Report finds 17 violations at high school

SHELTON, Conn. (WTNH) -- The State Fire Marshall released a report citing several code violations at Shelton High School last month. The Mayor says they're on top of it, but a local fire fighter disagrees.

A recent preliminary report by the State Fire Marshall's investigation looked into the fire that broke out at the school in 2008.

• Click here to read the full report.

Mayor Mark Lauretti told News 8 nothing in the report surprised him.

"It's pretty much what we anticipated an expected," he said. "Pretty much goes along with discussions which go along with the fire's office from the last two years."

The report, which was released on June 15th, cites 17 violations, violations which school officials say they're working on.

"We're aware that some of those go all the way back to the original design plan, but as I said we've already taken action on many of the code violations," said Freeman Burr, the Shelton Superintendent of Schools.

Burr says the biggest issue is windowless classrooms. He says they didn't know how to tackle them, that's why it's taken time.

"I also think it put us in a holding pattern because how do we endeavor to begin corrective action on what we think is remedy when we don't have specific feedback from the state on telling us what the exact remedy is," he said.

"I think the mayor is blowing smoke," said Chris Jones.

Jones ran for Mayor twice against Lauretti and he's been a volunteer firefighter for 12 years. He says they waited on the problems, especially on those rooms without windows.

"Are those classrooms safe," News 8's Stephanie Simoni asked.

"Um, I don't know. In today's world is it safe to have just one entrance in a classroom," he replied.

"Well I can tell you, well this parent who has four children in that building feels very safe," Lauretti said.

Lauretti says they haven't waited on the issues, "We haven't sat, we've sat and waited for the report to come out to get some direction from the state Fire Marshall's office."

It's not going to be a quick fix. The superintendent says the violations will not be rectified until the end of summer 2013.