East Chicago Students Make Move To New Building Over Lead Concerns
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Monday is the first day of classes for hundreds of students in East Chicago, Indiana, but they won't be going to their school, due to lead contamination on their campus.
About 430 students and the staff at Carrie Gosch Elementary school have started their school year at West Side Middle School, after their own building had to be closed. The district decided to close Carrie Gosch last week, after high levels of lead and arsenic were found in the West Calumet Housing Complex across the street at the end of July.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has confirmed soil on a part of the Carrie Gosch school grounds also is contaminated with lead. Gosch, like the West Calumet Housing Complex, was built on the former site of a toxic lead refinery.
"There's a lead issue happening over in the Carrie Gosch area, and even though our Carrie Gosch school itself was cleared, the land around Carrie Gosch – the neighborhood and a parcel of our property – tested positive for lead, so we decided to err on the side of caution, and move our students to our middle school location," East Chicago Schools Supt. Paige McNulty said.
The transition is one McNulty never expected to have to make, especially with less than a week's notice.
"It's been a monumental task to get the information out, and to close the building, and to move it in five days, but we've done it, and we're ready for school today," she said.
For Carrie Gosch parent Marlon Gary, the move has been a big inconvenience.
"It's a bit of a surprise," he said. "We stay right across the street from Carrie Gosch, and they usually walk. So now we have to figure out the bus schedule."
On Monday, Gary drove his kids to West Side. Despite the inconvenience, he said he agrees with the district's decision to close Carrie Gosch for the entire school year.
"If lead's a problem, we gotta do what we gotta do. We've got to worry about the kids' safety. We've got to worry about our safety, because we stay right across the street," he said.
School officials said the plan is for Carrie Gosch to complete the entire school year at West Side, which recently had been mothballed. McNulty said she doesn't want to disrupt the students' schedules by forcing them to change buildings again.