APOPKA, Fla. -- A teacher at Rock Springs Elementary School in Apopka says her classroom is making her sick. So, she hired an attorney and even did her own air quality tests.

The school district said it has done all it can to test the air in Room 34 at Rock Springs Elementary School and that there's nothing in the environment that could make anyone sick. But the teacher who works in the portable said the conditions have ruined her life and she hired a lawyer.

Is toxic mold lurking behind the walls of the elementary school classroom in Apopka? Amy Speakman's lawyer says so.

"She's gained 80 pounds. She's been sick all the time," said attorney David May.

May represents Speakman, a fourth grade teacher at Rock Springs Elementary. She said she's too sick to appear on camera, but through her lawyer claims the environment in her portable has basically ruined her life.

"According to her doctor, this is being caused by the conditions in her portable," May said.

May showed Eyewitness News pictures of water damage in Speakman's classroom and a report from a mail-order lab, which analyzed samples the teacher herself took in the room, and said spores of a certain kind of mold were "too numerous to count."

Eyewitness News checked and the kind of mold identified is rarely associated with any serious illnesses.
"He's been a healthy child and for the last two weeks now he's been sick," said parent Patricia Kennedy.
Kennedy thinks something is definitely wrong in Speakman's room. She said as many as seven students in the class have been hit with upper respiratory problems that have made them miss school this year. Her son Brian is one of them.

"I haven't been feeling really good and I keep losing my voice," Brian said.
"Amy's been sick, the students are starting to get sick now, so you can draw your own conclusion from that," May said.

The district said recent attendance rates in Speakman's classroom are no different from any other room at Rock Springs Elementary. They said lots of kids are getting sick with allergy season now upon us.

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