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The dominoes appear to be falling rather quickly in the case of lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools.
Golda Meir Lower Campus was the first school to be identified by the Milwaukee Health Department as having high lead dust levels throughout the school and high lead levels in some water sources. Kagel Elementary had similar findings. Maryland Avenue Montessori is being assessed, and Trowbridge is likely to be scheduled after that.
Eighty-five percent of MPS building inventory was built before 1980, and the average age of MPS buildings is 82 years old. Given that lead paint was not illegal until 1978, it does not take much intellectual effort to surmise the extent of the lead paint dust problem is much larger.
And given that there have been high lead-in-water readings in schools that have no lead laterals means all MPS schools are potential sources of lead-in-water due to non-lateral sources.
Moreover, it now appears that the person supervising MPS facilities and their maintenance, Sean Kane, was hired without the appropriate licenses and practiced in his role for nearly three years before he was prompted to renew his license to put him in good standing.
What is striking about the interview he gave with TMJ4 on this topic is that Mr. Kane takes no accountability. He stresses that it was HR’s responsibility to update his license.
As a license-holding professional myself, I am appalled by the lack of knowledge he has about his own responsibility for keeping a valid, up-to-date license for his work which involves protecting the public in our schools.
These facts should alarm every single Milwaukee County resident, regardless of if one has children. Lead poisoned-children compromise the health of our communities.
Lead poisoning has the following costs to communities: increased financial burdens from health care costs of lead poisoning, increased rates of disability, perpetuation of the cycle of poverty, and continued assaults on low-income and minority neighborhoods which bear the disproportionate burden of lead exposure
In the end, this is a racial justice issue, an environmental justice issue, a public health emergency, a working-class issue and a moral issue.
I am a parent of a third grader at Golda Meir and have volunteered many hours of my time at both Gola Meir and Parkside School for the Arts. I take my role as a parent and a community member seriously.
I believe it is our individual and collective responsibility to make our communities safe, caring, and functional places for us all to live and thrive. It’s why I sprung into action when I was first alerted to the lead issues in my child’s school It’s why I worked with other parents to form Lead Safe Schools MKE to lead the charge on parents addressing the lead emergency in MPS.
We have created an online petition to encourage community members and parents to voice their concerns and make demands of the Milwaukee Health Department and MPS. So far, we have been able to secure several victories, including the public release of the lead-risk assessments for all schools assessed as well as the public release of the health department’s remediation orders with timelines. But we need your help. We have lots to do!
Our goals are the following:
- Demand answers from our local officials and school leaders to understand how we got here, demand accountability, and establish safe and effective processes to prevent future lead emergencies in schools from all sources.
- Educate our communities about the danger of lead in schools from a variety of sources: lead based paint, water, and soil.
- Connect our communities to resources such as free lead testing clinics, NSF certified water filters, and lead-free water.
- Offer support to one another in the struggle for lead safe schools.
- Develop a national model for parent and community led interventions to create lead safe schools.
I hope you share my belief that we need each other to envision and create safe, caring, and functional communities. I hope you will join Lead Safe Schools MKE in our efforts to create lead safe schools in Milwaukee.
You can reach us at leadsafeschoolsMKE@gmail.com.
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