Lead Levels and Cleanup Costs Are High in Milwaukee Schools

Frederica Freyberg:
The legislature’s budget writing committee is on a road trip across Wisconsin this month. The Joint Finance Committee, now fashioning the 2025-2027 state budget, is holding public hearings in four cities through the month of April. The Republican majority will start from scratch on the budget, even after Governor Tony Evers delivered his two months ago. One item in the governor’s budget that legislators will be deciding on is money for lead remediation. Evers wants $300 million to replace lead pipes and remove lead from buildings statewide. Of particular concern, lead contamination in the city of Milwaukee, inside its schools. “Here & Now” reporter Nathan Denzin is tracking that.

Tony Evers:
It’s about doing what’s best for our kids and families – simple as that.

Nathan Denzin:
In his State of the State Address, Governor Tony Evers declared 2025 the “Year of the Kid.” Part of that declaration was over $300 million in budget proposals that would go towards lead remediation across the state.

Tony Evers:
There is no safe level of lead exposure for kids.

Marty Kanarek:
Lead is the one. Lead is the serious one that really hurts kids.

Nathan Denzin:
Marty Kanarek is an environmental epidemiologist and professor at UW-Madison that has studied lead and lead poisoning for nearly 50 years.

Marty Kanarek:
A little kid exposed to lead doesn’t grow as fast, doesn’t reach developmental milestones as fast. It affects behavior. It causes hyperactivity, attention deficit, bad behavior, disorderly conduct, lack of concentration. It affects hearing. It affects speech.

Nathan Denzin:
Lead exposure affects everyone but children from birth to about six years old are at particularly high risk. There are many ways to get lead poisoning. Two of the most common are from inhaling lead dust from deteriorated paint, or from lead pipes carrying water. Once the toxin is in the body, it can be stored in bones for more than 25 years, and in some communities, it can be hard to escape.

Marty Kanarek:
Milwaukee is like its own state on lead.

Ryan Clancy:
I think 62% of lead poisoning cases in children are from Milwaukee, throughout the, throughout the whole state.

Nathan Denzin:
Ryan Clancy is the representative for Assembly District 19 in Milwaukee. He represents the area around Trowbridge Elementary School, which temporarily shut down in March after dangerously high levels of lead were found.

Ryan Clancy:
Really, every — almost every MPS school and many schools across the state were built before 1970. They almost certainly have lead paint in them.

Nathan Denzin:
So far in 2025, seven schools in the MPS district have found a concerning level of lead.

Ryan Clancy:
That probably is the tip of the iceberg here.

Nathan Denzin:
Trowbridge was the first to temporarily relocate students, but three more temporarily shut down after health officials found nightly remediation work was unsafe. In some instances, lead paint chips were found within arm’s reach of a child’s desk. The other three schools were able to complete emergency remediation without relocating students. One of those schools is Golda Meir Lower Campus.

Kristen Payne:
My child is a third grader at Golda Meir Lower Campus, and on January 13th, we received a letter from MPS and the Milwaukee Health Department alerting us that there had been a lead poisoned child and the — at the school and the source of that lead poisoning was our school.

Nathan Denzin:
Kristen Payne was shocked when the Milwaukee Health Department released pictures from inside the school. The pictures show cracked and flaking paint and a large amount of lead dust on windowsills and floors. Emergency remediation at Golda Meir was done while children were still attending class in the building.

Kristen Payne:
I’m deeply concerned about sending my child into an environment that is not safe.

Nathan Denzin:
While Payne says she’s frustrated with how school district leaders have handled remediation, the buck ultimately stops at the Legislature.

Kristen Payne:
The defunding of our public schools is sort of a longer kind of trajectory of how we got here, right? That there just hasn’t been adequate money for staffing.

Ryan Clancy:
The costs to remediate, you know, even lead paint from schools are extreme.

Nathan Denzin:
Clancy estimated that a single classroom could cost up to $20,000 to remediate. Replacing lead water pipes can cost even more.

Ryan Clancy:
You can’t ask a school to say how many teachers will you fire in order to do lead remediation?

Kristen Payne:
It’s not something that we can defer. And if we do choose to defer it, it will have serious consequences for our communities.

Tony Evers:
Making sure our kids are healthy, physically and mentally, is a crucial part of improving outcomes in our classrooms.

Nathan Denzin:
Evers’ proposals can be broadly broken down into two categories: remediation for lead-painted windows and for lead pipes. For window remediation, the governor is asking for $100 million plus two full-time positions for a program that replaces lead-painted windows. To tackle lead pipes, the Evers’ ask includes more than $200 million to fund replacement efforts.

Chris Kapenga:
You’ve got not just a classroom. You’ve got not just a school. You’ve got multiple schools shut down. So that creates this wave of chaos behind it.

Nathan Denzin:
Chris Kapenga is the state senator from Delafield.

Chris Kapenga:
Number one, there needs to be accountability at MPS because the parents are upset about it. Local elected officials are upset about it.

Nathan Denzin:
At the Capitol, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Evers’ entire budget proposal is “dead on arrival” for the fourth consecutive biennium, making it difficult to know how much of this funding will be passed.

Chris Kapenga:
The Legislature will most likely just create their own budget, and we always have — the governor always lays out a budget and it’s his wish list.

Nathan Denzin:
Kapenga said MPS first needs to figure out what went wrong before the state commits to sending more money to the district.

Chris Kapenga:
We want to find out why this happened so that it never happens again. So the new superintendent of schools should be the one that says this is important to us.

Nathan Denzin:
Realistically, Kapinga says, Evers’ entire proposal won’t get funded, but he still isn’t sure what the Legislature will propose yet.

Chris Kapenga:
That is a big question that cannot be answered in a political sound bite, because we haven’t done the work yet to understand what’s needed.

Nathan Denzin:
But Clancy and Payne say even the full proposal wouldn’t have been enough to remediate all of the lead in Wisconsin.

Ryan Clancy:
I’m grateful that there’s some money in the state budget for now, right? Evers’ recommended budget, but even that’s not enough.

Kristen Payne:
$221 million just for lead hazard control.

Ryan Clancy:
So we’re estimating somewhere, you know, between $600 million and $1 billion. We should be starting there in the budget.

Marty Kanarek:
It’s just a question of money. Political will to give the money to do the job.

Nathan Denzin:
Even if the initial cost is high, everyone agrees that something needs to be done to keep students safe.

Chris Kapenga:
This is going to have to be a priority because we can’t educate our kids if they can’t be in the classroom.

Ryan Clancy:
Every dollar that is spent on that means an improvement in the quality of life for folks all across the state.

Kristen Payne:
It’s a losing argument to not focus on lead eradication.

Marty Kanarek:
The research is exquisite in showing that every little bit of lead hurts kids’ brains.

Nathan Denzin:
For “Here & Now,” I’m Nathan Denzin in Milwaukee.