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Public Health Week: Get the Lead Out


water dineshraj goomany 2

(Photo by Dineshraj Goomany)


After nearly three years of grappling with contaminated drinking water, the citizens of Flint, Michigan finally obtained some relief as a federal court approved a settlement mandating replacement of lead pipes. 

As we mark Public Health Week in New York, we must confront the sobering need to “get the lead out” here as well.

Lead is a potent neurotoxin. It is particularly damaging to children, who absorb as much as 90 percent more lead into their bodies than adults. Once ingested, lead flows from the blood to the brain, kidneys, and bones. Children’s organs and bones are immature and more vulnerable than adults’; they also have an incomplete blood-brain barrier.

We have known for some time that high levels of lead can cause severe health impacts – including anemia, kidney disease, abnormal brain function and even death. Yet the medical science now confirms that even low levels of lead can cause permanent damage to our children.

Over the past two years, the tragedy of Flint has stunned the nation -- we watched the drinking water of an entire city become contaminated with lead. 

Now we know this toxic threat extends well beyond Flint - to communities right here in New York. In fact, test results show that lead is even contaminating drinking water in schools and pre-schools, flowing from thousands of fountains and faucets where our kids drink water every day. 

As more schools test their water in New York, they are finding lead. In the latest round of testing in New York City, reports show nine times as many water sources tested above the EPA’s “action level” of 15 parts per billion (ppb) compared to tests conducted just a year ago.

Such confirmed cases of lead-laced water are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Often, we only hear about “elevated” results – i.e., those showing more than 15 ppb of lead in the water. However, there is no safe level of lead.

Moreover, even properly done testing often fails to detect lead in water. Mark Edwards, the Virginia Tech expert who helped Flint residents uncover their tragedy, has even compared lead testing to Russian Roulette. 

The reason for this pervasive problem is simple: all too often, the water delivery systems in our homes and schools are lined with lead – from the pipes to the plumbing and fixtures. In some cases, the service line, which brings water from the main pipe in the street into a home or school – is entirely made of lead. 

So instead of waiting for more tests to confirm this toxin at the tap, we should take a more preventative approach, one that truly prioritizes children's health and safety.

The common-sense solution is to remove lead from pipes, plumbing, and fixtures. And until we’re sure that’s 100 percent done, we can protect our children with filters certified to remove lead, at every tap used for drinking or cooking.

To be sure, undoing this toxic legacy throughout all of our communities will take time. But the first place for us to start is with our schools and daycares, and the other places where our children go each day to learn and play.

Fortunately, Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature have finalized a $2.5 billion Clean Water Infrastructure Act as part of the budget for the new fiscal year. This is a huge boost to efforts to protect drinking water at its source.

However, in February, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli released a report that places the state's drinking water infrastructure needs at $40 billion over the next 20 years. Such high estimates make it clear that steady and consistent future funding will be required as well.

As our nation rushed through more than a century of unprecedented economic growth, we allowed toxic health threats like lead to become embedded into the fabric our lives. We allowed manufacturers to put this potent neurotoxin in our paint, gasoline, and many other products.

For decades, public health officials have been working to undo the damage.  Banning lead in gasoline immediately removed a major source of toxic air pollution. Barring lead in paint stopped a major threat to children’s health from becoming even worse, but we are still cleaning up the damage from millions of homes with lead paint, as well as related lead in dust and soil. 

Yet until Flint, few of us were thinking about lead in the pipes and plumbing that bring drinking water right to our faucets. Now we know, and now we must act.  

For the sake of our children’s health, it’s time to get the lead out here in New York.

***
Heather Leibowitz, Esq. is the Director of Environment New York, a statewide advocacy organization. On Twitter @EnvNY.

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Requiem For A School That Works


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David Baiz, right, with students


Eight years ago, I had a front-row seat at the birth of a new small school in East Harlem. Global Technology Preparatory was crafted by its founding teachers over Sunday brunches at the home of Jacqueline Pryce-Harvey, who would go on to become the school’s assistant principal.

Featuring, among other things, a one-to-one laptop program for its poor students and an after-school program—the result of a partnership with Citizens Schools, a Boston-based nonprofit—Global Tech, as it is known, came to be heralded as one of a slew of innovative Bloomberg-era schools.

