Parents in the suburban Los Angeles community of Woodland Hills were outraged when they discovered that teachers and staff at Woodlake Avenue School were not following the Los Angeles Unified School District’s guidelines for flushing campus drinking fountains. If the fountains are not properly flushed each day, students are subjected to high levels of lead in the drinking water, due to aging galvanized pipes that the district has failed to replace.
The 30-second flushing policy, required on each fountain head, has been in place for nearly 20 years, yet tracking of this important task only began six months ago across the nation’s second-largest school district.
A concerned parent (who also happens to work for the Los Angeles water board) tested water taken from one of the fountains at Woodlake Avenue Elementary, and found levels of lead at 110 parts per billion gallons - almost eight times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended limit!
Woodlake Avenue is not the only LAUSD school to fail a lead test. Visits to more than 150 campuses took place recently, and the district’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety reported that logs on whether flushing took place were incomplete at 26 schools.
Woodlake parents told the Los Angeles Daily News that they first became wary about the school’s water quality after their children were told by teachers not to drink from its fountains. However, the school has refused offers from parents to pay for a private company to provide drinking water for the students, and the school also prohibits students from bringing their own bottled water from home. If they are thirsty, they have no choice but to drink unsafe water. More zero-tolerance nonsense.
Think the school should allow students to bring bottled water to class until the pipes get fixed? Let them know:
Woodlake Avenue Elementary School
Phone: (818) 347-7097
Principal: Kenneth McGee
5 comments ↓
How short-sighted on the part of the school administration. Don’t they realize this is a lawsuit (or a class-action lawsuit) waiting to happen if those kids test high for lead? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
i went to this school just last year, and i am completely stunned. i loved this school, but its lost my respect and my heart.
My child attends this school and takes bottled water every day! Where is this information coming from? I am a little confused.
Read more crazy stories from our schools at http://detentionslip.org. You’ll also find a related story from a school that banned bottled water because they’re were tired of recycling!
[…] not allow students to bring bottled water from home, and has refused PTA offers to buy water forhttp://awfulmarketing.com/index.php/2008/04/28/school-refuses-to-allow-students-to-bring-bottled-wat…Angel Wall Fountain - Kinetic FountainsThe angel fountain is a lovely cast stone wall fountain that […]
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