More than 600 people have signed a petition asking Suffolk Public Schools administrators to improve conditions in the weight room and locker rooms at Lakeland High School.

Local real estate agent Domenick Epps, who graduated from Lakeland in 2001, started the petition after seeing the conditions during a meeting at the school with the football coaches about fundraisers the alumni could conduct.

“I was surprised at what I saw,” Epps said. “That’s what led to the petition and everything else.”

Epps said he witnessed mold in the locker rooms and on the gym floor, an exhaust fan that doesn’t work, rusted athletic training equipment, mildew on wrestling mats and more. In the locker rooms, some lights are out, some toilets don’t work, there is visible rust on lockers, and the stench is “unbearable,” Epps said. Some lockers are unusable, because their doors are broken.

Those are only the obvious problems. “An air quality test needs to be conducted within the HVAC system as it relates to the circulation of mold spores and mildew,” Epps said. “You don’t know if that stuff is circulating throughout the school or what.”

His petition on Change.org had received 640 supporters by Monday evening. He said the school system had contacted him and set up a meeting for Tuesday.

Suffolk Public Schools spokeswoman Bethanne Bradshaw said administrators had started the process of replacing lockers even before the petition.

“As soon as the procurement process is complete, replacement work will start,” she wrote in an email. “We expect it to be completed by the end of the summer.”

She said the sports team locker room was recently refurbished by boosters, which Epps noted as well.

“The parents, some of the coaches and students had even went to the point of painting and cleaning last year,” Epps said. The concerns are mostly in the locker rooms used by students during the day.

Bradshaw said the photos online are of the boys’ gym lockers. The girls’ are in better shape, she said. Gym locker rooms are scheduled to be cleaned daily if they are used.

“The division’s facility managers have already started to assess the conditions of gym lockers in all schools and will make recommendations for improvements as needed,” Bradshaw wrote.

Epps said he is sad that it took someone who is not in the school regularly saying something about the conditions to spur action.

“It shouldn’t be that way when the School Board has money in the budget allocated for these issues,” he said. “That part concerns me, that you seem to feel it’s OK for the students to be in those conditions.”

View the petition here.