Source: http://www.oregonlive.com, May 12, 2017
By: Bethany Barnes
All but the two newest schools within Portland Public Schools contain hundreds of square feet of dangerous lead paint, a neurotoxin that poses a greater threat to children’s health than lead in drinking water.
More than a half-dozen Portland elementary schools have far higher quantities of deteriorated lead paint than is typical across the district’s run-down schools, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.
In all, the district has 474,000 square feet of degraded lead paint inside its schools — enough to cover all floors of Powell’s City of Books, which takes up an entire city block, seven times.
Children can unknowingly touch lead dust and ingest it, health experts say. More than 527 handrails at 79 schools have degraded lead paint, the analysis found.
Two elementary schools — James John and Grout — each have been found to have more than 17,000 square feet of dangerously damaged paint inside classrooms, hallways, gyms and other interior spaces where children spend time.
Ten of the schools with the highest concentrations of peeling, chipped or otherwise damaged lead paint serve children as young as kindergartners or preschoolers, who face a greater risk from lead exposure.
Those schools lie in every quadrant of the city, serving neighborhoods of tremendous poverty, substantial wealth and points in between. They include Duniway Elementary; Irvington, King, Sabin and Skyline K-8 schools, the Odyssey and Metropolitan Learning Center magnet programs and the Applegate Head Start center, along with James John and Grout.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reviewed lead inspection reports commissioned by the district over the past nine months at all 85 schools. The district launched those inspections after last summer’s lead in drinking water scandal.

The district and its contractor assumed that all paint and varnish inside schools built before the 1980s contains some degree of lead. The analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive excluded boiler rooms, utility rooms and storage rooms students do not have access to.
District officials say if voters pass the school bond on Tuesday’s ballot, they will cover over all hazardous lead paint with clean lead-free paint. That is not a permanent solution, however.
Before the district pivoted last year to get all schools’ paint inspected in a uniform manner, interim chief operating officer Courtney Wilton says, the district lacked a methodical approach to finding problem paint, let alone addressing it.
“It’s something we’ve ignored for quite a while and we can’t any longer,” said Wilton, who was tapped last July to help get the district on track. “Out of sight and out of mind, almost willful ignorance in my opinion.”
The new mission is to ferret out problems and make them public.
“Clearly the past didn’t work,” Wilton said. “I think fundamentally they didn’t think we had a big problem, and clearly we do.”
For parent and school board candidate Virginia La Forte, who for years has advocated that lead paint be taken seriously, the district has changed “night and day” in its approach.
“The attitude when I first brought (lead paint) to the district’s attention? I was told point blank over the phone that they would not address it,” La Forte said. “I was told that before anyone did any research to see how much it would cost.”
Uproar over high lead levels in schools’ drinking water last May presented a chance to get lead paint taken seriously, she said. Although district officials were still slow to respond even after that embarrassment, eventually they answered the call to action.
The district had repainted the outside of wood-sided Alameda Elementary in summer 2014 after La Forte called attention to alarming, peeling lead paint all around the school. But they didn’t paint an old cement wing of the school or clear up abundant lead paint chips on an Alameda playcourt — until La Forte harnessed outrage over tainted drinking water to get the district to address the paint problem too.
The district painted more during the summer of 2016 than it had in years. The school board also made room on its long-planned ballot measure to tackle lead in paint and water.
Voters will be asked to pass a $790 million bond on May 16, $17 million of which would go toward addressing lead paint. That will allow the district to tackle all peeling and flaking paint in every school, Wilton says.
If voters approve the bond, owners of a typical Portland home, appraised at $240,000, will pay an additional $336 a year. The tax rate for school construction debt, already $1.10 per $1,000 of assessed value, would rise by $1.40 per $1,000.
“If you told me three years ago I would be standing in a room talking about a bond that has 100 percent lead paint stabilization in it, I would have told you you were crazy,” said La Forte, who is on the bond advisory stakeholder committee. “I couldn’t even get a letter of support from my PTA” to urge that Alameda be repainted “because it was too controversial.”
What Portland Public Schools has found after digging into the issue is unsettling, Wilton said. Reports on each school that have come back from PBS Engineering + Environmental, which the district hired to find problem paint, look scary. Maps mark trouble spots, which at many schools number in the hundreds. In total, the contractor inventoried 844,000 square feet of problem paint in more than 68,000 spots inside and outside schools.
