Legislative session ends, battle over public schools continues

15th June 2015   ·   0 Comments

By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer

State Representative Joseph J. Bouie, Jr., fought for the rights of public school children during the 2015 state legislative session that ended on June 11. Bouie was elected to the District 97 seat vacated by Jared Brossett, who won a seat on the New Orleans City Council.

Bouie’s HB 166 would have sent successful schools back to the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and HB180 would have stopped the Recovery School District (RSD) from building new schools on former waste dumps.

It was a mammoth undertaking, akin to David and Goliath. Bouie went up against big money interests in the charter school system. But HB166 failed to pass, by a vote of 60-31 on the House floor and HB180 died in the state Senate Education Committee, even after it sailed through the House with a 92-0 vote. Still, Bouie made salient points with experts and community members supporting his bills.

HB 166 faced staunch opposition from supporters of the RSD, the overseer of 61 charter schools funded with public dollars. Although more than a dozen schools were eligible to be returned to the Orleans Parish School Board, charter operators were given the legislative option of deciding to return to OPSB or not.

Although considered to be “public schools,” parents, students, educators, and others cannot hold private charter school operators accountable nor have a say in how their tax dollars are spent. Educational justice advocates say stakeholders are being subjected to taxation without representation. Clearly, controlling millions of public education dollars is at the core of charter operators’ refusal to return to the OPSB, as is being subjected to more oversight and public input.

For Bouie, a retired Southern University New Orleans Chancellor and licensed social worker, these issues are both personal and altruistic; especially when it comes down to new school construction.

After attending a community meeting on schools built on toxic waste dumps, including Bouie’s alma mater Booker T. Washington (BTW) and Moton, the legislator grew concerned.

He met with officials of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) to find out how to safely remediate a toxic waste site for new school construction. Bouie was compelled to fill HB180 after reading LDEQ’s assessment of the toxins at the Moton site. “It said there were six heavy metals and toxins, including lead, mercury, arsenic that exceeded safe standards for human beings,” Bouie testified before the Louisiana Senate Education Committee on June 4. “I’m offering this bill to protect the children of this state from having schools built on toxic waste sites.”

A busload of education advocates rode to the state capitol to support HB180. Two busloads made the trek for the House vote on HB166, both trips included parents, clergy, teachers, lawyers, and members of A Community Voice, Justice and Beyond, Walter L. Cohen Alumni Association, and L.B. Landry Alumni Association.

Bouie was accompanied by experts. Dr. Wilma Subra, a chemist and environmental scientist, represented the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Attorney Monique Harden, co-director of Advocates for Environ­mental Human Rights, which is representing the Walter L. Cohen Alumni Association in a lawsuit to prevent building a new school on the Booker T. Washington site for Cohen students, testified before the committee.

“At the BTW site, there is a layer of heavy metals that goes down from eight to 10 feet and cancer-causing elements that go down 15 feet. The toxins there are way over the standards. Studies show that you will expose children, parent, staff, and educators to health risks. It is inappropriate in this day and age to build a school on top of an old landfill or an old contaminated site. We must protect our most precious resources, our children,” Subra explained.

The waste doesn’t go away, added Harden. “There is no safe level of lead or other toxins found at the BTW site,” which was built on the former Clio Street City Dump. “You can still have adverse health effects occur at levels below those risk-based standards.

“Impaired learning, behavioral development problems, and physical and mental health issues can result from exposure to these toxins. 30 states have enacted laws requiring environmentally safe sites for schools. Louisiana does not have such a law. “As a result, we have a governing board of authority of a school district or special school district that can ignore health risks and build a school on a former waste dump.”

Harden accused the Recovery School District and OPSB of putting the capital project cart before the horse. “We are jumping to remediation without fully understanding, through a protocol of environmental groundwater and soil sampling, the full extent of contamination on this site

“We don’t have all the information on toxicity levels. The only thing we know is that two out of a dozen of categories of toxic substances or constituents of concern have been tested at BTW and it turns out that those tests show very high levels of toxins.”

“Tests were done for lead at nearby public housing sites and high levels of lead were found,” Bouie said in response to Sen. Conrad Appel about litigation. Appel is a contractor who represents Metairie and chairs the Senate Education Committee. Bouie said several BTW classmates died at early ages from respiratory illnesses or cancers, although he couldn’t directly attribute their deaths to the school’s toxic environment.

After Moton was built on the largest waste dump in New Orleans, the Agriculture landfill, “Pipe corrosion was traced to corrosive materials that were in the waste under the clean soil the Orleans Parish School Board had remediated. More than 100 toxins were found but not tested for,” Harden explained. The school was closed when the area was designated a Superfund site by the EPA and a Consent Decree was entered into by the City of New Orleans and the EPA.

Subra said the LDEQ’s plan to remove only three feet of waste and replacing it with three to six feet of top soil at the BTW site, may not prevent children from being exposed to the adverse effects of toxins there. They could still be affected by toxins in the ground water and cancer-causing vapors.

Senator Mike Walsworth voiced his concern about HB180 calling it “far-reaching.” While he agreed with the bill’s intent, “It’s not just about a landfill in New Orleans, it is statewide. You can say that any waste or hazardous materials, which could be agriculture, could be on every single property in the state of Louisiana.”

Senator J.P. Morrell, a committee member, supported HB180 but agreed that the bill’s language is too broad. “Words matter. You have to go in the weeds and maybe add the word commercial waste disposal and storage. I’m with you on keeping the kids safe.” Morrell then introduced an amendment with “extreme specificity,” to address opponents’ concerns.

Sen. Dan Claitor said he couldn’t imagine that East Baton Rouge Parish would issue a permit that would put kids at risk, “so I’m trying to figure out why Orleans Parish would do that.”

“Because they did that,” Bouie replied. The recently constructed Rosenwald Center is built on part of the same waste dump as BTW.

“Requests to LDEQ to have a public hearing on the new construction were denied,” said Harden. Additionally, the RSD has not held public hearings on the BTW project and the City Council does not weigh in environmental concerns, even though the city must issue the construction permit.

Sen. Mack “Bodi” White, a Ba­ton Rouge official, said he couldn’t support the bill because it is too broad. He supports remediation of waste dumps. He cited a $2 million clean-up of an old hospital site in Baton Rouge that he supported. White neglected to say what development is planned for the site.

Morrell offered an amendment to HB180 with “extreme specificity” in the language that targeted specific sites like Moton, and urged the adoption of the amendment, before leaving to attend another committee meeting.

Members of LDEQ, BESE, opposed the bill. LDEQ’s position is that the remediation program, based on EPA Superfund policies, works. LDEQ representatives said remediated sites are safe and there have been no reports of adverse effects linked to those sites.

“The Recovery School District is driving the effort,” to build new schools on dump sites, said Reverend Willie L. Calhoun Jr. When asked about public input, Calhoun replied, “The RSD does not speak to the community.” He urged the committee to send the bill to the Senate floor for a vote, to correct past injustices, instead of promulgating environmental racism.

Dr. Paul Lo, President of Materials Measurement Group, Stan Smith, CFO of the Orleans Parish School Board, Attorney Tim Hardy, who has practiced environmental law for 30 years, and OPSB President Henderson Lewis, Jr. opposed the bill because they believed the bill’s “vagueness” would prohibit the building of any new schools in New Orleans. Lewis said he agreed with the intent of the bill and hoped Morrell’s amendment would be passed.

But it wasn’t and HB180 died in committee. “We litigate,” said Bouie, when asked what’s next in the fight for environmental and educational justice for the state’s public school children.

This article originally published in the June 15, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.