"High lead levels found in water at hundreds of schools" by Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff May 02, 2017
Water testing at more than 1,000 Massachusetts schools found that a majority had at least one sample showing lead levels above regulatory limits, and in a few cases results rivaled or exceeded levels measured during the crisis in Flint, Mich.
In many of the worst instances, school officials said that the source of the water had not been used for years. They have taken steps to address cases of high lead levels and have notified parents of the results.
But the findings. taken in tests over the past year, nonetheless alarmed school officials and public policy specialists.
“We were surprised by the amount of schools and the amount of tests coming back with positive lead readings,” said Deirdre Cummings, legislative director for the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, which recently gave the state a “D” letter grade for its efforts to prevent lead from entering the water at schools and day-care centers.
They are the only ones, as we are flogged with climate change, climate change, climate change day after day after day.
Now comes along a real problem, the health of our children, and it turns out government and institutions have been negligent in looking out for their interests. Then they turn around on you and wax politically about how everything they do is because they care about the children.
Umm, yeah, this issue leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it's not just the kids ingesting the lead! People like Brockovich have said this is a national problem, and she's right. That's why the coverage has been turned on and off the last three years.
You see, as with terrorism, the government and their media mouthpieces need to create the problem so that they can then sell you the pre-$elected $olution. Any real crisis, like their own neglect, and they can't respond. They were too busy constructing fictitious scenarios while looting the place.
All right, I've hogged the fountain long enough.
Of the 1,037 Massachusetts schools tested during the past year, 605 schools had at least one sample test above the state’s regulatory limit. A total of 995 schools had at least one sample with some amount of lead detected.
Advocates and experts contend that no amount of lead in water is safe. Even low concentrations can be harmful, particularly for children and the fetuses of pregnant women.
The tests also found high levels of copper — another potentially harmful material — at 265 schools. No wonder our kids are "dumbed-down."
It's not only the curriculum and vaccines; it's literally in the water.
The state launched a testing program, funded with about $2.75 million, last spring in the wake of concerns generated by the crisis in Flint, which was rocked by very high lead levels in its municipal drinking water.
No mention that government at all levels first ignored the problem, basically telling the citizens they were nuts, then lied about it and tried to cover it up. As usual, only low-level underlings have been charged when the malfeasance reaches to the EPA and Washington. Another in a long -- be it invisible to the pre$$ -- list of Obama scandals.
The program, which was overseen by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and tested mostly public schools, intensified last fall around the start of the school year. The final batch of results came back in recent days.
The program was voluntary so the results do not represent all of the state’s schools. There are more than 1,850 public schools and about 80 charter schools, along with hundreds of private schools statewide.
One key district missing from the statewide results is Boston Public Schools, which consists of about 130 schools. It began its own testing before the state program launched, and that sampling released last spring and summer turned up elevated lead levels in a number of school buildings.
They tested about half of them if you do the numbers.
The worst sample came from a bubbler at the Hancock K-5 Elementary School in Brockton, which had a lead concentration significantly above the highest levels measured during the crisis in Flint, but in that case — and for some of the other instances in which extremely high lead levels were found — the readings came from fountains that were believed to have not been used for years, according to officials from those school districts.
Believed not to have been used?
The longer water sits in lead-bearing pipes, the more lead can leach into it. Testing of such water can produce unusually high results.
Steps have been taken in many schools to address elevated lead levels, including shutting off drinking fountains or taps, flushing pipes, installing signs at certain fixtures instructing people they can wash their hands but should not drink the water, and making long-term plumbing repairs, officials have said.
Yup, they are fixing the problem now that it is massive after having neglected infrastructure all these years. I'm so happy!
Results varied, in some cases significantly, from one building to the next.
Cummings applauded the state and school leaders for conducting the testing but said the results sound an alarm about how much more work on prevention is needed....
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Time for lunch!
"A separate but unequal system for day care" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff May 02, 2017
Linda Cirino planned to go back to work after she had a baby in January, but she couldn’t afford child care at the Roxbury day-care center where she had worked for 16 years. And when she applied for a state subsidy to help cover costs, her baby was put on a waiting list — alongside more than 24,000 other children.
Gee, Hollywood, GE, and all the other well-connected corporations get their checks cut right away.
So she quit her job.
Now Cirino, 43, is at home with her daughter, relying on her husband’s maintenance job to pay the bills. They sold one of their cars, cut the cable, signed up to get free formula and milk, and applied for food stamps.
“I didn’t want to leave my job,” Cirino said. “Sixteen years working with babies, that’s a job that I love to do. . . . Every time I think about it I feel like crying.”
Parents such as Cirino are finding that, as state subsidies for child care have lagged over the years, some early education centers can’t afford to stay open or are admitting fewer low-income children. Instead, those centers are getting more of their income from families that can pay the far higher market rate.
It's a richer's world, and WhereTF is all the money going in this state?
To compound the problem, day-care teacher pay, which is based on the subsidy rates, is so low that many educators are leaving for better jobs. Nonprofits with a mission to support low-income families are picking up some of the slack.
Well, I'm glad corporations and rich people are getting a tax write-off for funding that is woefully insufficient.
It is widely agreed that the state’s system is in crisis, but help could be on the way.
Yeah, state leaders (DeLeo and Baker) are finally going to start pouring in millions -- probably the annual cost of the pay raise (after getting a 4% bump last year) that they had to get out of the way because of more pressing business, pfft -- after heavily subsidizing GE, Hollywood, and other conglomerates to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, dah-dah-dah.
Advocates are skeptical that all of the governor’s proposed funding will come through but hopeful that the state’s crippled early education system is finally getting the attention it desperately needs.
Can you eat hope? Does it sit with a child?
Honestly, I'm sick of hoping, although what else do we have?
Pray to God, the Father and the Spirit....
Of all programs designed to assist low-income families, studies show that government spending on early child care may have the most significant impact for parents and their children — leading to higher earnings, more education, better health, and less criminal activity. Yet the United States spends less on child care per capita than almost every other industrialized country....
Huh?
That statistic so flies in the face of the daily myths and lies propagated at you by politicians and the ma$$ media regarding AmeriKa.
Also see: The Numbers are Staggering: U.S. is ‘World Leader’ in Child Poverty
Yeah, all the money is being spent on wars, banks, Israel, corporate subsidies, and lavish political lifestyles, but you aren't supposed to notice. You are supposed to be arguing and focusing on side issues like race, gender, sex-pref, climate, immigrants, what have you.
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OMG, there is even a huge demand for child care in Newton!
Maybe they can get themselves a dog.
