At the Board of Education meeting, parents demand health and safety report card.

On Thursday, Nov. 20, more than 30 parents and a dozen children assembled at the Board of Education meeting to tell Charles Epps, Jersey City School District Superintendent, and members of the Board of Education that parents have a right to know the health conditions of the schools their children go to. At the meeting, parents told the Board to adopt PCUE proposal for health and safety report card for each school in Jersey City.

Below you can read PCUE statement at the meeting. The pictures from the PCUE action can be viewed in the next two blogs.

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Dr. Epps, Members of the Board, Parents, and Visitors

Hello,

My name is LueElla McFadden. I am President of the Parents and Communities United for Education (PCUE). I am also a great grandmother of a child in School # 38.

Dr. Epps, we received your letter yesterday (hand delivered to our office) regarding the lead remediation. We are glad that the facility department has been taking care of the lead problem and a second set of testing is planned to take place. Dr. Epps, we thank you and all board members and also all our hard working maintenance and custodial workers who do their best to keep our schools in good conditions.

One thing we would like to see happen is that we want PCUE to be notified of the progress being made in regard to the water situation. But the most important thing here is to have parents be notified through internal flyers sent home by school students and it should be done in a timely manner. This is a must. We would like you to ensure that all principals in the district have these flyers go out with the students, and we will, of course, notify all our parents that we are in contact with on a daily/weekly basis.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Mr. DeRosa, Ms. Sue Mack, Mr. Dehere and Mr. McCann who met with us to talk about our proposal regarding a Health and Safety Report Card for each school. Why is the report card important? It is important because it will ensure that the parents and students are notified and aware of the conditions of each school and to bridge the communication gap between our parents and the School District.

Our goal is to have the report card put into policy to ensure that all Jersey City schools are safe and healthy for our students. A mere adoption is not enough. We want it to be a policy so that there is accountability and that it can be enforced. We understand that there is a process involved in bringing such an idea to fruition and that it is a collaborative effort, but we need you to realize the importance of the policy to the parents.

We need you and all board members to know how important it is that parents are and must be involved in the school walk-through. We also want to make sure that this report card is issued semi-annually.

The creation of this report card is very important to all concerned. It will bring the kind of healthy and safe environment that is urgently needed in our public school system today.

Thank you and we are looking forward to working with you to make our schools a better place for all our children.

More Pix: Healthy Schools, YES, WE CAN

Pix: PCUE Demands Health and Safety Report Card

Letter from Epps to PCUE regarding lead remediation plan

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Please click on the images to read the letter.

PCUE Letter to Dr. Epps: Fix high level of lead in our schools’ drinking water sources

Parents and Communities United for Education (PCUE)
Jersey City Chapter of the Statewide Education Organizing Committee (SEOC)
169-A Martin Luther King Drive, Jersey City NJ 07305
201-918-2918 --- pcue.info@seocnj.org


Nov. 10, 2008


Dr. Charles Epps, School District Superintendent
Jersey City Board of Education
346 Claremont Ave.
Jersey City, NJ 07305


Dear Dr. Epps,

As we write this letter to you, PCUE has not yet received the lead remediation plan/timeline. You told us, in your letter dated Oct. 8, that it would be available to us by the week of Oct. 20th. The plan was originally supposed to be ready by Oct. 3 as was stated to the Jersey Journal by your spokesperson Mr. Roger Jones. We are very disappointed that our school district has been dragging its feet to deal with the lead problem in drinking water in a decisive manner.

More than two years ago in September 2006, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warned you about the high level of lead in drinking water in our schools. For 18 months, your administration not only failed to do anything about it, but also did not share that information with parents of children in our schools and the community until it became national news in January 2008.

Under public pressure, your administration finally began testing of water sources in all schools in May, 2008 and completed the process in July. In your letter to the parents, you stated that according to EPA guidelines a remediation plan could only be developed when all the testing is done and test results were available for all schools. This was inaccurate information to the public which you attributed to EPA. We learned about this information from a letter that was sent to you by Ms. Dore LaPosta, Director of Division of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, EPA Region II.

As stated by Ms. LaPosta, there was no need to wait to have the test results for all the schools. Your administration could have begun correcting lead problem as test results were available for each school. This would mean that the district could have remediated the lead problem before the start of this school year.

