Here & Now

Milwaukee Public Schools Confronts Dangerous Lead Problem

Frederica Freyberg:
As another school year quickly approaches, we have an update on lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools. “Here & Now” reporter Steven Potter has this report.

Brenda Cassellius:
So they’ll come back before school starts and make sure that they get every single spot and it’s just a constant upkeep.

Steven Potter:
Brenda Cassellius is the superintendent of the Milwaukee Public School system. Since her first day in the job, less than six months ago, she’s faced the daunting task of how to manage a significant health risk facing the school district’s more than 60,000 students. The problem is lead contamination, specifically chipping lead paint and lead dust and the extent of the problem is very widespread.

Brenda Cassellius:
So we have to assume that the schools built prior to 1950, when there was the understanding that there’s lead in paint happened, that those schools have lead in them.

Steven Potter:
Cassellius says the Milwaukee Public Schools were using lead paint until it was federally outlawed in 1978. That means a majority of schools are considered contaminated.

Brenda Cassellius:
That’s about 106 schools.

Steven Potter:
The lead crisis began when a student at the Golda Meir Elementary School tested positive for lead poisoning back in January. That’s when the City of Milwaukee Health Department got involved.

Mike Totoraitis:
We’re very concerned about developmental delays and cognitive regulation. So if a child has significant lead poisoning, it can cause behavioral issues and make them more impulsive, and it can cause permanent brain damage that has significant long-term effects. So this is why lead is regulated at the federal level and why we’re taking this so seriously here in the city.

Steven Potter:
Early last spring, after another MPS child tested positive for lead poisoning, the health department ordered the school district to come up with a lead abatement and management plan to address the most contaminated schools and the student populations most in danger of lead poisoning.

Mike Totoraitis:
The district was required to produce a lead plan to ensure that we could get back to compliance with the lead standards that are set forth for any school across the state of Wisconsin.

Steven Potter:
Around 600 students have been tested, Totoraitis says, and the testing of students continues.

Mike Totoraitis:
This is an ongoing effort that’s really going to span into the coming years to ensure that we keep eyes on the students at MPS and frankly, across the city.

Steven Potter:
Part of the school district’s new plan, released last April, included temporarily closing several schools and relocating the students to another school while cleaning and repainting was done. Over the spring and now through summer, school officials say they’ve made progress but still have dozens more schools to clear.

Brenda Cassellius:
We’re hoping that we’ll have our schools finished and tested by the September 2nd school start date.

Mike Totoraitis:
It’s a fluid process, so as we do our screenings and ensuring that the schools are ready to reopen, we’ve uncovered, “Hey, you actually need to reclean this room or you need to restabilize this surface” and that adds more time.

Steven Potter:
Despite all of their efforts so far, MPS officials say that there’s still a lot more work to do with cleaning and painting the schools to get them to a standard that’s safe for students. And once the schools are stabilized, additional maintenance and regular inspections will be needed to keep them that way.

Brenda Cassellius:
So far, we think it’s going to cost somewhere around $25 million to do. And then there’s the ongoing costs so we put in an additional $16 million of ongoing investments within our facilities department to add custodial support, to add painters, to add plasters, to add lead abatement or lead inspectors to the team to make sure that we’re keeping up with our lead action plan.

Steven Potter:
And those are costs that MPS is having to cover alone.

Brenda Cassellius:
We have not received any help from the state.

Steven Potter:
Still, some are concerned that not enough is being done fast enough or thoroughly enough to keep their kids safe. And one group wants more transparency about what’s being done. Shannon Pahlicek is a parent with Lead Safe Schools Milwaukee.

Shannon Pahlicek:
It shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place. It’s an issue of aging buildings is a big part of it, but it’s also an issue of deferred maintenance, which is, you know, a multifaceted problem. The administration’s job is to know what’s going on in the schools. And so the idea that there was, you know, as much degradation in the paint as there was and as much dust in the schools as there was, I think that’s, that’s disheartening. No child deserves to be unsafe on day one. So they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do. But the faster the better but you want it done right.

Steven Potter:
MPS Superintendent Cassellius says she understands the parents’ concerns.

Brenda Cassellius:
We’re working as fast as we can with all urgency and no expense spared. So I’ve told my team, if you need additional painters, we will buy them. If you need additional plasters, we will buy them. The only thing that I can’t give them more of is time. We are up against a deadline on September 2nd to get this work done.

Shannon Pahlicek:
You can’t make a mistake like this and then ask the public to just trust you. You have to be willing to build that trust by being completely transparent.

Steven Potter:
Regardless of how much cleaning and repainting is done. One fact remains that these schools still have decades of lead paint inside them. So the only way to truly eliminate this risk, MPS officials say, is to rebuild.

Brenda Cassellius:
I think that we need to do some either major renovations or new builds, and we need a significant 100-year plan in Milwaukee Public Schools. We have to make some hard decisions as a community about the investments we want to make in our children’s future.

Steven Potter:
Reporting from Milwaukee, I’m Steven Potter for “Here & Now.”