Water fountains at a Mission school that has been found to have excessive levels of lead were taped off Wednesday as the temperature peaked above 90 degrees.
The fountains were among 12 water sources at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School on 23rd Street that continue to have lead levels exceeding the San Francisco Unified School District’s safety threshold of five parts per billion, the district said Thursday in an emailed statement.
The fountains and faucets were previously covered to stop students and staff from using them; however, the district said it learned this fall that some had been in use again. “To eliminate confusion,” the statement said, the school was told Monday to turn off the water flow at the outlets.
Mission Local first reported about the water shutoffs at the school.
In December 2022, The Standard reported that tests had revealed the presence of lead and arsenic in garden soil on the Buena Vista Horace Mann campus, leading to calls for water sampling.
Days later, three of 11 fountains tested were removed after elevated levels of lead were found in the water, a district spokesman said. At one point, staff threatened to walk out over the conditions. Earlier that year, an assessment found that a comprehensive fix for the district’s infrastructure could cost north of $1 billion dollars.
The bilingual Mission school teaches largely Spanish-speaking, low-income, and immigrant students. There are 620 students enrolled, according to district records.
Buena Vista Horace Mann Principal Claudia Delarios-Moran told Mission Local the school has been asking for two months to have some of the fountains shut off because of dangerous levels of lead in the water, but the district didn’t act until the hottest day of the year.
The district has been sending bottled water to Buena Vista Horace Mann since late 2022. It delivers bottles every two weeks and provides additional water upon request, district spokesperson Laura Dudnick said by email. Although Dudnick’s statement did not directly address this week’s warm weather, she said the district sent five 5-gallon water jugs to the school on Wednesday and 10 on Thursday, along with bottled water, in advance of a regularly scheduled delivery Monday.