By most measures, Global Tech is a school that works. During the Bloomberg years, Global Tech got mostly “A’s” on its school report cards. Under the school’s most recent “quality snapshot,” which measures schools on seven characteristics, Global Tech received a “good” on five, and an “excellent” on two—trust and leadership. Parents and teachers rave about the school. And next school year, it was to become a “host school” in schools Chancellor Carmen Farina’s signature Learning Partners Program, which is “designed to promote interschool collaborative learning and leverage the rich reservoir of expertise that already resides within our school communities,” according to the education department website.

I’ve written before about Global Tech, a Title 1 school with a special needs population that, historically, has topped 35 percent of the student body—most recently about its first class of students, many of whom were getting ready to head to college. I’ve also written about David Baiz, the award-winning teacher who was handpicked by Global Tech’s founding principal to become her successor.

Now Alexandra Estrella, the District 4 superintendent, has shown Baiz the door in what is expected, by most educators who know both Global Tech and the district, to mark the beginning of the end for the school. Last week, the staff sat stunned and teary-eyed, when Baiz announced at the weekly staff meeting that he would not be returning after spring break.

“One thing I've been really proud of—I feel like we've created something special in East Harlem,” Baiz told his staff. “Not every school is like this, in New York City, in East Harlem, in tough neighborhoods. You should be very proud.”

But, in interviews with half-a-dozen current and former staff members, several used the word “dead” or “dying” to describe what they see happening to the school.

“There was so much magic here; the way people worked together, how hard they worked,” said one staff member who did not want to be identified and caught herself speaking about the school in the past tense. “There is already tremendous upheaval in the lives of our kids who desperately need stability,” she added, noting that she expects more uncertainty in the coming months.

“The real tragedy of this is that David was the right guy at the right time,” notes Nick Siewert, a senior educational consultant with Teaching Matters who has worked with the school for several years. Baiz was committed to the school's social-justice mission, adds Siewert, but he is also “a systems-and-structures guy” who believes it is important for Global Tech and its students to do well by “measurable results.” Among other things, Baiz introduced a system of interim assessments designed to help teacher teams analyze specific student weaknesses and improve their practice.

One of the first schools in the Bloomberg-era iZone—in fact one of the few to survive the early years of that experiment—Global Tech also traces its lineage to the era of collaboration and teacher-leaders that flourished in District 4 under Tony Alvarado and Debbie Meier, beginning in the 1970s, and was, to a limited degree, revived under Bloomberg.

That legacy of grassroots leadership and collaboration, which was intended to foster creativity and innovation, is now widely seen as endangered—not just at Global Tech, but throughout the city. “This is a successful school; and yet, this is the kind of talent the DOE doesn’t want to retain?” said Chrystina Russell, the former principal referring wryly of Baiz’s ouster. “Is there no cause for pause?”

Indeed, Global Tech may turn out to be among the first Bloomberg-era small schools to be dismantled by the de Blasio-Farina administration. Those close to the school see Global Tech as a victim of an expanding bureaucracy where “who you know matters more than what you know.” Farina, the schools chancellor, has said she plans to merge dozens of small schools, arguing that mergers will create economies of scale and allow schools to offer more programs.

However, Global Tech had already punched above its weight thanks to a slew of partnerships. In addition to Citizen Schools afterschool offerings, under Baiz, the program’s apprentice teachers have offered an extra daily guided-reading program during the school day for every child. Partnerships with Cornell Tech and Google have helped Global Tech develop a course in software coding. For the second year, Global Tech is sending students to Bridge to Enter Advanced Math, a residential college-based summer program for seventh-graders. And following the standardized-testing season each spring, the school’s challenge-based learning modules allow students to work on everything from fashion design to a theatrical production.

Yet, Global Tech has known for nearly two years that its days might be numbered. Soon after Baiz become principal, in 2013, he learned that the superintendent was considering merging Global Tech, which has never had more than about 175 students, with P.S. 7, the K-8 school that shares its building. Russell and other friends of Global Tech within the education department urged Baiz to fight for the school; in what proved a short-lived victory, the principal of P.S. 7 moved to a job at DOE headquarters, and Estrella tapped Pryce-Harvey, Global Tech’s assistant principal and Baiz’s friend, to be the interim-acting principal.

Then, last summer, Baiz learned that Estrella had turned down his tenure application; under education department rules, there was a good chance that he would lose his principalship. A few months later she overruled his tenure recommendation for a respected Global Tech teacher—a Math for America master teacher for science who also holds a special-education certification.

