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District reports progress on lead action plan: seven schools cleared, stabilization under way and project manager on-site
Summary
Milwaukee School District officials told the board their lead action plan has seven schools cleared by the Milwaukee Health Department, hired JCP Construction as project manager with teams in the field, and set an aggressive summer timeline with a target completion date for initial remediation by Aug. 25, 2025.
Milwaukee School District officials reported June 17 that they have begun stabilizing and clearing classrooms affected by lead, have a contract construction manager on-site, and are operating a phased plan that officials said should allow the bulk of remediation to be completed before the new school year.
"As of today, we have 7 schools that have cleared with the Milwaukee Health Department. They are Trowbridge, Maryland Avenue, Coggle, Goldenmeyer, Fernwood, Storms Early Childhood Center, and La Follette," interim Director of Facilities and Maintenance Services Michael Turza told the board.
Turza said the district completed visual, room-by-room inspections of all pre-1950 schools and has organized the work in phases. Two schools—Brown Street and West Side—were in active stabilization, with West Side expected to be cleared the week of June 30 and Brown Street the week of July 7, he said. The district identified 14 phase-1 schools that have been prepared (decluttered and staged) and said further phases will proceed through July and August; post‑1950 buildings generally require less intervention and can be handled after hours or on weekends, Turza said.
The board approved JCP Construction as contract manager; Turza said the firm is on-site with 14 teams (one per school for the initial phase) and that each school will be managed as a separate project to track schedule and cost. The district said it initially distributed about 9,000 boxes for decluttering and that Smurfit‑WestRock donated about 8,000 additional boxes.
Officials reported substantial disposal during the first-phase decluttering and said approximately 20,000 pounds of recyclable material were removed in addition to more than 400,000 pounds of outdated furniture and other waste from the first 14 schools. The district also reported on school-based lead-testing clinics held in partnership with the Milwaukee Health Department and Children's Hospital; clinics tested roughly 36 students at Hopkins Lloyd, 58 at Highmount and about 34 students each at West Side and Brown Academy as part of initial outreach.
Turza told the board the district has received third‑party clearance vendors approved to perform building clearance and that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) and the Milwaukee Health Department approved a building-clearance protocol to expedite clearance. The district said it received a DHS notice listing 13 non‑compliance items; seven occurred before a leadership change and the district said all items were corrected and a response to DHS would be filed by June 24.
The superintendent said the district will post an electronic dashboard showing school‑by‑school status, will train custodial and facilities staff on lead‑safe cleaning protocols by September 2025, and has received a donation of 33,219 replacement water filters from a county partner. She repeated a district contact point for reports at ledmilwaukee.k12.wi.us.
District officials said they are targeting Aug. 25 as a working completion date for the initial wave of remediation and emphasized the scale of the project: "It is a big heavy lift," the superintendent said, and urged patience while the work proceeds.
