 Children's Health > School Siting
School Siting
Public schools are our community anchors. They house and nurture our growing children for 6-8 hours each weekday. They are meeting places for communities, sporting events and extracurricular activities. They employ public workers and are funded by our tax dollars.
Unfortunately, many schools are not free of chemicals that pose invisible threats to the health of staff and students. Increasingly, schools strapped for funds are constructing schools on cheap property that is contaminated with toxics. And astonishingly, building a school on contaminated land is often completely legal.
CHEJ is the lead national organization advocating for clean and safe land for schools. In 2002, CPOC and partner organizations analyzed five states: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California and Michigan, to approximate how many public schools were within ½ mile of a known contaminated site. The results were astounding. Over 1,100 schools in just these five states are within ½ mile of a contaminated site, affecting the health of over 600,000 students.
In 2005, we analyzed how many states regulate school siting and take into consideration potential site contamination. Again, we were astounded. Only five states have any law at all that makes it illegal to build a school on a contaminated site. All other states are mostly silent on the issue.
With health experts, engineers and community organizations, we have created Model School Siting Legislation that community groups can bring to their local school board, city council, or state Department of Education to help pass a health protective school siting law in their region. These model guidelines are meant to be a basis for communities to craft laws that fit their particular circumstances, not to be adopted verbatim.
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