MPS lead crisis; parents address concerns in virtual town hall

MILWAUKEE - Parents of Milwaukee Public Schools students who attend any of the seven schools with lead issues got the chance to have their questions answered on Thursday, April 10.

The district held a virtual town hall on lead remediation as three schools remain closed.

"Frustrating and heartbreaking and infuriating"

Local perspective:

At the Lucas family home in St. Francis, the living room is part-art museum, part-classroom.

For nearly a month, the Milwaukee Health Department and MPS have kept Fernwood Montessori School closed so they could address and remediate "significant lead hazards."

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Parent Lisa Lucas then learned from a Wisconsin Department of Health Services notice that the clean-up went wrong inside her daughter's classroom.

"Our kids thrive on predictability and reliability and consistency, and so to not be able to provide that to our daughter. And, she's home with us, so she misses her friends," Lucas said. "[...] They didn't fix it. They, in fact, made it worse and put lead debris into my daughter's classroom while she was breathing that air. That was so frustrating and heartbreaking and infuriating."

No reopening timeline update

Dig deeper:

When asked about who is paying for the lead cleanup and remediation costs, MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said it would not be coming out of parents’ school budgets.

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But Cassellius, health commissioner Michael Totoraitis and other administrators couldn't answer the pressing question regarding reopening timelines.

Several parents shared their frustrations on the lack of timeline clarity with FOX6 News, as Fernwood, Starms Discovery Learning Center and LaFollette Public School are at different stages in the remediation process.

The last update on all of them came a week ago.