I have heard our superintendent, Mr. LaRose, say many times that the health and safety of our students is the School District’s No. 1 priority. I believe him. And yet, our School Board does not seem too concerned over the time El Marino Language School students are spending outside playing, even while toxic particulates continue to rain down on them from the 405 Freeway.
Vicious Cycle
Once these pollutants are circulating inside the body, it may well take over 24 hours to cleanse itself. By then, the students are right back in school, caught in a vicious school-week cycle, breathing in the same particulates all over again.
Breathless
During PE classes, the kids are exerting themselves, breathing in the very same toxins that this Board finds so unacceptable for their classrooms. During recess, the students breathe much deeper and faster. They inhale a lot more of these concentrated particulates deeper into their lungs while playing outside than when sitting in their classrooms.
The Board finds these toxins so worrisome that it just approved spending tens of thousands of dollars for a trial on a prototype filtration system for one room.
Duh!
This begs an answer to common sense questions. If the air pollution at El Marino is bad enough for the District to consider spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to filter all the classroom air at El Marino, why would Board members think it’s okay for these students to play outside and breathe in the same crud?
How many El Marino students will contract asthma or live with its symptoms because the Board decides to keep them playing outside, next door to a freeway?
Risk Management?
Could it be that the District has done a cost management study and health risk analysis of the El Marino situation and found that the health risk to these and future students playing next to a freeway was cost effective?
End of Concern
If Board members really care about the health and safety of the “Whole Child,” they should remove these younger, more vulnerable lungs from all risks of the offending concentrated freeway pollution.
Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com