Getting rid of Baiz appears to be a first step in consolidating the two schools in the East 120th Street building they share, under a principal hand-picked by Estrella. Pryce-Harvey will retire from P.S. 7 this year; her successor has already been chosen. While Estrella urged Baiz to leave early, assuring him that she had selected a successor for Global Tech, it turns out that she is moving one of her lieutenants, Ellen Johnson Torres, a teacher evaluation and development coach, into the job temporarily—another sign, education sources say, that the school will be merged with P.S. 7.

Estrella’s office referred interview requests to the education department, which did not respond to a phone message.

Despite the turmoil, several teachers at the school, which is also known for low teacher turnover—not a single teacher left last year—are clearly reluctant to leave. “I love these kids and I love East Harlem,” said Sage Hunter, the science teacher whose tenure application was turned down, adding that she wants to see her seventh grade students through to next year’s graduation. Kayla Hamilton, who started out as a Citizen Schools apprentice teacher seven years ago, said, “I’m going to be open-minded. As long as they keep our kids number one, I’m OK. But if I feel I can’t do what’s best for our students...”

Several other teachers, though, are updating their resumes. Thanks to Estrella’s decision to push Baiz out early, they have the entire upcoming so-called open-market period to look for new jobs within the department.

The one thing no one is worrying about is Baiz’s future. Last month, Baiz was accepted into Harvard University’s Doctor of Education Program, perhaps the most prestigious and selective program for educators in the country.

“He’s good enough for Harvard, but not for East Harlem,” one Global Tech teacher said of Baiz.

***
Andrea Gabor is the Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at Baruch College/CUNY and is working on a new book on education reform. On Twitter @aagabor.

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New Yorkers Deserve Answers About the State’s Nuclear Bailout


indian point


Climate change is a serious threat to New York. With so much of the state’s population, infrastructure and economic activity crammed into the coastal communities of the New York metropolitan area, sea level rise and increasingly intense hurricane seasons spell certain disaster in the long term.

In light of this, I’m sure that I share the concerns of many New Yorkers in expressing my disgust with President Trump’s executive action aimed at dismantling Obama-era climate regulations. That’s why it’s more important than ever to take action at the state level to combat this growing threat.

New York has already developed an ambitious Clean Energy Standard with a “50 by 30” goal of generating at least 50% of New York State's electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030, and reducing carbon emissions by 40% by that same year. These are important efforts that should be undertaken transparently and with the full cooperation of both government and the general public.

Sadly, that has not been the case. Last month, the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, which I chair, held a joint hearing with the Committees on Energy, Consumer Affairs and Protection, and Environmental Conservation to examine state plans around nuclear power plants and utility costs for New Yorkers.

Specifically, our hearing was intended to provide New York ratepayers with the opportunity to learn more about the state’s plan to offer Zero-Emissions Credits (ZECs) to upstate nuclear power plants and the program’s potential impact on utility costs. We invited the Public Service Commission (PSC) to testify about its controversial plan to provide ZECs. However, by failing to even appear before the committees, PSC officials continue to keep ratepayers in the dark on some of the program’s most pressing and questionable aspects.

The PSC even added insult to injury by sending a letter to me and my three fellow committee chairs giving conflicting reasons for its absence. In its letter, the PSC accuses us of not giving them sufficient notice for the hearing, while simultaneously blaming pending lawsuits brought by environmental groups against the Clean Energy Standard.

This is exactly the kind of half-baked reasoning we’ve seen recently from our federal government: blame as many groups and individuals as possible and see what sticks. The simple fact is that New Yorkers deserve transparency on such a vital issue, and yet the PSC is offering us just the opposite.

The Trump comparisons don’t end there. The plan would also mandate companies under the PSC’s jurisdiction to purchase these credits to subsidize four unprofitable upstate nuclear plants, all owned by the Exelon Corporation. The cost to ratepayers is estimated to total as much as $7.6 billion over the next 12 years. This is corporate welfare, pure and simple, with downstate ratepayers footing 60% of the bill and getting zero in economic benefit. The President would be proud.

My colleagues and I continue to demand that the PSC testify on these matters, and we’re prepared to fight until we get answers to our questions: How were these plants determined to need the subsidies? What are the potential taxpayer-funded profits for this private corporation? New York ratepayers deserve to know.

It's time we shine a light on our state’s electrical network, and ensure that the term “green energy” applies to the environmental impact for our state, not the economic impact to a company’s bottom line.

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Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz (D – Bronx) Chairs the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions. On Twitter @JeffreyDinowitz.

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