MILWAUKEE– Trowbridge Street Elementary is temporarily closing its doors on Monday, March 3rd due to excessive amounts of lead dust found within parts of the building.
In a letter sent to parents, Milwaukee Public Schools in partnership with Milwaukee Health Department have recommended that all students at Trowbridge be relocated temporarily to the Wisconsin Conservator of Lifelong Learning as clean up crews can enter the school to perform additional deep-cleaning and remediation of the lead.
While Trowbridge will be open on Friday, February 28th, a separate letter from the district to parents says arrangements for excused absences can be made.
So far, schools such as Golda Meir Lower Campus, Kagel School and Maryland Avenue Montessori all have reported high cases of lead dust within their buildings.
MHD has noted before that any building built prior to 1978 has lead-based materials inside.
As of this letter being sent to parents, no lead risk assessment report has been released by the Milwaukee Health Department on it’s lead investigations webpage.
Previous assessments done at Golda Meir saw more than 1600 micrograms per square foot of lead dust in classrooms and bathrooms.
MHD has recommended to MPS in the past to hire external cleaning groups to remove the excess dust.
This is the first time since the most recent round of lead investigations began that the Health Department has required students to be relocated to a different location as remediation is done.
MHD reports that it will have a press briefing on Friday to further discuss it’s findings from its lead risk assessment report on Trowbridge Elementary School.
