About 100 concerned parents attended a meeting hosted by Lexington Public Schools Wednesday night in the Cary Hall Auditorium to discuss a project to remove chemicals found at Joseph Estabrook Elementary School.
The school closed this week after the removal of window caulking containing polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB), a toxic man-made chemical, failed to adequately lower the levels of PCBs in the school.
Administrators said they closed school today to begin a second phase of PCB removal, but they said the current levels would not deter them from reopening the school on Tuesday, after the long Labor Day weekend. The school system posted more information here.
Several parents demanded school be closed until administrators are sure they have eliminated the risk.
“My children will not go back,” said Angela Gharabegian, who has two daughters at Estabrook in first and third grades. “I don’t trust what is safe and what is not—it doesn’t mean anything to me at this point.”
The results won't come back til next Thursday. School Superintendent Paul Ash announced at the meeting that he would form a committee of experts, consultants and three parents to analyze the data and decide how to respond when they get the results.
Ash said that if he decided to keep the school open, children currently attending Estabrook would have to continue their education there, because the district is already tight for space. Estabrook has about 455 students; it is one of nine schools in the Lexington district and total enrollment in the town has increased by 250 students this year, Ash said.
Tuesday was the first day of school in Lexington. Many parents found out about the unsuccessful PCB removal that evening at a Lexington Board of Selectmen meeting and did not send their children to school Wednesday.
Gharabegian said at the Wednesday meeting she no longer trusts Superintendent Ash’s judgment in regard to the problem because he knowingly allowed students to enter the contaminated building this week.
"You never gave us a choice,” Gharabegian said to a panel of administrators, experts and consultants. “You did not give us the parental right to protect our children, and you withheld numbers from us.”
Ash said he did not close school because a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency for New England, Kim Tisa, said if the levels of PCBs are above certain “screening” numbers, the building should be examined but not necessarily closed. Ash also said he was under pressure to keep school open for a certain number of days under state law, and closing school this early in the year would cut into vacation time.
“Who cares about vacation?” Gharabegian said. “If it comes down to our childrens’ health?”
Tests last spring found that the school had unsafe levels of the chemical in the building’s caulking, and a plan was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the chemical began on Aug. 24., said Gerard Cody, the town’s health director.
The plan was supposed to be completed before school started Tuesday, but as classes resumed for the year, the Lexington Health Division measured even higher unsafe levels of PCB's in some of the building’s rooms, said Pat Goddard, the schools’ director of public facilities.
Estabrook closed today, which would have been a half-day, so the school could begin to look for sources of PCB's other than the caulking that might explain higher levels of the chemical, said Goddard.
There is no school Friday and Monday because of Labor Day, but the holiday weekend also means the results will not be received until Thursday, said Goddard.
Many parents, however, expressed doubt that the results would demonstrate reduced levels of PCBs, and a few asked where else their children could go, or if they would be punished for staying home until Thursday.
Bernie Fabricant, an Estabrook parent, said administrators should be already working on a plan to reorganize the district.
“Parents here feel a lot of pain," Fabricant said. “I’ve been listening patiently, and the science is great, but the bottom line is that within everything, there’s still a risk. We don’t want to expose our kids to it, whether you like it or not.
“Get together with the school board, which should have been here tonight, and put pencil to paper, and get it done.”
PCB has been shown to cause cancer and other adverse health effects in animals, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website. The manufacture of PCB was banned in the United States in 1979, and the EPA recommended last year that buildings built between 1950 and 1978 should be examined for harmful levels of the chemical.
The town hired consultants to test various school buildings and 12 other public buildings for PCB last spring after The Boston Globe reported the EPA’s recommendation in Sept. 2009. The Town Administration Building, Clarke Middle School and Estabrook Elementary School did not pass the initial screening process and required further examination with a method developed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The second screening showed that Estabrook Elementary had unacceptable levels of PCB in the building’s caulk and soil. A plan of action was approved by the EPA Region 1 office on Aug. 17.
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