Less than a year after Stege Elementary was suddenly shut down for environmental hazards, parents and community leaders are organizing to get their lead poisoning questions answered.
A report by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) released Jan. 22 found that construction workers who were doing renovations at Stege Elementary last summer, before the district closed the school, were likely exposed to elevated lead levels and had not been warned about the risks. Cal/OSHA determined that this violated state workplace protections laws and WCCUSD was ordered to pay an $800 fine, which it did.
The district originally planned to continue renovating the 80-year-old campus during the 2024-25 school year, but because construction would likely have exposed those in the building to lead paint dust, officials decided to close the campus and relocate the school to a nearby middle school campus.
Parents say since this all happened, the district has done minimal outreach about the lead issue or what level of exposure their children might have had so they’ve turned to outside resources to get their questions answered at an end-of-the-school-year celebration on Friday.
Tiara Speech, a parent of two children who would have attended the old campus before it was closed, told Richmondside she is outraged by the district’s silence about all of the school’s issues.
Stege Elementary lead workshop/end-of-the-year fun day
What: Healthy Contra Costa and Fierce Advocates are hosting an event for Stege families, marking the end of their first year at DeJean Middle School while their campus is rebuilt.
When: Fri., May 30, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Booker T. Anderson park, 960 South 47th St., Richmond
Details: There will be food, activities and educational resources. Experts from Contra Costa Health will host a lead education session to help parents understand the dangers of lead and to consider whether their child should be tested.
More info: Families can register here or call or text 510-932-6031.
“It’s been one of the most nastiest, distasteful, disgusting experiences I’ve ever experienced,” Speech said. “I can’t believe that the district was allowing the kids to be in this kind of learning environment.”
Speech became involved in advocating for a new Stege campus to be built (as opposed to renovating it) after meeting Lakisha Mitchell-Keith, a community leader whose videos of Stege bathroom sewage overflowing, broken windows and other issues, propelled parents into action.
Mitchell-Keith said the district sent one “vague” message at the beginning of this academic year telling parents to get students tested if they believed they had been exposed to lead but it did not specify whether the old campus was possibly the source.
It is common to find lead in buildings as old as Stege, one of the district’s oldest schools, because lead-based paints were popular before being banned for health concerns in 1978. However, unless there is construction disturbing the lead or a child is eating the paint, it’s unlikely that the lead levels in a child’s bloodstream would accumulate to dangerous levels, according to Jeremiah Cau-Ang, the Childhood Lead Prevention Program Coordinator for Contra Costa Health.
If left untreated, lead poisoning in children can cause developmental delays, behavioral issues and learning disabilities, and there are often no symptoms or warning signs.
Francisco Ortiz, president of the United Teachers of Richmond, said he is not sure that the school community would have found out about the Cal/OSHA report if the employee unions had not discovered it. The report was finalized and sent to the district on Jan. 22 but it was not shared with the teachers union until the end of March.
In March the United Teachers of Richmond filed an unfair labor complaint with the state over what it says was the district’s delay in providing them with the Cal/OSHA report, despite multiple requests from the teachers union.
School district officials did not respond to Richmondside’s requests for comment.
Friday fun day: Activities and lead education for parents
Mitchell-Keith said Stege parents are at a disadvantage because they don’t have a Parent Teacher Association (PTA) chapter and now they don’t have a dedicated meeting space. (WCCUSD eventually decided to fully rebuild their neighborhood campus, and it won’t reopen for several years.)
So, she and other community leaders are organizing an end-of-the-year celebration at Booker T. Anderson park on Fri. May 30, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., to bring Stege families together. The event, co-hosted by nonprofits Healthy Contra Costa and Fierce Advocates, will provide students and families with food, activities and education resources.
Experts from Contra Costa Health will lead a lead education session to help parents understand the dangers of lead and eventually it plans to help them get their children tested.
Mitchell-Keith said the event is not just about the lead exposure risks at Stege — though it will be a major focus.
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“No amount of lead exposure is safe. But in the case of Stege, I’m not overly concerned about their exposure at school.”
— Jeremiah Cau-Ang, Childhood Lead Prevention Program Coordinator, Contra Costa Health
“Parents have been disenfranchised. They have been cut off and shut off even just in being able to get consistent information about what’s going on at the school with their child and their education,” Mitchell-Keith said. “So this event is to bring them together and start the conversations, informing them about what’s going on, on multiple levels.”
Johana Gurdian, project manager at Contra Costa Health, said before Kenneth “Chris” Hurst resigned as superintendent, there were efforts underway to provide more information about lead exposure. Amid the transition to new leadership, those efforts were lost.
“Given the dangers of lead exposures in young children, we just thought it was important to really engage (parents) and sit them down to get a better understanding of the potential problems that can come with students being exposed to lead,” Gurdian said. “The next step hopefully is to offer free lead testing, but we are still working on that.”
No amount of lead is safe but expert isn’t ‘overly concerned’ about Stege
“No amount of lead exposure is safe. But in the case of Stege, I’m not overly concerned about their exposure at school,” Contra Costa Health’s Cau-Ang said. “If they had been there during construction, and they had been there during renovation, then I’d be more concerned.”
Lead paint has to be physically disrupted to enter a person’s body, and there needs to be sustained exposure for it to become dangerous, Cau-Ang said.
Cau-Ang said there are 175 cases of children under the age of 10 having elevated lead levels in Contra Costa County. This is less than 1% of the child population that is being monitored for elevated lead levels, according to the county’s health department.
Parents can request free- to low-cost lead testing directly from medical providers. If a child’s blood lead test level reaches 3.5 microns per deciliter or higher, the case is flagged for expert intervention to reduce blood lead levels.
Nevertheless, it is important for parents to understand how lead can be a risk. If parents are worried, they should get their children tested, Cau-Ang noted.
Aside from that, he said, the best thing parents can do is to provide healthy meals.
“Leafy greens, berries, water, milk — things that will really enhance a child’s immune system,” Cau-Ang said. “That way, their body’s natural detoxification will help them purge any lead from their body, if there is any.”
