In the flurry of last-minute dealmaking to approve this year\u2019s state budget, legislators tucked in eleventh-hour language that relaxes Pennsylvania\u2019s rules for publicly reporting the results of lead tests on school drinking water.<\/p>\n
State law does not require schools to test for lead, as long as the topic is discussed at a public meeting annually. But if schools do test, they were previously required to report any finding above zero to the state so the results could be posted publicly.<\/p>\n
The new provision<\/a>, quietly inserted in the final 48 hours of budget negotiations earlier this month, requires schools that test to report lead levels above five parts per billion.<\/p>\n Lawmakers passed the change after several statewide associations representing school boards, principals, and other school officials complained to education leaders that the state\u2019s prior lead testing requirements were unrealistic, according to records reviewed by Spotlight PA.<\/p>\n Environmental groups say the change hinders the public from knowing the amount of lead in school drinking water, even though it\u2019s a toxic substance with documented harmful impacts to children\u2019s health.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, it means a lot of parents will be in the dark, and every day we know there will be kids out there drinking school water with lead in it even though we know that lead is unsafe at any level,\u201d said David Masur, executive director of the advocacy group PennEnvironment.<\/p>\n The original law, Act 39 of the Public School Code<\/a>, passed as part of the budget in 2018. It created the requirement to test drinking water for lead or to discuss the issue at a public meeting. It also mandated that when lead is detected, a school must create a plan that ensures no one is exposed to contamination and provide alternative forms of drinking water. The state, meanwhile, is required to publicly post information about elevated tests.<\/p>\n But critics say the law is flawed to the point of being ineffective. Not only is it easy for schools to avoid testing; there is no accountability mechanism for ensuring schools that test report the elevated results to the state.<\/p>\n The Pennsylvania Department of Education also failed to accurately implement the law until recently.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Sign up for Morning Wire: According to emails reviewed by Spotlight PA, education officials initially provided guidance to school districts to report lead levels exceeding 15 parts per billion, rather than anything over zero.<\/p>\n Masur was one of the people who pointed out the error to administrators several times, he said.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until this year that officials revised the guidance, according to a copy of an email viewed by Spotlight PA. The agency told districts in May that when \u201ca school tests for lead in drinking water and the result is in excess of 0 parts per billion,\u201d the school must take the actions required by the law, including reporting the result for public posting.<\/p>\n In an email to Spotlight PA, a department spokesperson did not respond when asked why it took so long to make the fix.<\/p>\n The May directive prompted immediate pushback from school organizations and advocates and precipitated lawmakers\u2019 decision to loosen reporting requirements.<\/p>\n State Rep. Peter Schweyer (D., Lehigh), chair of the House Education Committee, supported the change and pointed to a new requirement for schools to compile reports about the general state of their facilities, including the age of their buildings and whether they have damage.<\/p>\n The first of those reports is due at the end of next year, and they are required every five years subsequently.<\/p>\n \u201cUp until this budget, we\u2019ve never collected meaningful data across the commonwealth,\u201d Schweyer said, \u201cwhich is unreal to realize.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, the new inventory reports do not explicitly require schools to report any information about lead. Lawmakers also didn\u2019t address many of the other flaws critics have flagged about the lead testing law.<\/p>\n Faulty guidance<\/p>\n At the heart of state education officials\u2019 incorrect guidance to schools were two different federal benchmarks for lead levels in drinking water.<\/p>\n The 2018 law said schools must implement an action plan if lead levels in drinking water exceed the \u201cmaximum contaminant level goal.\u201d The Environmental Protection Agency sets that goal at zero parts of lead per billion. In other words, if schools detected any lead in their drinking water, they had to report it to the state.<\/p>\n But the EPA also sets what is called the \u201clead action level,\u201d<\/a> which is 15 parts per billion. \u201cThe lead action level is a measure of the effectiveness of the corrosion control treatment in water systems,\u201d according to the agency. \u201cThe action level is not a standard for establishing a safe level of lead in a home.\u201d<\/p>\n Lead contaminates drinking water through the corrosion of pipes or other plumbing fixtures. Any level of lead exposure can cause learning disabilities or damage to the nervous system, especially in young children, according to the EPA.<\/p>\n When the education department initially provided guidance to schools on the law, Masur said it told them to report if lead levels exceeded the federal action requirement of 15 parts per billion, not the EPA\u2019s maximum contaminant level goal of zero parts per billion.<\/p>\n When state education officials issued the correct guidance earlier this year, the pushback was almost immediate.<\/p>\n A letter sent on June 9 to Pennsylvania Education Secretary Carrie Rowe, signed by six Pennsylvania school associations and obtained by Spotlight PA, urged her to consider limitations to achieving the standard.<\/p>\n \u201cWe respectfully encourage PDE to distinguish between an aspirational public health goal and a practical, scientifically actionable standard for implementation and reporting purposes,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n The Pennsylvania School Boards Association, one of the groups that signed the letter, wrote in an email to Spotlight PA that resource-starved schools need better investments in infrastructure if they\u2019re to meet stronger lead standards.<\/p>\n \u201cEquating any detectable presence of lead with a significant exposure risk may create unnecessary concern among families and communities while setting expectations that are difficult, if not impossible, to meet in practice,\u201d it wrote.