Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School Status FAQs

Potential exposure varies based on a number of factors to include but not limited to ingestion or inhalation of dust particles and previous environmental exposure to lead outside of Brooks, etc. Students and staff exposure in classrooms and/or other spaces where higher levels of lead were identified also varies based on the start date of the window replacement project within that space.  At this time, our current understanding regarding dates of potential exposure is from Monday, 09/23/24 through Thursday, 09/26/24.

An independent contractor completed sample testing; results provided to ACPS on September 26, 2024, revealed lead particles in the social worker’s office, conference room, psychologist’s office, a kindergarten classroom (Room 2), and the clinic. Lab results, to include a crosswalk to those results, can be found on the school status updates webpage under the "Lead Testing Reports" section. When reading the report with the Sept. 26, 2024 lab results, please note that the "Reporting Limits" column is used for technical lab analysis and does not affect the comparison of the "Final Results" column to HUD standards. For clearing areas for occupation, only the "Final Results" column should be compared to HUD standards for lead thresholds: 10 micrograms/square foot for flooring and 100 micrograms/square foot for window sills.

An environmental cleaning contractor is conducting comprehensive remediation cleaning throughout the entirety of the facility. While general cleaning has already occurred, remediation cleaning is essential in ensuring all residue has been removed.

Health care providers can provide testing for children and adults. Or, free testing will be available to Naomi Brooks students, staff, faculty, and volunteers at the Alexandria Health Department this week. AHD is located on the 4th floor at 4850 Mark Center Drive. Or, call 703.746.4988 during normal business hours for questions. Visit the Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School Status Updates webpage for the details on the lead exposure testing. 

Or, free testing will be available to Naomi Brooks students, staff, faculty, and volunteers at Alexandria Health Department this week. AHD is located on the 4th floor at 4850 Mark Center Drive. More information about testing at AHD will be posted online as soon as possible. Or, call 703.746.4988 during normal business hours for questions.

Immediate blood lead level testing is not usually required. Lead stays in the body for longer periods of time, and the body releases lead very slowly. Depending on the amount of lead a person was exposed to, their body may take months or years to slowly release lead.  

However, if any child is very sick with symptoms of lead in the body or any other symptoms of severe illness, please do not wait to see a doctor. If your child is severely ill, please seek urgent medical care.

If you believe your child may have been exposed to lead, you should get their blood lead levels tested. This is the only way to know if your child has blood lead levels at or above the CDC blood lead reference value, or the amount of lead in a child’s blood that requires follow-up action.

Next steps will depend on the results and the amount of lead in your child’s blood. Sometimes, this is as simple as making sure your child eats a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables.

You can get testing from your healthcare provider. Or, free testing will be available to Naomi Brooks students, staff, faculty, and volunteers at the Alexandria Health Department this week. AHD is located on the 4th floor at 4850 Mark Center Drive. Or, call 703.746.4988 during normal business hours for questions. Visit the Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School Status Updates webpage for the details on the lead exposure testing.

Children with lead in their system may have a range of symptoms.

These may include vomiting, abdominal pain, nausea, constipation, and seizures. In the longer term, effects may include growth and developmental delays, irritability, learning difficulties, loss of appetite and weight loss.

Please note, it may be hard to identify symptoms. The only way to know if your child has blood lead levels at or above the CDC blood lead reference value is a blood lead test.

Immediate testing is not required for a potential lead exposure since lead stays in the system over longer periods of time. However, if your child is very sick, please seek urgent medical care. It’s important that very sick children are seen by a health care provider for any illness.

Students, staff, and faculty should get a blood lead level test. This will identify if there are blood lead levels at or above the CDC blood lead reference value.

Next steps will depend on the results and the amount of lead in you or your child’s blood.

In some cases, health care providers and public health staff will ask more questions about potential exposures or visit places where your child spends time to try to identify the source of lead. This can be a longer process.

A provider may share education or guidance about a healthy diet and follow up testing.

In cases of very high levels of lead in the blood, a child may be hospitalized and receive medical treatment to reduce the amount of lead in their body.

Lead dust can spread in the air and land on surfaces. There is a chance that lead dust can land on surfaces and be carried from place to place. 

As ACPS continues their investigation, we don’t have details about how much any one person may have been exposed to lead in the air or brought home objects with lead dust on them.  

The only way to know whether household members of a Naomi Brooks student, staff, or faculty member have lead in their system is to receive a blood lead level test.

Yes, you can wash lead dust off clothes or backpacks in the washing machine by following your washing machine’s instructions.

If you’re concerned about lead dust on items, wash those items in a load by themselves, separate from your other laundry. Then, run a wash cycle on the empty washing machine to rinse out lead from the machine. This will help prevent contamination.

If you’re concerned about other items having lead dust on them, you can wash them using a cloth with soap and water. 

