School siting issues
Take Action!

Insist on Better Standards for School Property

Here are some specific actions you can take to help reduce children’s chances of going to school on poisoned property, which have been outlined by the Child Proofing Our Communities Campaign:

Schools Located On or Near a Known Contaminated Site 

• Just because your school is within a half-mile of a known toxic site doesn’t mean that your child is endangered. But it does mean that you should check to see if a danger is present.
• Drive around the contaminated site and see where it actually is, if you don’t already know. How close is the site to where your child walks to and from school each day?
• Contact the city or county department of environment and ask them where you can find information on the site. Check to see what was beneath the land that your local school is built on. Often this information is located at a local library.

You can also contact Center for Health, Environment and Justice (www.chej.org ) or a local environmental group to help you decipher the information your find and the potential threats that may exist. 

New School Construction

• Find out if new school construction is planned within the next five years in your school district. You can inquire about this through the local school board, county/city offices or your state department of education. 
• Take model school siting legislation to your local decision-making body, usually the school board for your district, and ask them to officially adopt the policies.
• Take the same model legislation to your state-level elected representatives and ask that they introduce the legislation as law for your state.

Even if you don’t have a new school proposed for your district, you should ask your state legislators to consider the model legislation for adoption. This will ensure future schools are built safely and will support other parents faced with a proposal for building near a contaminated site.

For a good example of model school siting legislation, click here for a document developed by the School Siting Committee of the Child Proofing Our Communities Campaign. Obviously, this model can be given to your state (or even federal) legislators to draft new laws, but it can also be used by school boards to form new local school policies.

Currently, California is the only state with some regulations on this issue and an assessment process for the building of new schools. Even California’s laws, however, do not prevent use of contaminated property, so there may still be room for legislative improvements even in that state.