So what about LA?

“Yes, our water is safe, not only LA Unified, but LA has some of the safest water in the nation,” said Robert Laughton, director of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety for the district.

“I have never seen an agency that goes as far as we do to ensure safe drinking water,” said Laughton, who was expecting phone calls about LA Unified’s water after the Flint and Newark news reports but has yet to receive any. “I haven’t even heard of any agency that does all the things we do.”

Laughton detailed for LA School Report what’s different in LA, how LA Unified tests its water and a new program the district is rolling out for drinking water in the schools.

NO LEAD PIPES

The problems on the East Coast stem from lead pipes. “No one I know, no plumber has ever seen a lead pipe,” Laughton said.

Pipes in California are made from cast iron, but what holds those pipes together does contain small amounts of lead.

Until 1998, solder materials were 50 percent lead and 50 percent tin, so if water stagnates in a pipe, lead could leach out into the water. “We all have that problem,” Laughton said, not just schools, adding that the city of Los Angeles is continuously testing its water supply and “I meet with DWP regularly.”

“The other issue is brass,” Laughton said, a metal alloy used in faucets that until Jan. 1, 2014, could be made up of at least 8 percent lead but now can be no more than a quarter of a percent, so “we are basically lead free at this point,” Laughton said.

FLUSHING

But to make sure no one is drinking water with lead, fountains and other taps where the water is used for drinking or in food preparation are flushed — by running water through them — for a minimum of 30 seconds each day throughout the district.

There are about 48,000 drinking fountains in the district, and LA Unified tested all of them in 2008 to determine which ones had elevated levels of lead. Those offenders, which constituted about 2 percent of all fountains, were removed.

But to be safe, all fountains have continued to be flushed and will be until the district completes a lead-mitigation program approved by the school board in September and begun about three months ago.

Only about 40 schools no longer need to flush their fountains because they have been cleared by that program, part of a $20 million bond-funded drinking water program in which every school in the district will be surveyed. If any fountains require flushing because of their lead levels, the fountain is either removed if the school can live without it, or the plumbing is changed out or a filtration device is added. Within the next 18 to 24 months all schools will have been cleared and then flushing will not be necessary.

About 500 LA Unified schools currently have no more than one drinking fountain that requires flushing. All fountains in early education centers already have been switched to filtered water “as a precaution,” Laughton said.

The flushing is conducted by different people depending on the campus — the plant manager, teachers, classroom volunteers or even students designated by the teacher — but each school’s principal must verify at the end of each month that the flushing was completed. Then the local district superintendent verifies the principal’s logs. And Laughton’s office performs safety inspections at each school every year to evaluate the flushing logs.

Chief facilities director Mark Hovatter said in a report in January that eliminating flushing would save 9,500 gallons of water a day or 2.5 million gallons a year. It would also save 500 hours of custodial time a day or 130,000 hours a year.

HYDRATION SYSTEMS

The district’s next frontier in drinking water is the installation of hydration stations. The vertical appliance is built into a pole and dispenses water, like on a refrigerator door, and will allow students to fill their own water bottles and encourage them to drink more water.

The first two have been installed at Jefferson High School and at district headquarters downtown, but schools throughout LA Unified will be getting the hydration stations in the next few months, with 800 schools slated to have them within two years.

“It was good timing,” Laughton said of the district’s efforts this year to ensure lead-free drinking water. But he noted about the current news stories on lead in drinking water, “What is lost is this is not a schools issues, this is a societal issue. It’s the same plumbing system everywhere. Courts, hospitals” — and homes.

As the district tries to eliminate any trace of lead, plans are underway to remove school fountains that aren’t being used regularly. LA Unified exceeds the one-fountain-per-150 students by nearly 10 times, so schools are inundated with fountains. But, some are redundant and need to be taken out or replaced, board members were told.

The $19,831,708 approved to eliminate lead is setting a “serious standard for school districts across the nation,” said Evelyn Wendel, of the nonprofit We Tap, which she founded to save public drinking fountains.

“Most of our drinking water is the best in the world,” she told the board. A former movie producer and mother of two, she added, “The seriousness that this school board has in improving the water equals some of what is being done with academics.”

But caveats arose. Board member and former teacher Mónica Ratliff said she worries about taking fountains away even though some may be unused. “As a teacher I want it in my classroom,” she said. “If there was one in the classroom and now we have to go elsewhere that will be a problem in terms of classroom management.”

Board member and former principal Scott Schmerelson pointed out that he has seen the need for more fountains where physical education activities take place. “You don’t want to have to wait in a long line after P.E., you need more fountains,” he said.

And dipping his toe into the issue, school board member Ref Rodriguez suggested, “We need to organize and create a campaign to communicate something specific to drinking water for the students.”

The report is a followup to a story first examined by NBC seven years ago, when it found lead levels in district drinking water 400 times above the amount declared safe by the EPA.

LAUSD proposed to fix the problem of aging lead pipes with a “Flushing Policy,” requiring school staff to run drinking fountains for 30 seconds every morning to remove lead built up overnight. But undercover video and internal documents obtained by NBC show that some schools are not flushing the fountains properly. Click here to see the story or click on the video below.

LAUSD student wins national tech award

Ana Hernandez, a senior in the Technology Academy at Foshay Learning Center, is one of 35 national winners for The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) “Aspirations in Computing” award.

The award, which comes with a $500 prize, a laptop computer and engraved trophies for winners and their schools, “honors young women who are active and interested in computing and technology, and encourages them to pursue their passions,” according to the NCWIT website. The 2015 winners will be honored at the Bank of America Technology Stars of the Future Showcase and Awards Ceremony on March 7 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Last year, Hernandez was a national runner up and Southern California winner.

”When I found out that I won I was encouraged to do more,” Hernandez said last year, according to a LAUSD press release. “I am now determined to encourage more girls to do their best in these fields and let them know that this award and more is available to them.”

Teachers group performance: Galatzan = Marie Antoinette

A group calling itself Teacher Theater Street Parody of LAUSD held a performance in the parking lot in front of the Elks Lodge in Canoga Park before the District 3 school board candidate forum Tuesday. The teachers union, UTLA, has not endorsed a candidate in the race, but is clearly no fan of incumbent Tamar Galatzan, as it chose to share a photo and info about the performance on its Facebook page.

The photo shows “Queen Tamar Antoinette” in full regalia and two men dressed as FBI agents. One performer is holding a sign that reads “Let them eat iPads.”

The artistic statement, while perhaps bold and creative, has questionable levels of fairness and maturity, as the target or targets of a grand jury investigation — which led FBI agents to seize files in December related to the district’s iPad program — are unknown and appear to be aimed more at the district administration and not the school board. No one has been arrested as a result of the investigation. But Galatzan remains a strong supporter of the controversial program.

It is also important to note — these are teachers, after all — that historians say the phrase “Let them eat cake” was unfairly and incorrectly attributed to Antoinette by her enemies in an effort to discredit her with the French public. Hmm.

This is simply the latest of political attacks, including one leveled at board member Bennett Kayser that compared him to a ruthless movie villain gangster, that uses questionable levels of fairness and taste.

The post is embedded below.