EPA guidelines require a short-term and a long term plan to rectify the lead problem. We are glad to see that as a short-term solution, the district is currently providing safe drinking water to children in our schools. However, safe drinking water availability is a continuous problem in many schools. Parents from various schools complain that water coolers provided by the school district either run out of water or cups are not available. In other occasions, water is not readily accessible to children. Some parents even complain that their schools do not even provide drinking water for children unless in case of emergency when children forget to bring water from home. On Thursday, Nov. 6 we called and conveyed this to Mr. Crisonino.

We understand that providing safe drinking water to 30,000 students in 40 schools, under current condition when drinking water fountains are shut off, is not an easy job. However, we are asking that the school district make all the effort to have safe drinking water available for our children at all times. No child in our schools should go without safe drinking water and no parent should be forced to provide water to their children to take to school. It is the responsibility of schools to have safe drinking water for our children while they are in schools.

Also, we urge you to share with parents and the community how and when you plan to permanently fix the lead problem in drinking water. Under EPA guideline, you are advised to share that information with the public. Furthermore, you made a commitment to parents that you would notify them of the lead remediation plan/timeline.

As parents of children, we have a right to know how and when the district will be correcting this long over due lead problem that exist in our schools. We are concerned about our children’s health, well-being, and comfort in schools. We are concerned that the school district is not motivated enough to act decisively to deal with the lead problem and even worse is keeping us in the dark.

Dr. Epps, we urge you to address our concerns. It is time for action, not more promises. You may reach us at 201-918-2918.


Sincerely,



LueElla McFadden, President
Parents and Communities United for Education

Cc: Members of the Board of Education

Jersey Journal: School cafeteria can't reopen yet

School cafeteria can't reopen yet

Friday, October 24, 2008

By KEN THORBOURNE

JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The cafeteria at School 25 in the Jersey City Heights section flunked an inspection by city health officials yesterday morning when they found fresh mouse droppings, city and school officials said.

The cafeteria, which serves 723 kindergarten through fifth-graders, was shut Tuesday.

Inspectors yesterday found mouse droppings in the kitchen and dining area and it appears the exterminator called in by school officials treated the area for a cockroach problem instead of mice infestation, said city spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill.

School officials were told they need to put down glue traps and seal openings around entry doors so mice can't enter the building, Morrill said.

"We are not looking to fine them (the Board of Education)," Morrill added. "We are looking to insure that the cafeteria is safe and that no one gets sick from any diseases that could possibly spread from mice activity."

An employee at the Kennedy Boulevard school, who didn't want to be identified, said the mice problem is nothing new and has spread to classrooms.

"And now that food is being eaten in the classrooms it is going to get worse," the worker said.

Custodians were scheduled to work though the night if necessary to rectify the problem, said Board of Education spokesman Gerard Crisonino.

Students at the school ate breakfast and lunch in their classrooms, which would be cleaned thoroughly at the end of the day, Crisonino said.

The school had cold lunches brought in, he said. Normally, the school doesn't prepare hot meals, but heats food already prepared in the kitchen, he said.

In the meantime, some 300 students and their teachers at the School 23 Annex on Duncan Avenue went without heat Wednesday afternoon and half of yesterday due to a broken valve on the school's furnace, Crisonino said. The boiler was fixed yesterday about 1 p.m., he said.

©2008 Jersey Journal © 2008 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.

School 25 cafeteria is shut; mouse dropping cited

School 25 cafeteria is shut; mouse

droppings cited

Thursday, October 23, 2008

By TOM SHORTELL

JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Jersey City health inspectors closed the cafeteria of School 25 in the Heights on Tuesday after receiving a tip about mouse problems on the building's ground floor.

Inspectors found mice droppings in the ground floor cafeteria and the basement of the Kennedy Boulevard school, said Jennifer Morrill, the mayor's spokeswoman.

Inspectors closed the cafeteria after lunch on Tuesday and it will remain closed until it can pass inspection, officials said. In the meantime, cafeteria workers cannot heat food for the school's 723 kindergarten through fifth grade students, officials said.

Meals at School 25 are cooked elsewhere, but heated and served in the cafeteria, said Jersey City Public Schools spokesman Gerard Crisonino. The school has called in exterminators and needs to board up any access points mice could have to the building, Morrill said.

Crisonino said the Board of Education hopes the cafeteria can be reopened today, when health inspectors are expected to re-examine the building.

The violations aren't as severe as inspectors made them out to be, he added. "The health violations were not that egregious. However, we don't want any of our facilities to not be the best environment for students," he said.

Students ate breakfast in their classrooms yesterday, and no lunch was scheduled since it was a half day, he said.

Most students at the school get lunches for free or at reduced prices through a federal food program, he added.

©2008 Jersey Journal © 2008 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.