I am writing this letter to connect with Juan Cabrillo, Malibu Middle and Malibu High school parents who do not comprehend the seriousness of the PCB crisis or prefer to be in denial. Parents need to know that, although the school board prefers to sweep the issue under the rug, reports by world-renowned experts state that PCBs are a carcinogen.
Although I worked all day last Thursday, I motivated myself to go to the board meeting because teachers would be there to comment on what the crisis means to them. I was weary of going to meetings where nothing ever happened. The board consistently refuses to put the PCB issue on their agenda, which is simply their way to avoid transparency and talking about it with the public. They give speakers two minutes to air their grievances, but it seems that they can barely tolerate listening to anyone. They impatiently wait for a speaker’s two minutes to be up and then immediately reprimand them to stop.
Thursday night’s meeting was heartbreaking. I listened to teacher after teacher talk about how they are afraid to teach in toxic classrooms. They also complained that BMP (Best Management Practices) are not being followed. This cleaning is supposed to make the classrooms safe, according to a firm that the board hired using over $3 million of taxpayer money to prove that they are doing everything correctly. The cleaning, which is assumed to make classrooms safe, is not being done correctly. Teachers and students continue to get sick.
I became angry watching the faces of those responsible, including Ralph Mechur, Maria Leon-Vazquez and superintendent Sandra Lyon. I detected no sympathy, empathy or even a shred of humanity from any of these people while listening to teachers begging for a safe work environment, crying about becoming sick from toxic classrooms that even their own children have to sit in. How did we select these people to run our schools? Would we have this problem if these people had children in our schools? I think not. It is disgraceful and they should be ashamed. Let’s not let Malibu schools become another Flint, Michigan story.
Abby Bloch