MEDIA ADVISORY
San Diego Unified and CALPIRG to Present New Clean Water Plan to School Board
WHAT: San Diego Unified’s Board of Education will consider adopting a groundbreaking clean drinking water plan at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting. The new plan calls for providing drinking water districtwide solely through filtered hydration stations, with the goal of achieving the strongest lead in water standard in the state of 1 part per billion or below. A filtered hydration station will be a combination traditional drinking water fountain and reusable water bottle filling station.
Officials from the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) will join Superintendent Cindy Marten, representatives for Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez and representatives for Assemblywoman Shirley Weber to tour Clay Elementary School, the pilot school for the new clean water plan. Leaders will also be joined by Clay Elementary School Principal Lindsay Michaliszyn, whose campus served as the district’s pilot site for the filtered hydration stations.
WHEN:
Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020
9:45 - 10:15 a.m.
WHERE:
Clay Elementary School Auditorium*
6506 Solita Ave., San Diego, CA 92115
*This will take place in front of the mural, outside of the auditorium*
VISUALS:
9:45 - 10:00 a.m. - speakers
10:00 - 10:15 a.m. - tour of hydration stations
GUEST SPEAKERS/INTERVIEWS:
Cindy Marten, Superintendent, San Diego Unified
Laura Deehan, Public Health Advocate, CALPIRG
Richard Barrera, Board of Education Vice President, San Diego Unified
Lindsay Michaliszyn, Principal, Clay Elementary School
BACKGROUND:
Since April 2017, San Diego Unified has aggressively pursued lead in drinking water through districtwide testing of drinking water fountains. Using a strict action level that is three times stronger than legal requirements, more than 2,500 water samples have been taken. Any drinking water outlet that produced a result above the district action level of 5ppb has been remediated. All high risk schools have been remediated to date.
San Diego Unified used the lessons learned from the data generated from all the testing to date, and is ready to take a big leap forward in the clean water plan by moving to filtered hydration stations district wide.
More details about the plan being presented to the Board of Education can be found here.
PARKING:
Street parking.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Samer Naji, Facilities Communication Supervisor, San Diego Unified, 619-548- 3388, snaji@sandi.net.
Jamie Ries, Facilities Communication Liaison, San Diego Unified, 619-855-9283, jries@sandi.net.
Laura Deehan, public health advocate, CALPIRG, 415 420 4710, laura@calpirg.org
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