Monica Hernandez / Eyewitness News
NEW ORLEANS - Some Uptown parents are concerned that the Orleans Parish School Board is moving their children into a danger zone.
For the next two years, a lot across from the Kingsley House, bordered by Constance, Richard, Annunciation, and Orange Streets, will be the temporary home of Audubon Charter School while its site on Broadway undergoes an $11 million renovation.
But some parents don't believe school officials are doing enough to protect students from high levels of lead found in the soil at the temporary site.
"I know a lot of parents who are considering this, and we hope that this wonderful school is not affected by this lack of foresight and environmental unconciousness," said Melissa Piñera, who opted to register her second grade son elsewhere for the upcoming school year because of her concerns about lead contamination.
According to a Powerpoint on the school board's website, officials took 43 soil samples from the portion of the site facing Annunciation Street, where the playground will go. Each sample came back with higher than acceptable levels of lead, some of them as high as 15 times standard levels.
"So we're very concerned about the dust, and how this is going to affect the children's health. It's extremely dangerous," said Piñera.
The school board plans to remediate the future playground area, but didn't test a much larger area where modular classrooms and the cafeteria will be located. There is no word yet on whether that area will be remediated, even though it wasn't tested.
"I feel very strongly that the school needs to step up and protect our children and do it transparently," said Piñera.
But Lourdes Moran, the school board president whose grandchild attends Audubon Charter School, said parents shouldn't be concerned.
"I would not jeapardize my child, my grandchild, or anyone's child," said Moran. "It's just not within my personality to expose any child to a perilous situation. It's unfortunate that some parents might disagree."
Moran went on to say that the site, which is owned by the Orleans Parish School Board, was chosen because school officials were unable to find another location large enough for the classroom modulars needed to accommodate hundreds of children who attend Audubon Charter School.
"It is not our intent to make [parents] feel uncomfortable, but unfortunately we really have no options," said Moran. "We've gone so far as to discuss with the Recovery School District to give back a building that they're not using so we could use that as "swing space" and not have to spend this much capital in temporary modulars, but unfortunately they could not acommodate us. This is the only solution we had at hand."
Concerned parents started an online petition Monday asking that the entire area be remediated with new soil and concrete.
"We're just trying to urge them to really look at the site, face the facts about the lead levels there, and really, remediate the entire place," said Piñera.
Parents also say they've never been formally notified the school is relocating for the next two years.
Crews are set to start building the temporary school next week. The $3.4 million project is scheduled to be complete by the end of July. The next school year begins August 11.