The district expects to pay $165,000 when all the inspection bills come in, Wilton said.
How worried parents should be is tough to say, Wilton said, in part because of the insidious nature of lead exposure.
Symptoms often don’t show in a way that is apparent, said Perry Cabot, who oversees the Multnomah County lead poisoning prevention program. For example, a child could be constipated because of lead exposure, but how would you know it was lead? You wouldn’t because constipation can be caused by all sorts of things, he said.
More sinisterly, it could mean an IQ point or two is lost from many young children’s brains.
“Is it likely they are going to be exposed? No,” Cabot said. “Is it possible? Yes.
“We don’t want to dispute that lead is poisonous,” he continued. “Just because we can’t see someone turn green and froth at the mouth that doesn’t mean it’s not causing harm to our body because it can and will.”
The children at greatest risk are toddlers, because they tend to put everything in their mouths and their brains are rapidly developing, Cabot said. Detrimental exposures tend to be found in children who have had chronic exposure to lead, he said.
Portland Public Schools’ plan of attack has so far has been to amass data and beef up its paint crew. Previously, one person was charged with painting all schools, some of which are leased to private or charter schools. He got a counterpart this year, and in the summer, a team of five is also supposed to also get to work, Wilton said.
Priority areas for the district will be spaces where kindergarteners through second-graders spend time, said Steve Effros, a senior facilities project manager. Another focus will be interior spaces, he said, as there is “no question” there is more exposure inside than out.
The district used to care more, with a team of roughly 20 painters, said Herb Wagner, Portland Public Schools’ safety hazmat coordinator who has worked for the district since the 1980s. Those were less lean times, before the passage of Measure 5 in 1990.
“Cracking paint around little kid areas is not good,” Wagner said, noting that had been permitted by previous management. “If you want to maintain a hazard-free environment, I think you need to do maintenance painting on some level each year at each school.”
That means that while the bond will bail the district out of the problem it let pile up, it isn’t a long-term solution that will keep them in the clear, Wilton said.
Sometime down the line, Wilton said, the district will have to either increase the operational budget or designate money for paint work in future bonds.
Without money from this month’s bond, the district won’t be able to tackle the “sheer magnitude” of the lead paint threat, he said.
“Bottom line is we are going to be able to deal with the most critical needs (without the bond),” he said. “How far down the list we get until the money runs out I’m not sure.”
Should voters approve the biggest bond in state history, the board’s stakeholder advisory committee has advised them to develop a long-term plan by December to handle hazards.
The run-up to the crucial vote has seen some of the district’s darkest days, the nadir of which may have been May 4. That day’s news included the resignation of the human resources director, a $1 million jury verdict against the district for racial harassment, an apology for a math error that caused a lucrative contract to be erroneously awarded, and the implosion of the superintendent search.
Board members have stressed that strong, stable leadership remains in the district despite its lack of a permanent superintendent, chief of staff, general counsel, human resources director, chief information officer and assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.
Their confidence lies in Yousef Awwad, whose ability to shoulder responsibility has caused him to rise in the ranks in Portland Public Schools from chief finance officer to deputy executive officer. Awwad is expected to step up and helm the district, at least for a time, when interim superintendent Bob McKean’s contract ends at the end of June. Board members also spotlight the performance and reliability of Jerry Vincent, chief of school modernization, for his implementation of construction projects under the 2012 bond.
Vincent also stands poised to take on more responsibility. McKean’s proposed budget for the coming school year eliminates Wilton’s position. The move means the district doesn’t have to hire a permanent operating officer, but also puts Vincent atop a plethora of additional departments. He would not only have to implement the 2012 and the 2017 bond projects under this budget proposal, but also oversee facilities and asset management, nutrition services, security services, student transportation, enrollment and transfer.
Much remains unknown, but some people see signs of real change amid the public turmoil.
“I generally feel like the signals that I’m getting and the signs that I’m seeing out of (Portland Public Schools) — despite obvious ongoing issues and challenges — is they’re interested in doing the right thing,” Cabot, of the health department, said. “Doing the right thing when you have a portfolio of structures like they do is a pretty monumental challenge, but I’m fairly confident in what I’m seeing that they are making a good faith effort to do that.”
An example? The district now regularly meets with a team of people at Multnomah County’s public health department.
“That’s something that never happened before and that’s something that happens now,” Cabot said. “That willingness to engage is somewhat new — and appreciated.”