I'm glad to see Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson will be in attendance at this important event. If you have not registered, please do so immediately - Registration.

Disrupt IT

In the fascinating GCLAC meeting yesterday we learned things that have not yet gained the attention of enough comeback-city, we'll-improve-our-schools advocates here in our region; the facts about lead poisoning and how it affects children in our schools. Alan Ehrenfalt, speaking on WCPN, says don't try to fix the hardest problem first to revive the downtown -- just get the wealthy to move back into the city. But for many they can see their families living in the city except for the schools, violent crime and blighted properties. Friends of mine who built an environmentally excellent house in Ohio City will move away soon as their daughter nears school age because they can’t see their daughter attending Cleveland Schools or growing up in a neighborhood where so many sex offenders are living. It's just not going to give her the best chance at a future. Not only that, but they fear that if she digs in the dirt of their front yard she like so many children in the neighborhood will become lead poisoned.

In a fascinating and mind boggling talk yesterday at the Museum of Natural History, Michael T. Martin of the Arizona School Boards Association drew the parallels for about 250 in attendance between lead poisoning and school performance. Oh, my god! This is news we must not ignore any longer. This is a complex and far reaching issue that faces every neighborhood of the city of Cleveland and its surrounding inner ring suburbs.

I didn't spot a school board official or a city council person from my inner ring suburb, but they may have been there. In Cleveland Heights, a group of well meaning white intellectuals will sue the school board for their attempt to close Coventry school due to declining enrollments district wide. How much money and time will be wasted on this frivolous lawsuit while the money and time could be directed toward alleviating this more important and pervasive root cause of our school's malaise?

Here’s a sample:

"Public schools can no longer ignore the tragedy of lead poisoning. Environmental lead in low-income housing begins a conveyor-belt of tragedy that inevitably produces precisely the symptoms of "failing schools." School officials, both administrators and governing board members, need to organize school and community resources in an effort to interdict the poisoning of children during their first three years of life, as well as to look for ways to ameliorate the consequences of lead poisoning in subsequent years.

But up to now, schools have done nothing. The fact that most "failing schools" are in low-income neighborhoods where children live in housing known to be laced with a brain damaging neurotoxin is not just a coincidence. The complete impact of lead poisoning is unmeasurable, because most of the victims do not even know the lead is there. But it is there and "failing schools" are but one symptom.

Governing board members need to stop automatically blaming the victims and the teachers and the schools for academic failure and start understanding "Maybe it's beyond that." As long as "The education community has not really understood the dimensions of this" continues, then the failure of public schools will mount, governing boards will be dismissed, the achievement gap will widen, violence will infest the schools, and more children will not be able to learn. No matter how hard they try. The problem is beyond them, beyond teacher competence, beyond funding shortages, beyond standards and testing and vouchers and every other ill-conceived rationalization that ignores lead poisoning."

Read the report here. Rise and shine Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Environment, education, economic development and the return of our urban core are served up in this tangle of problems we face. There is no silver bullet as is usually the case with environmental issues we have wrought on ourselves. It will take generations, lots of money and time, but Like DDT, this is an educational Silent Spring being sprung upon us whether we want to look at it or not.

Thanks Norm for encouraging us to attend and learn, for educating us over the past few years about the dangers of lead poisoning. I understand your passion around this issue even more clearly now. As Jeff says, keep hammering this point home. I’ll be hammering with you from now on.

Students like Jasmine Mosby in the Integrated Science class in Room 201 of the Cleveland School of the Arts, have to dodge paint chips that fall off the walls and ceiling while they try to concentrate on their schoolwork. Photo by Lynn Ischay Plain Dealer

The Ohio School Facilities Commission offers this: “The Extreme Environmental Contamination Program was established to assist districts with buildings whose "occupants are exposed to contaminants at levels which violate acceptable state and federal standards." For a district to participate in the program, it must be shown that the building needs to be replaced rather than modified or renovated.”

And this: “The General Assembly created the Urban Initiative in May 2000 to address the facility needs for the six largest urban districts: Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo.

This program recognizes the exceptional issues facing Ohio’s urban schools, such as socio-economic demographics, higher percentages of “at-risk” children, and a larger population of special education students. The challenges facing OSFC’s urban partners are formidable – restrictive site sizes and conditions, a highly mobile population base, suburban migration, and significant neighborhood diversity, just to mention a few. (note they don’t mention lead!!!)

The construction and renovation projects in urban districts are occurring in phases or “segments.” Each segment is comprised of new construction, additions and renovation projects as reflected in the Master Facilities Plan. By approaching the plan in segments, OSFC and the district can focus on the particular issues that have arisen and make adjustments as necessary.

Please see this report on childhood lead poisoning and our schools -- http://www.azsba.org/lead.htm. It is an eye-opening look at a silent killer of school performance. Mr. Martin has uncovered information everyone involved with education must know. At the very least, schools must not contribute to the lead hazards young children face daily in our urban centers (like Cleveland). If we wonder about the rise in dropout rates, the rise in aggressive behavior among our students and their apparent inability to learn, this is a report we all need to read carefully.

If Arkansas is testing for childhood obesity and beginning to do something about it, we in the paint industry's capitol certainly need to address the issue of lead poisoning in our children. Cleveland leads the nation in the number of children who tested positive for high lead levels.

I did not find anything about lead poisoning in our urban schools in the pages of the Ohio School Facilities Commission.