So they'll come back before school
starts and make sure that they get
every single spot.
And it's just a constant.
Brenda Cassellius is the
superintendent of the Milwaukee
Public School System.
Since her first day on 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.
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.
Kasselius 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.
About 106 schools.
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.
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 their
more impulsive and it can
caused 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.
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
population's most in danger of
lead poisoning.
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.
Around 600 students have been
tested, Torderitis says, and the
testing of students continues.
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.
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.
We're hoping that we'll have our
schools finished and tested by
the September 2nd school
start date.
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 re-clean this room or you
need to re-stabilize this
surface, and that adds more time.
Despite all of their efforts so far,
MPS officials say 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.
So far, we think it's going
to cost somewhere around $25 million
to do, and then there's
the ongoing cost. So we put an
additional $16 million of ongoing
investments within our facilities
department to add custodial
support, to add painters,
to ad plasters, to lead abatement
or lead
inspectors to the team to
make sure that we're keeping up with
our lead action plan.
And those are costs that MPS is
having to cover.
We have not received any help from
the state.
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 Polacek is a parent with
Lead Safe Schools, Milwaukee.
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 a multifaceted problem.
The administration's job is to know
what's going on in the schools.
And so the idea that there was
as much
degradation in the paint as
there was and as much dust
in the school as there, I
think 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.
MPS Superintendent Kasselius
says she understands the parents'
concerns.
We're working as fast as we can
without urgency and no
expense spared.
So I've told my team, if you
need additional painters, we will
buy them. If you need addition
plasters, we will by 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.
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.
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.
I think that we need
to do some either major renovations
or new builds, and we need a
significant hundred 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.
Reporting from Milwaukee, I'm
Stephen Potter for Here and Now.