UPDATE at 10:45am on 5/8/2025: The Milwaukee Health Department confirms that they screened 22 children for lead exposure during the May 7 screening clinic at North Division High School. Two of those students required follow-up venous blood draws.
In a statement from MHD:
While turnout was lower than MHD hoped to see, we are encouraged that some families took advantage of the opportunity. MHD remains committed to making lead screening as accessible as possible. We will continue working closely with Milwaukee Public Schools and our partners to host additional school-based screening clinics. In the meantime, families are encouraged to visit ongoing pop-up clinics at Children’s Wisconsin and Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers, which are listed at www.milwaukee.gov/MPS-Lead.
MILWAUKEE–So far, 400 Milwaukee Public School students have been screened in search of high lead levels.
On Wednesday at North Division High School, Milwaukee Public Schools in it’s ongoing partnership with the Milwaukee Health Department and Children’s Wisconsin hosted its second lead screening for MPS students.
City health commissioner Dr. Michael Totoraitis said overall, more students need to be tested for high blood lead levels as MPS continues to screen its schools for lead contaminants in paint, piping, soil and water.
“Of the students that we have tested, it is still a very small percentage of the overall MPS district population,” said Dr. Totoraitis. “As deputy commissioner Weber mentioned, we are still trying to ramp up additional testing and making that recommendation to MPS that more testing is done.”
Wednesday’s lead screening clinic at North Division High School was planned to have a capacity of 300 students.
MPS parent Teressa Linton has a child who attends Brown Street Academy and says while she is glad that tests showed no high lead presence in the blood stream, she encouraged other parents to get their children tested.
“Everyone should get their children tested, just to make sure that their blood levels are safe and that they shouldn’t be afraid. They need to get out here and make sure that everyone is safe,” said Linton.
When asked as to how MPS should operated moving forward after the lead crisis is concluded, Linton said that she would like to see the district rebuild some of the older schools in the district.
“I think they probably should start over,” said Linton. “These schools have been here for so long that they should build up something brand new, something fresh for the children so they don’t have to worry about lead in the long-run. So I do think they should tear down some buildings are start fresh.”
MPS and MHD plan to look over 54 schools built prior to 1950 for lead dust as part of the upcoming summer break, but a coalition of parents frustrated about the school district’s years of inaction on lead say they want the district to ensure that all schools, both elementary level through high school are checked and cleaned for lead dust.
Prior to the lead screening clinic starting, members of the Lead Safe Schools M-K-E group demanded more action and transparency with parents in the district.
“Money cannot be more valuable than the lives of our children,” Earl Ingram said. “The future of our nation is connected to the future of our children.”
Robert Miranda who was also protesting with Lead Safe Schools M-K-E says when dealing with lead as a whole, the city of Milwaukee has done a poor job to remove piping that impacts households and schools in the last 20 years.
“Since 2015 and 2016, MPS has acknowledged there being lead pipes in their school infrastructure. Besides recommending filtration systems, there have been no real initiatives to remove the toxins from the buildings,” said Miranda. “The district and government should know that the community is understanding this issue very well. Every year, more people are learning about the risks that impact our children’s health, and that overall impacts the community.”
Dr. Totoraitis says that he appreciates that more people are becoming aware of the ongoing issue at hand and says the city health department is constantly updating information and and reports to members of the public as soon as possible.
“On of the things that was raised among parents and faculty was having some sort of dashboard that folks could actively track, that’s something we’re working on right now so that parents can see where their school is in the queue and additional information to be made available,” said Dr. Totoraitis. “Our department has made a lot the documents available so that parents can see that as well as anyone else that’s interested, and we’re grateful for all the attention that we’re getting. Our department has been investigating lead hazards in our city for a long time and unfortunately with our investigations, we are seeing that poisonings are happening because of paint and the soil. That doesn’t mean there aren’t hazards potentially in the water and I think having people talk about multiple hazards is really needed for us to get additional funding.”
Ongoing clean up efforts continue at Starms Early Childhood Center and LaFollette School and the district is preparing for more remediation later on with Brown Street and Westside Academies.
