Schools and daycares raise the stakes on radon testing in a way most other commercial buildings do not: the people spending the most hours in the building are children, whose developing lungs are more vulnerable to airborne hazards, and whose parents expect the adults running the facility to have already checked. This post covers where Pennsylvania stands on school and daycare radon testing, what the process looks like on a campus, and what to do with the results. For the broader picture, see our complete guide to commercial radon testing and mitigation in Pennsylvania.
Are Pennsylvania Schools Required to Test for Radon?
Not yet, but that is actively changing. Pennsylvania legislators have introduced multiple bills aimed squarely at school radon testing, including House Bill 289 and Senate Bill 760. Versions of this legislation would require existing public school buildings to be tested for radon on a defined timeline, with a mitigation-and-retest requirement for any building at or above the EPA’s action level of 4.0 pCi/L, and periodic retesting after that — more frequently for buildings that tested elevated, less frequently for buildings that tested clean. As of this writing, these bills have advanced through legislative committee but have not been signed into law, so there is no statewide mandate currently in force. Given how much movement there has been on this specific issue, any school administrator should check the current status with the PA Department of Education or DEP rather than rely on an older article’s summary of where things stood.
Daycares and licensed childcare facilities fall into a similar position: there is no dedicated statewide radon testing mandate specific to childcare licensing today, but the same underlying exposure risk applies, arguably with even younger and more vulnerable occupants than a K-12 school building.
Why Schools Are a Special Case
A few things make radon testing especially relevant for school and daycare buildings, independent of whatever the legislature eventually decides:
- Occupancy hours. Students and staff spend roughly the same number of hours in a school building each week that an office employee spends at work — but many are children, for years in a row, during a period of physical development.
- Ground-contact classrooms. Older school buildings often have classrooms, gyms, and cafeterias built at or below grade, which are exactly the spaces most exposed to soil gas infiltration.
- Parent and community expectations. Radon is a topic parents increasingly research on their own. Search activity around specific institutions — queries like “radon testing George School PA,” referencing the well-known Bucks County boarding school — shows that families are actively looking into indoor air quality at particular campuses, not just asking about radon in the abstract. Schools that can point to a recent, professionally documented test are in a stronger position than ones that cannot.
- Transparency requirements in proposed legislation. The pending state bills include provisions for reporting results to a school’s governing body and community, which suggests lawmakers expect testing data to be shared, not just filed away.
How Radon Testing Works on a School or Daycare Campus
Testing a school building follows the EPA’s protocol for measurement in schools and large buildings, which is also the protocol referenced in Pennsylvania’s own testing regulations for schools and commercial buildings. In practice, that means:
- Every room in contact with the ground — not just a sample of them — gets its own detector, since radon levels can vary significantly from one classroom to the next depending on foundation type, flooring, and proximity to mechanical rooms.
- Testing typically happens during the school year with the HVAC system operating normally, since ventilation patterns during occupied hours affect indoor radon levels.
- Results are compared room by room against the EPA action level of 4.0 pCi/L, so a school gets a floor-plan-level picture rather than a single building-wide number.
- Any room testing at or above the action level typically gets a confirmatory retest before mitigation decisions are finalized.
Because campuses are often a mix of building ages and foundation types — an original building from decades ago alongside a newer addition — testing intervals can reasonably differ across a single property. Our post on how often commercial buildings should test for radon covers how to think about retesting cadence, including after any renovation, HVAC replacement, or foundation work, all of which can change how a building interacts with the soil beneath it.
What Happens If a School or Daycare Tests Elevated
An elevated result is not a crisis — it is a solvable engineering problem, and one shared by plenty of buildings across Central Pennsylvania given the region’s soil composition. The next step is a certified mitigation system designed for the specific rooms or zones that tested high, which in a school setting usually means coordinating with the building’s existing HVAC rather than installing an isolated stand-alone system. This is a case where hiring a contractor with actual commercial and institutional experience matters — a system designed only around single-family homes will not translate cleanly to a school building’s mechanical layout. For more on how testing requirements apply across all commercial building types, see our post on whether commercial buildings in PA need radon testing.
Get Your School or Daycare Tested
Whether or not a state mandate is in place yet, testing a school or daycare for radon is a low-cost way to close an important safety question for the families and staff who rely on that building every day. PA Radon Pros provides certified school and daycare radon testing across Central Pennsylvania, with room-by-room results your administration can share with your community. Request a free quote or call us at (844) 945-4329 to schedule testing.
