The first day of school is often met with tears from both children and their caregivers. Parents entrust education facilities to keep their children safe and free of harm, but that isn’t always the case.
As FacilitiesNet previously reported, four students in Milwaukee were diagnosed with lead poisoning. Officials were able to trace lead exposure back to seven schools within the city. According to a report done by the city, lead dust levels on windowsills at one school was more than 14 times than the allowable standards. In addition, dust levels on the ground floor were more than six times the standard, meaning that all floors were considered hazardous. No lead was found in the buildings’ water pipes.
Three schools were ordered to close for lead remediation while others are still waiting to be inspected. According to the Milwaukee Journal, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) district encompasses 68,000 students and has roughly 125 schools that were built before lead paint was banned in 1978. All are expected to test positive for lead-based paint.
Confidence in MPS is rather lackluster amongst parents. This was furthered upon discovery that Sean Kane, director of facilities and maintenance - who was said to be heading up the remediation project – was allegedly hired without proper licensing that is required for the job. As FacilitiesNet previously reported, policy states that the director must be either a registered architect or engineer. When Kane was approved by the school board in 2021, his license had lapsed. Three years after he was hired, administrators received a complaint on their fraud hotline about his lack of licensing, only for Kane to renew his license the next day. Kane was reprimanded by the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services and he was charged $1,319 for the cost of the proceedings.
It was announced at the beginning of April that Kane is no longer with the district. According to WISN12, director of home environmental health, Mikhail Mannan, will temporarily lead the facilities department to support lead hazard remediation while a permanent replacement for Kane is found. Mike Turza, a retired MPS leader, will lead the facilities and maintenance department.
Given the scale of the exposure, Dr. Michael Totoraitis, Milwaukee’s health commissioner, reached out to the National Center for the Environmental Health, a division of the US centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help create a remediation plan, CNN reports.
For several weeks, Totoraitis has been collaborating with a medical toxicologist to triage which schools and children might need additional lead screenings and how to understand the findings, CNN reports. The city was seemingly making strides in their investigation, but this all came to a halt last week when RFK made sweeping layoffs to 10,000 federal employees. The Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch was completely eliminated, and the environmental health team that was aiding in Milwaukee’s lead crisis had been cut and no longer had access to their work. According to CNN, there are no longer any lead experts working for the federal government.
According to CNN, Totoraitis had also put in a request for Epi-Aid on March 26, a short-term loan of an office from CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service that would aid in the investigation. Totoraitis hoped the additional person would help increase testing programs at schools and would be able to reach the most vulnerable students.
At the time of publication, the EIS program hasn’t been affected by the federal layoffs. However, Totoraitis is not optimistic that the help will come through.
The layoffs comes just weeks after Milwaukee was notified that federal funding to state and local health departments were cut. According to the Milwaukee Journal, the Milwaukee Health Department is expected to lose $5 million in COVID-era grant funding. The money, which was set aside to aid in COVID recovery, was meant to last through mid-2026.
Mackenna Moralez is the associate editor and the host of the Facilities in Focus podcast.
