Milwaukee is facing a deepening lead crisis in its schools, and it suddenly finds itself without help from the country’s top public health agency.
Four children in the Milwaukee Public Schools have been found to be exposed to high levels of lead in the last six months. Investigators have discovered seven schools with flaking lead paint and lead dust inside classrooms and basements. Three school buildings have been shuttered so far, and officials said that more are expected to follow — as soon as next week — as the investigation expands.
In the past, school districts have turned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help manage lead problems. But weeks ago, the commissioner of the Milwaukee health department was told that a toxicologist and epidemiologist from the C.D.C., both lead experts who were expected to assist city officials with the local response, had been fired from the agency.
Then the Milwaukee health department was dealt an even sharper blow: Its request for federal assistance from C.D.C. experts to help manage the lead crisis, known as an Epi-Aid, had been formally denied.
“There is no bat phone anymore,” Dr. Michael Totoraitis, the Milwaukee health commissioner, said in an interview. “I can’t pick up and call my colleagues at the C.D.C. about lead poisoning anymore.”
The C.D.C. is already reeling from layoffs targeting 2,400 employees, nearly one-fifth of its work force. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the C.D.C., did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has said that it is cutting positions throughout the federal government to reduce spending and bureaucratic bloat.
Cuts to the federal government are affecting communities all over the country in ways that few Americans could have foreseen. While lead problems in the Milwaukee schools were not caused by any federal institution, the C.D.C. had the power to help solve them.
C.D.C. cuts could quickly threaten public health, experts say, pointing to reductions in agency resources to promote environmental health and prevent communicable disease.
As Milwaukee officials navigate the crisis alone, they are doing so amid rising fury and fear from parents.
The first case of lead poisoning was discovered late last year, when a routine blood test showed elevated lead levels in a child who attends a public school. The health department investigated the child’s home but found no lead hazards present. Then they turned to the child’s elementary school, Golda Meir School, and found lead dust on windowsills and floors — the dust contained six times the federal threshold of lead.
It was the first known time that a child in Milwaukee had been poisoned by lead traced to a public school, health officials said.
Lead is an omnipresent threat to children in Milwaukee, especially in its poorest neighborhoods. Much of Milwaukee’s housing stock was built in the 19th and early 20th century, when the manufacturing industry was expanding, and along with it, rows of brick bungalows and cottages that still line city blocks today.
Before it was banned in the 1970s, lead was a common material in paint, and while there have been efforts for decades to eradicate it, lead is still commonly found in water, pipes, the soil in Milwaukee backyards and in older houses that have not been renovated.
Children in Milwaukee suffer from especially high rates of lead poisoning: In some census tracts on the north side, more than 20 percent of children under 6 years old had high levels of lead in their blood, according to state health data.
“Everybody in Milwaukee is aware of lead,” said Lisa Lucas, whose daughter attends an elementary school that has been closed for lead remediation. “There’s lead paint in almost all of the schools and buildings. And nobody has really stepped up, either in the city or the state legislature, to make our city safer and healthier for everybody. That’s the most frustrating part of it.”
But the discovery of lead poisoning tied to school buildings has shaken parents from all over the city.
“Frankly, I just sort of trusted that there would have been appropriate upkeep in the facilities, especially following what was happening with Covid,” said Kristen Payne, a parent whose oldest child attends Golda Meir. “I was really surprised to see the extent of the problem.”
Parents and advocates for safe schools say that the response from the school district has been slow and insufficient, and they have focused most of their frustration on the local government’s handling of the crisis. They have asked why the district has failed to maintain its buildings and inspect for peeling lead-based paint. Most public school buildings in Milwaukee were built before 1978, when the sale of lead paint was banned.
Other cities that have dealt with lead contamination have received extensive guidance and resources from experts in the C.D.C. During the lead water crisis in Flint, Mich., a decade ago, the C.D.C. helped state and local officials develop a response and recovery plan, and provided funding for a voluntary lead exposure registry.
A top schools official in Milwaukee who oversaw building maintenance, Sean Kane, left his job earlier this month after the uproar over the lead contamination began to build. In the last 30 years, 85 percent of the school district’s painting staff has been eliminated, allowing instances of peeling, flaking lead paint to multiply, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Last week, the closed school buildings were locked and quiet, with trucks for a painting company parked outside. Students, teachers and administrators were conducting classes in other school buildings that had room to spare, though some parents said they were too afraid of the lead threat to send their children to school anywhere in the district.
The district has already spent $1.8 million on lead remediation, a small fraction of what the costs could eventually total.
Marty Kanarek, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied lead poisoning for nearly 50 years, said that while Milwaukee has made progress in identifying sources of lead, the threat to children, especially in low-income neighborhoods, still remains. No amount of lead is safe to ingest, and lead poisoning can cause damage to children’s nervous systems and brains, as well as learning and behavioral problems.
“It’s a massive problem which requires lots of money,” he said. “Lead is the one that is the most serious for its effects on kids. Lead is this pervasive thing, and it really hurts kids’ brains.”
Last week, city officials held a virtual town hall meeting attended by hundreds of parents — the first one since the crisis began — to answer questions about the lead issues and try to calm worries.
Dr. Brenda Cassellius, superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, offered no timeline on when school buildings could reopen.
In an interview, Dr. Cassellius said that principals had been required to take many school maintenance costs out of their own budgets. Forced to choose between fixing peeling paint or hiring more staff, for instance, they often chose to skip the maintenance.
“Schools have been so terribly underfunded for so many years,” she said. “You’re often faced with a really tough choice of whether students get additional support for literacy and a paraprofessional in the classroom to help those who are maybe needing a little bit extra help — or painting or fixing something within your building.”
Some community organizations have tried to fill the gaps between the public and the city government. Melody McCurtis, the deputy director and lead organizer of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, a community organization, has been going door to door, informing residents of the problems with lead and distributing free lead filters to hundreds of households.
“I think that this is the first time that parents and communities are really pushing back,” Ms. McCurtis said.
Some assistance could be coming from the state. Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a Democrat, recently unveiled a plan to invest more than $300 million statewide to reduce lead poisoning in homes and schools.
But Milwaukee officials said the price tag for fixing the schools’ lead problems could be astronomical, and they are not counting on help from the federal government in the future.
The work of the health department “has not stopped,” said Caroline Reinwald, a spokeswoman for the Milwaukee health department. “This only underscores the importance of the role local public health plays in protecting communities — and the challenges we now face without federal expertise to call on.”
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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