In the last few weeks parents and staff at Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) have received concerning emails and updates from the district regarding the levels of lead in the water at their children’s public and charter schools. Tests conducted by the district’s risk management team over the last few months showed lead levels in water fountains and sinks above 5 parts per billion, the threshold set by OUSD’s clean drinking water policy and the federal government.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, lead poisoning in children can lead to learning disabilities, impaired hearing, blood disorders and behavioral problems. Lead contamination can come from old pipes and can be present in soil and paint. Doctors and scientists say that there is no safe level of lead.
More than a dozen schools in all are affected, including Hillcrest K-8, Edna Brewer Middle School and Frick United Academy of Language. The average age of an OUSD building is 57 years, which means old and likely lead pipes. With this in mind, questions abound: How often is testing taking place? Is there a plan to test all the schools? When will these old lead pipes be replaced once and for all?
On Thursday, August 15 the story broke in the local Oakland news source, Oaklandside. The following Monday, August 19, teachers and staff across the district entered their classrooms and hallways at schools across the district to find plastic bags over water fixtures and the water turned off. Only after staff pressed administration and district personnel were emails sent out to employees with an update on the situation.
Emails were finally sent out saying that faulty fixtures had been taken out of service, and that the district’s buildings and grounds teams are installing new filters or replacing the fixtures and attached piping. The whole process could take several weeks. The district released a statement that a system is being put in place to ensure that lack of effective communication does not occur again, and that school communities receive quick notice when this kind of testing is taking place on their campuses.
District officials claim that in the coming months, all OUSD schools will be tested, and families will be notified of the results within 72 hours. For now, district testing results can be found in this public folder. Until fixes are made students and staff just have to wait it out with a limited water supply.
OUSD has FloWater water dispensers at every campus and encourages families to send their kids to school with refillable water bottles. However, one dispenser for an entire school site can quickly become a problem. School personnel have written formal letters to the district stating that these machines have already been broken due to vandalism or overuse in the last week. Even when they are working, one water fountain for an entire school site is a behavior management issue, as hundreds of students seek to fill reusable water bottles at the same source. Every student deserves safe water for drinking and handwashing. Our students should not have to waste class time trekking to the farthest end of a school to refill water or wash hands.
The fight for safe drinking water is unfortunately not exclusive to Oakland. In the past decade high levels of lead have been found in the water of schools in Newark, New Jersey and other cities. Nationwide, an estimated six to ten million lead pipes remain underground, delivering water to people’s homes every day.
People seeking to increase protections for public health, especially children’s health, should follow Newark’s example and replace all of their lead service lines as quickly as possible. But Newark only got changes made after community groups organized protests and filed a lawsuit to force the politicians to take action. To get safe water, communities in Oakland must continue to organize among themselves to get everyone’s attention on this crisis and to force our so-called leaders to take action! Our kids deserve safe schools and safe water now.