<\/p>\n The decision to increase the amount of lead that can go unreported in schools took some back and forth between the Democratic-controlled state House and GOP-led Senate.<\/p>\n Members originally planned to increase the reporting level to the EPA\u2019s \u201clead action level,\u201d or 15 parts per billion, according to a draft of the code.<\/p>\n House Democratic spokesperson Beth Rementer wrote in an email to Spotlight PA that this level was championed by Republicans who control the state Senate before Democrats advocated for a more stringent level of five parts per billion.<\/p>\n The Republican caucus\u2019 initial plan to set the level at 15 parts per billion was at the request of education leaders, Kate Flessner, spokesperson for Senate Republicans, said in an email to Spotlight PA. But after conversations with other legislative leaders and advocates, lawmakers decided to lower the threshold.<\/p>\n Schweyer said the new measure of five parts per billion balances public health concerns and what is realistic for schools to achieve. It\u2019s also in line with the FDA\u2019s standard<\/a> for bottled water, Rementer wrote.<\/p>\n Masur said he would have preferred that lawmakers get more input from environmental, parental, and public health groups before making a change. Public hearings, for instance, would have allowed for more debate and context on what is undeniably a complex issue.<\/p>\n Instead, he said, the change was rushed through on a Saturday morning, as lawmakers hastily wrapped up the budget that weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cIt happened as many things tend to in Harrisburg: at the eleventh hour, in a back room somewhere in the Capitol, on a Saturday morning in July,\u201d Masur said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very undemocratic way to implement a wildly unpopular policy.\u201d<\/p>\n A flawed law<\/p>\n Critics say there are several issues with the original 2018 law.<\/p>\n Schools can forgo lead testing if they hold a public meeting to discuss the issue. There is nothing in the law that requires schools to report any information about these meetings to the state, so it\u2019s impossible to tell whether districts actually comply with this provision.<\/p>\n Public meetings aren\u2019t necessarily well-publicized, said Chad Baer, a parent from the Philadelphia suburbs and public health graduate of Yale. He has researched lead reporting in Pennsylvania schools and advocates for its removal.<\/p>\n The way the law was written allows some schools to tuck brief discussions about lead into any of their public meetings to escape testing requirements, he said.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also no way to know if schools that do test and find lead in their water actually report to the state as required.<\/p>\n Under the law, schools with \u201celevated\u201d lead levels must complete a report<\/a> with information about how much was found, when the testing occurred, and remediation plans to address the problem. The state Department of Education then posts that information in a spreadsheet on its website<\/a>. However, there\u2019s no penalty for not submitting that report.<\/p>\n The agency says the online file is updated quarterly. The most recently reported tests are from August 2025 on the spreadsheet currently available online.<\/p>\n In an email to Spotlight PA, a spokesperson said the department \u201cis in the process of modernizing our data collection system to make reporting easier for schools and more accessible to citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n There are also no standards for how testing should be conducted. Baer said he discovered schools could run water for a period of time before testing, which would lower the lead levels that would show up. Testing equipment also wasn\u2019t standardized across districts or verified by the state, and there was little state-level oversight of testing accuracy or consistency, Baer said.<\/p>\n In email correspondence from 2024 that Baer shared with Spotlight PA, a state education department official told him that \u201cthe interpretation of the statute was a local issue,\u201d and questions about lead testing should be raised with school districts directly, despite it being set by state law.<\/p>\n \u201cBreaking it down at the piecemeal level of district by district is totally ineffective,\u201d said Baer. \u201cIt\u2019s got to be top-down enforcement that things are actually being tracked and ensuring it\u2019s a safe environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Education department officials, responding to questions from Spotlight PA, wrote that the agency is not granted the authority to enforce remediation plans, but that the posting of data \u201censures public notice.\u201d<\/p>\n After the 2018 law passed, state Sen. Art Haywood (D., Montgomery) told<\/a> WHYY the lead provisions were a compromise and \u201ca first step toward a more comprehensive legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the new law does not fix those loopholes and problems. There are also no bills before the legislature that would mandate lead testing in schools.<\/p>\n Instead, two companion bills \u2014 HB 341<\/a> and SB 759<\/a> \u2014 propose to address lead-related infrastructure issues by requiring schools to replace water fountains with ones that are filtered. Both bills currently sit in state House and Senate committees.<\/p>\n When similar bills circulated in the previous legislative session, school organizations still found them to be unrealistic, despite a proposed state grant meant to fund eligible schools.<\/p>\n In an email obtained by Spotlight PA, a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials wrote to several legislative offices that it opposed the concept because \u201cit requires a one-size-fits-all approach to a complex problem and creates a mandate onto school entities that will not be fully funded through the grant program provided in the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n The Association of School Business Officials also signed the letter sent to Rowe last month. Officials there did not respond to requests for comment for this story.<\/p>\n Baer said that the cost of remediation \u2014 say, replacing a drinking fountain \u2014 isn\u2019t higher than the cost of not replacing it.<\/p>\n \u201c(Lead) causes behavioral issues, lifelong cognitive impairment,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the cost is being paid; it\u2019s just that people aren\u2019t seeing it as a line item. It\u2019s being paid for by the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Spotlight PA\u2019s Angela Couloumbis contributed.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n
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