Some long-term effects of lead in a child’s body can include growth and developmental delays, irritability, learning difficulties, loss of appetite and weight loss, sluggishness and fatigue, seizures, hearing loss, and vomiting.

Some impacts of lead in a pregnant person’s body can include

• Risk for miscarriage

• A baby being born too early or too small

• Damage to the baby’s brain, kidneys, and nervous system

Behavioral and learning problems in the child.

Families should turn to trusted sources of information to understand lead safety and prevention. Some resources include:

• A health care provider, including a child’s pediatrician.

• Providers can call Alexandria Health Department for guidance on lead safety and lead testing.

• The Virginia Department of Health’s Lead Safety Webpage: www.vdh.virginia.gov/leadsafety.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention.

• Alexandria Health Department’s Environmental Health Division, available at  703.746.4910 during normal business hours.

As of now, we have not finalized any definitive plans regarding the reopening of school. We are working diligently to reopen on Monday, October 7, 2024 with plans for alternative locations if needed. Once clearance testing has to be completed in order to ensure spaces in the building are within acceptable limits. While this is being done, ACPS is considering all options to ensure our students can return to learning safely.

Lead-based paint is present in many older buildings, as lead paint was not banned from use in the United States until 1978.  According to the EPA, this paint poses little risk to inhabitants provided the paint is properly maintained.  To the best of our knowledge, there are no areas within ACPS where this paint has deteriorated, but any time construction work takes place in which there is paint that could contain lead, abatement procedures must be put into place to ensure that there is no lead contamination in the building. In relation to Brooks, lead clearance testing is being performed throughout the facility as part of the remediation effort.

Lead clearance testing is being conducted prior to the school reopening to ensure lead levels are within the allowable threshold for a school facility. Additional testing will be completed as/if warranted.

Health care providers can provide testing for children and adults. Alexandria Health Department has communicated with local providers to share information about lead testing and lead safety. Any provider can connect with AHD with questions about health guidance.

As noted above, you can get testing from your healthcare provider. Or, free testing will be available to Naomi Brooks students, staff, faculty, and volunteers at the Alexandria Health Department this week. AHD is located on the 4th floor at 4850 Mark Center Drive. Or, call 703.746.4988 during normal business hours for questions. Visit the Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School Status Updates webpage for the details on the lead exposure testing.

ACPS ensures that contract language specifies all requirements for construction projects, to include requirements for lead abatement activities, if applicable. It is incumbent upon the contractor to be in adherence with all noted contract requirements. ACPS has project managers who oversee project progress (to include regular meetings) and project managers address issues as they arise, which was the case with the Brooks window project.

The work required the school to be unoccupied over the summer to support staying within the targeted schedule for completion.  With a shortened summer timeframe, our team takes advantage of the available weeks to complete much-needed capital improvements to our facilities.

We will continue with the process of updates through the completion of remediation efforts. If further elevated levels of lead are discovered, that information will be shared accordingly. AHD will continue to work with ACPS to ensure that students, faculty, staff, and families receive health information and guidance as it becomes available. People with questions for the Alexandria Health Department can call its call center line at 703.746.4988 during normal business hours.

The Facilities and Operations, Office of Safety and Security, manages the water quality testing program for the division.  Water quality tests are done to detect levels of lead and copper within drinking water. Details about this testing, to include test results from previous years, can be found on the ACPS Water Quality webpage.

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The Student Support Team (SST) is available in the school to support students. A social emotional learning (SEL) lesson has been created for staff to support students transitioning back to school and with getting tested.  

Some links with additional information about lead safety and health are: 

• The Virginia Department of Health’s Lead Safety Webpage: www.vdh.virginia.gov/leadsafety 

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention

Families with additional health questions about lead exposure should talk to a health care provider. Families without a health care provider may call Alexandria Health Department at 703.746.4988.

Swab testing can’t measure lead in someone’s body. Only blood tests can measure how much lead may be in a person’s body.

You may find swab tests available in stores and online. You can use these swab tests on surfaces like walls and toys to measure if there is lead on those objects.

However, even if an object has lead on it, you or your child may not have high levels of lead in your body. Blood testing is the only way to measure if there’s lead in your body.

Testing for lead in the blood requires taking a blood sample. This can be done in two ways.

In one method called a “capillary” or “finger prick” test, the skin is pierced with a needle to draw a drop of blood. The drop of blood is collected and sent to be tested for lead. If the “finger prick” test shows blood lead levels at or above the CDC blood lead reference value, your provider will request a follow up venous test, also known as a blood draw. That blood will be sent for testing to confirm there is lead in the blood.

Or, a provider may provide the venous test, or blood draw, as the first test.  

Both methods are equally effective in measuring blood lead levels. And, depending on the results of either test, follow-up testing may be needed.

The health care provider providing the test will decide how to test you or your child. You can ask the provider of your test about the procedure, how and when you will receive your results, and information about next steps. 

