MPS finally steps up remediation
Nearly 50 years after the U.S. government banned lead-based paint, Milwaukee Public Schools officials have again been trying to cover up or remove the toxic substance that parents likely presume was dealt with long ago.
There can be no doubt the owner of the schools — the City of Milwaukee — knew about the hazards of lead paint. The city, concerned about lead exposure in homes, was itself for years a plaintiff in extensive lead paint litigation against the paint industry.
There has been less public discussion — until recently — of schools.
While MPS’ school buildings are owned by the city, they are managed by the school district that has recently — many decades after it became clear lead paint can severely harm childhood growth and brain development — spent approximately $45 million remediating lead paint in more than 100 MPS schools.
MPS undertook the cleanup after an elementary student at the Golda Meir School Lower Campus tested positive for lead poisoning last January.
Subsequent testing after the Golda Meir lead case found the potential for lead paint exposure in many other schools in the district, although no other school-related cases of lead poisoning were found.
Lead poisoning can originate in many places other than schools and, decades after the issue was identified, is still common. Doctors and other medical personnel refer between 1,000 and 1,300 cases of children with elevated blood lead levels a year to the City of Milwaukee Health Department, spokesperson Caroline Reinwald said.
This is not the first time Milwaukee schools have addressed the lead issue.
Since the nationwide ban on lead paint in 1978, MPS school staffs had been responsible individually for painting over or encapsulating paint, particularly in schools built before 1950, Stephen Davis, media relations manager for the district, said. Repainting and lead inspections have been done in district schools many times since then.
A review by the school district in Milwaukee, however, revealed significant lapses in painting maintenance and testing throughout the district in violation of a 15-year-old Lead-Based Paint Compliance Program.
Investigators after the lead poisoning report at Golda Meir School found that MPS engineers were not keeping up with required annual inspections of all schools for traces of lead from paint.
District staff painters had fallen hundreds of work orders behind because the number of painters employed by the district had shrunk, from roughly 30 in 2000 to 10 in 2017 to five before the district’s new superintendent added staff.
“If painting and routine maintenance work orders had been completed promptly in the past, this unique effort would not have been required,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, past staffing levels did not keep up with the quantity of work required. Protecting children’s health is not optional, and we have put stronger systems in place to prevent lead risks in the future.”
“All schools that required lead stabilization were completed and tested in accordance with state and local health regulations,” Davis said. “Our schools now meet or exceed state and city safety standards and are safe for our students and staff.”
As part of her Lead Action Plan, Superintendent Brenda Cassellius in June added five dozen employees to the Facilities and Maintenance Department budget, including 11 building engineers responsible for paint testing, 14 painters and plasterers, and 20 additional custodial workers.
That increase came as parents began to pressure the district to fire its facilities director, Sean Kane, for his performance. On April 1, the state Department of Safety and Professional Services reprimanded and fined Kane $1,319 for having allowed his architect’s license to lapse, although he had by then renewed the license.
Two days later the district fired Kane, but in a joint letter from the district and the Health Department officials did not provide a reason, saying district policy, federal and state laws prohibit them from commenting on a personnel matter.
Student screening done during and after the remediation has shown no other positive tests for lead tied to schools. Screening and education will continue through 2026 with the assistance of the Milwaukee Health Department, paid for with a $397,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Michäèl Mannan, the department’s home environmental health director, told the Badger Institute.
“There will be three screenings every month in, I think, 42 schools,” Mannan said. “I think we need to see data from a larger sample size through the year to see if we want or need to continue the screening process.”
Despite the recognition for decades that schools across the country, particularly those built before 1950, could pose a lead paint threat, the Environmental Protection Agency’s lead renovation, repair and painting rules did not go into effect until 2010.
The most recent report by the EPA’s inspector general in 2019 found that just 12 percent of American school districts inspected for lead paint, while roughly 75 percent did not.
Among the top 100 school districts by enrollment (Milwaukee was 34th in 2025), districts most likely to have schools at one time covered by lead paint, 63 percent tested for the paint and 51 percent found it, according to the report. “The scope of this (remediation) effort (in Milwaukee) was unprecedented, and the extent of work completed during the summer was unique,” Davis told the Badger Institute. “Ultimately, we addressed 2,700 classrooms and associated areas, totaling approximately 7 million square feet.”
Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.
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