"DETROIT — The results landed on Nikolai Vitti’s desk on a late summer afternoon, days before Detroit’s nearly 50,000 public school students would return to class. The findings were definitive and disturbing: In initial tests, two-thirds of schools showed alarming levels of lead in the water.
It was the latest in a growing list of crises for Detroit’s new schools superintendent, barely a year into his job. The city’s 106 schools needed $530 million in capital improvements, with no real way to fund them. Vitti had been chipping away at a daunting teacher shortage, overhauling outdated curriculums and trying to place an art teacher on every campus.
Earlier in the year, he ordered universal water testing for Detroit’s schools — testing that is not required by local, state or federal governments — and the answers he got that August afternoon were confounding. Old schools, newer schools, high schools, elementary schools — all proved susceptible to lead contamination."
Brady Dennis reports for the Washington Post December 19, 2018.
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