Safety of New School Sites Is Questioned

A state audit committee assailed the California Department of Education on Thursday for approving the purchase of at least nine Los Angeles school sites despite suspicions that the soil on the properties was polluted by industrial chemicals.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee called for the department to reexamine all its approvals of school sites where contamination was originally suspected, and to modify internal procedures to ensure that local school districts build schools only on clean land.

The committee detailed its concerns in a report released late Thursday. About half the sites named are in South Los Angeles and include the recently inaugurated Jefferson Middle School, where administrators had to delay opening for a year because of concerns about underground contamination.

“The fact that toxic sites are currently approved by the state for school construction illustrates a serious flaw in the way site approval is currently being conducted,” the 37-page report states.

A state education official defended the department’s oversight of school land purchases, saying that investigators conduct exhaustive reviews of school district plans and require that polluted land be cleaned up before issuing final approvals.

“I find this really offensive that staffers to this committee have made these allegations that are not substantiated,” said Deputy Supt. Susie Lange. “I think these are cheap shots at the Department of Education.”

Local school districts are responsible for ensuring that properties are safe. But when state funds are involved, districts must also get approval from the Education Department. Consultants from the department’s school facilities planning division review the district plans to ensure that toxic contamination and other hazards are addressed.

The audit committee contends that the department lacks internal controls that would ensure proper oversight. For example, school district administrators are required to sign a form declaring new school sites free of trouble. But the committee said the forms it examined were not signed.

The panel also contends that state officials fail to follow up on conditions they impose when local school officials propose buying former industrial sites.

The chairman of the audit committee, Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), said the report raises troubling questions.

“The state [Education] Department doesn’t have the procedures in place to verify that information from local districts is accurate,” he said. “Though we appear to have checks and balances, in actuality they don’t exist.”

Wildman cited Jefferson Middle School as a prime example of the system breaking down.

The Los Angeles Unified School District bought the land for that campus in the early 1990s and cleaned up the site, once home to a gas station and furniture factories.

In 1996, after a state inspector revealed that the campus was across the street from a former chrome-plating plant, state environmental officials notified the district of possible chromium contamination seeping underground toward the school.

Subsequent tests of the water table showed high levels of hexavalent chromium and the solvent trichloroethylene.

The state approved the original land purchase even though the school district had not completed its soil testing. L.A. Unified administrators said they were unable to gain access to the property because it was still privately owned at the time. State officials said they approved the site on the condition that the district not finalize the purchase until it completed the sampling and cleanup required by state law, which mandates that schools be built on safe sites.

District officials said that they did in fact clean up the soil contamination and that the school was then built and opened to use recently. “Everything we were required to do at the Jefferson site passed muster,” said Lange of the Education Department.

District officials said they were unaware of the pollution across the street when they bought the Jefferson property. They did not learn of that problem until the state uncovered it in 1996.

Officials say the Jefferson site is safe for students because the remaining contamination is 150 feet below the surface.

Four of the nine sites cited in the committee report are in South Los Angeles. The list also includes Belmont High near downtown, a new site for South Gate High and an elementary school next door.