Next steps will depend on the results and the amount of lead in you or your child’s blood. 

In some cases, health care providers and public health staff will ask more questions about potential exposures or visit places where your child spends time to try to identify the source of lead. This can be a longer process.

A provider may share education or guidance about a healthy diet and follow up testing.

In cases of very high levels of lead in the blood, a child may be hospitalized and receive medical treatment to reduce the amount of lead in their body.

No type of lead is more or less dangerous than others.

Lead dust is one form of lead that can enter the body, but the other types of lead can also enter the body. The most common ways that lead can enter the body is by breathing it in (inhalation) or by putting it in your mouth (ingestion).

Lead-based paint would have been present in the school since the original construction of the facility in 1929.  Lead-based paint was not officially banned until 1978, and the majority of the school, to include some of the additions, were built before 1978.

We are testing all spaces in the building as part of a thorough remediation plan. After cleaning, we conduct clearance testing to ensure the effectiveness of the remediation.

We aim to complete most capital improvement work during the summer. However, shortened summers due to calendar changes and project funding timelines can complicate this. We also face potential delays from supply chain issues. When necessary, we phase work during unoccupied periods, such as Thanksgiving and winter breaks. For this particular project, we wanted to prioritize window installation before colder months to maintain temperature control in the building.

Cleaning began on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 and is progressing well. We have not paused cleaning, as the environmental company will conduct clearance testing after each space is cleaned to confirm the effectiveness of our remediation efforts.

We anticipate completing cleaning by this Sunday, but we want to ensure all post-sampling is done to confirm lead levels are below detectable thresholds. While the cleaning is expedited, it remains thorough and takes time to ensure all spaces are properly addressed. Our cleaning contractor is providing regular progress updates, and we will inform families of any timeline changes.

While ACPS has not made any final decisions at this time, it is not planned to significantly delay the completion of this project.

Based on testing conducted by a third party, classrooms in which the work was conducted were more affected than classrooms in which the work was not conducted.  However, all classrooms have been cleaned and will be tested to ensure that they do not contain impermissibly high levels of lead prior to reopening.

Lead-containing dust was found on window sills, floors or both window sills and floors for the spaces that noted elevated lead levels. Information regarding lead levels can be found in the lead-testing reports linked in FAQ #2.

ACPS has its own procurement rules and follows the Virginia Public Procurement Act. Below is the required insurance for this project:

Property  

• Commercial Property Policy/Builders Risk: Provide replacement cost. Should include all perils (also known as “special” or “all risks”) including theft, flood, earthquake and terrorism.
• Contractor’s Equipment Floater: Provide coverage for Contractor’s mobile equipment, including road building machinery, steam shovels, hoists, and derricks or any equipment to become part of the permanent structure used on the job by builders of structures, roads, bridges and tunnels.

Additional Insurance Requirements:

• Workers’ Comp- $1M
• General Liability- $1M
• Auto Liability- $1M
• Crime- $1M
• Professional Liability- $1M
• Umbrella Liability- $2M
• Garage Liability- $1M
• Pollution Liability-$1M

Yes, asynchronous learning days count as school days. The asynchronous modality affords students time to work on their learning on their own schedule. A sequence of activities has been designed to engage students and allow them to work independently. Asynchronous learning has been provided and includes examples such as reading, watching videos,  completing projects, and choice boards.

No, students will not be penalized for daily attendance.

Students may need extra support in completing the assignment or in how to structure their time to complete work. Families and students may email their homeroom teacher with questions.

Parent conferences will remain virtual on October 4, 2024.

Our current focus is ensuring that all spaces within the school are thoroughly cleaned and that post-cleaning clearance testing is completed. This will allow us to reopen school safely and as quickly as possible. Once that process has been completed, our team will focus on the safe completion of the window replacement project.

As part of the cleaning remediation process, our third-party environmental contractor is wet-wiping primary accessible surfaces, high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vacuuming the floor, and using Sentinel 805 Lead Dust Cleaner to clean windows, doors, furniture, and school supplies. They are also removing any loose flaking paint with hand tools, followed by HEPA vacuuming and applying lead encapsulant coating.

Working within a building containing lead-based paint is not in and of itself an issue, provided that the paint is not chipping, peeling or disturbed by renovation or construction. ACPS does not have any reason to believe there were any risks of exposure to students or staff prior to Monday, September 23, 2024.

At this time, and after consultation of our third-party environmental contractor, we do not plan to test the soil for lead, as covered areas such as grass and mulch are thought to protect children from potential exposure to contaminated soil. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulations, bare soil—defined as soil not covered by vegetation or similar materials—poses a lead hazard only if it exceeds specific lead levels. Our assessment of the ground below the school windows indicate that those spaces are composed of either wood mulch, regular grass or wire-grass plants (and not bare soil).