school. Abatement will cost more than $10,000, with no current guarantees of insurance coverage, according to Mitzel.
“It will exceed the $10,000 limit that we had put on this originally, and I don’t know where it’s going to land,” Mitzel said. “I’m not going to guess-timate at this point.”
Mitzel said the district has sent out requests for proposals and would likely consider three quotes from low-bidding companies for the abatement job.
Mitzel at the time noted that the district would likely contract with a company for abatement by this week.
“The nice collateral benefit of that is it will actually take care of the deconstruction as a part of abatement, so by the time the abatement’s done, deconstruction will also be done.
“That’s it in a nutshell,” he added.
School board members had questions, though.
Chair Rebecca Dyson asked if there would be a significant cost to the abatement process.
Mitzel said it would not be significant, but that it would be an increase in cost, and more than $10,000, which was initially the limit for spending.
“I’m disappointed, but also not when we run into abatement issues like this because our goal is to try to abate everything at some point,” Mitzel said. “We want all the asbestos gone at all our facilities.”
Dyson also asked if Mitzel was surprised by the findings.
“We really were pretty confident that we were going to run into asbestos in that area,” Mitzel said.
“We’ll wait for an abatement company to come in and do it the certified way, the legal way,” he added.
Mitzel said he’s been keeping the district’s insurance company apprised throughout the process.
“They’re going to bring in their own engineer to do their assessment and so they’re just waiting for that to be done,” he said. “Unfortunately I don’t have an answer to what extent they are going to cover us, at this point.”
Prior to being closed by Fire Marshal Mark Shay in August, Lincoln School housed Ashland Schools Foundation and Catalyst and Thoreau, alternative high school education classes. Those classes have since been relocated to the main school campus.
The building was closed due to a significant shift of two to three inches in the building that a local engineer said could eventually lead to “catastrophic failure,” according to a previous Ashland.news story. Lincoln School closed to regular classes in 2005 due to declining enrollment.
Superintendent Joseph Hattrick said in August that the school district would continue to own and maintain the building, as previously reported by Ashland.news.
Reach Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].
Related stories:
Closed for months, Lincoln School to be ‘shored up’ so engineers can make repair estimates (Oct. 11, 2025)
Ashland School District shutters Lincoln School: Nearly 100-year-old structure at risk of ‘catastrophic failure’ (Aug. 22, 2025)
