Oakland Schools Official Calls for State, Federal Help After Lead Contamination Findings

At a contentious Oakland school board meeting where officials gave an update on elevated lead levels found in water at nearly two dozen campuses, district leaders called for state and federal help to address aging infrastructure and criticized communication lapses.

“This is a legacy problem that we’re facing,” board Vice President Mike Hutchinson said, addressing district officials and community members in attendance Wednesday night. “It’s something that’s been known, and it’s something that, as a community and a district, we need to be able to figure out how to address.”

Testing that found water sources on 22 campuses had lead levels above the Oakland Unified School District’s acceptable standard of 5 parts per billion was completed as early as April in some cases.

Emails to the affected school communities were only sent this month, during the first week of class, prompting anger and fears about the students and staff drinking water in the months between.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell apologized for the lapse in communication, calling it “completely unacceptable.” She said a full personnel investigation was underway to determine the cause of the shortcomings.

“I sincerely apologize for the stress and concern this has caused our school sites, students and families,” Johnson-Trammell said. “We understand the gravity of this situation, and we are fully committed to taking immediate, transparent and corrective action.”

Still, board members and parents pressed that more should be done to replace the aging water fixtures and ensure that lead contamination isn’t just tested more regularly but absent in the schools.

Multiple district directors said they would work to access local funds allocated for lead abatement after Oakland and Alameda County were allotted a combined $24 million in a 2019 settlement “to clean up lead paint that poisons tens of thousands of children across California each year,” according to a release from the city attorney’s office.

Hutchinson also said the district needed “help to improve our infrastructure from both the state and federal government.”

“Our local facilities bonds cannot build our way out of this,” he said.

Preston Thomas, the district’s chief systems and services officer, said the cost of fixing aging water systems, brought in front of the board in 2017, was estimated at $38 million.

Currently, the district is watching Proposition 2, which could allot California schools funding for the renovation of aging facilities if it passes in November, as well as a state bill that would establish a pilot program to require lead testing and remediation at participating school sites built before 2010.

Other funding sources that have been discussed come from the lead paint settlement as well as revenue from Oakland’s tax on sugary drinks, which Thomas believed helped fund some of the district’s current FloWater bottle-filling systems.

During the meeting, Thomas outlined the district’s plan to restore water fixtures where lead was detected and create a more structured and transparent testing policy.

Thomas also said that the district had already ordered additional FloWater stations to be installed at the most affected schools this week and that a second round of testing, focusing on schools with the oldest buildings that were not tested this spring and summer, was completed. Results, which showed six fixtures identified for repair, according to the presentation, were communicated to the campus communities, he said.